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talypollywaly's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
3.0
Dear god was this book a chore to get through. And yet I didn't learn what I picked up the book hoping to learn, and the end hardly touched the surface on the issues facing modern-day libraries.
arrianne's review against another edition
3.0
This was ok, but as somebody who loves books and libraries (I was a volunteer librarian in my school library at lunchtime and it might have been the pinnacle of my professional career) it was a bit dull and weirdly structured. It focussed on boring things for extended periods of time and I just wanted...a different book.
howardgo's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
2.25
I learned about The Library: A Fragile History by Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen from a Jeff Jarvis tweet. I was intrigued by his comments and the subject matter of the book and added it to my read pile. I recently finished reading it and have to say that I was very disappointed.
The book is quite dry and very slow. In fact, it reads a bit like a graduate dissertation that was edited for the general public. The feel is that lots of facts were gathered together and linked with spare prose. The prose and the facts are interesting and informative but a long way from entertaining, at least for me.
Another drawback is that the book is almost entirely focused on Europe and the United States. There is no exploration of libraries or their history anywhere else except for the very brief discussion of the Library of Alexandria in Africa. Surely the Muslim world had libraries during the Dark Ages when Europe was basically struggling to simply survive.
As I said, this book wasn't my favorite. Maybe I came to it expecting too much. I certainly expected more than it gave.
bookanonjeff's review against another edition
5.0
Comprehensive History. This is a fairly dense (yet readable) comprehensive history of humanity's efforts to store its written words. We begin all the way back in ancient Mesopotamia with some discussion of even their clay tablets, and we come all the way through the digital and eReader era (which the authors are a bit more pessimistic about than this reader, who is admittedly a technologist). While other areas such as China, Africa, India, (modern) Australia, and Columbian era Middle America are mentioned at times, the vast majority of the focus of the discussion here is Euro-centric, with detailed discussions of American library systems once the discussion advances to the relevant time periods. Indeed, as it turns out, the "modern public library" as Americans know it today? Did not exist prior to WWII in any real form at all, though through the efforts of business titans such as Andrew Carnegie (discussed in much depth here in the text), the earlier forms of it were beginning by the late 19th century. Truly a fascinating book, but also truly a very long one. Anyone remotely interested in books and reading should probably at least consider reading this, as it really is a remarkable history of the book, its uses, and its storage. Very much recommended.
bloodravenlib's review against another edition
4.0
Quick impressions: Overall, this is an interesting but also dense book. Some chapters can be a bit slow. It is an ambitious work that strives to cover a lot of ground, and it does so in a relatively coherent way.
(Full review with reading notes on my blog soon.)
(Full review with reading notes on my blog soon.)