kathleenkellyhalverson 's review for:

The Library Book by Susan Orlean

2.0

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I thought the information was interesting, but only at times. It really was quite a dreadful and dry read. What made it worse (for me, anyway) was that I read it via Audible and it was narrated by the author herself, and she has the most monotonous, BORING voice in the history of voices reading books. It. Was. Awful. I increased the speed at times just to hobble through listening to her. I read to the end b/c I wanted to see where she would go with this book, and, sadly, it didn't get better for me. Although I learned something (quite a bit of something) about the history of libraries, much of it was SO mundane in its presentation and narration and was drilled down to the most ridiculous level of detail, it was more like reading an anthropology textbook or a scholarly journal article on architecture, and, at times, like reading a dissertation. You could tell the author did lots of research, but, honestly, for me, it was TOO much research and took away from the main crux of the storyline: The fire, and the story of the libary that it destroyed. It was about so much more than this library--TOO much more. In my opinion. Glad it's over; took me months of driving back and forth to work to finish this read (I only listen to my Audible books to and from work; at home, I read in different ways and different books). Oh, well. I don't entirely regret it. I learned some stuff.