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dhirschhorn 's review for:
The Library Book
by Susan Orlean
This book read a little all over the place for me (chapters would jump around between covering the current operation of the LA library, its history, and then very specific historical focus on the fire) but there were so many interesting little tidbits scattered throughout which will stay with me. (Did you know that you wouldn't have to pay a fine if you had diphtheria or the plague while in possession of a library book because the library would take care of the costs of fumigating them?) But I was also so touched by the stories throughout about how people use their libraries and what they mean to them. The young man with autism whose hyperfixation on maps makes him a valuable member of the team cataloging an inheritance of an entire house's worth of cartography. The current LA librarian who remembers coming to work there with her librarian mother before her and playing peekaboo at the desk. Those who are homeless getting access to services and a place to go out of the rain. And the author herself who fondly recounts the trips she would take to her own public library with her late mother and knowing how much she would have loved to have seen the Goodhue Building.
When I became a librarian, my grandmother, who has now passed, would tell me often how happy it made he to think of me doing this job. How she remembers going to their local library on Saturday mornings to hear the librarian read books to the children. She'd remind me that they didn't have very much money when she was growing up but this was something that they were able to do because the library was free. She was in her eighties and still remembered that woman telling her stories.
Books matter. Libraries matter. Thanks to Susan Orlean for reminding us.
When I became a librarian, my grandmother, who has now passed, would tell me often how happy it made he to think of me doing this job. How she remembers going to their local library on Saturday mornings to hear the librarian read books to the children. She'd remind me that they didn't have very much money when she was growing up but this was something that they were able to do because the library was free. She was in her eighties and still remembered that woman telling her stories.
Books matter. Libraries matter. Thanks to Susan Orlean for reminding us.