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Randolph Reads

Randolph Reads: The Library Book

by Kelsey Molseed on 2020-02-28T16:34:00-05:00 | 0 Comments

Welcome to Randolph Reads, a space for Randolph to share what we're reading! This month, Professor Chelsea Berry from the history department shares her thoughts on The Library Book, by Susan Orlean...sounds pretty good to us! Check it out:

I still have my first library card from the Lafayette Public Library. It’s laminated, with my name in spidery five-year-old script. I remember the pride of handing that card to a librarian to check out stacks of Calvin & Hobbes collections. In my house, we had a particular tote bag for checking out and returning DVDs and the stacks of books my sisters and I would plow through each week. I was of the generation where the release of each Harry Potter book involved a party at the library, and a dramatic reading of the first chapter by our one librarian from the UK, as she had “the proper accent for it.” I later spent hot summer afternoons slouched in bean bag chairs with dystopian young adult fiction, or ensconced in carrels to work on high school reading assignments. From story hour to college applications, the public library was a cornerstone of my childhood and adolescence. In case it isn't clear, I love libraries.

Susan Orlean’s 2018 The Library Book—a love letter to the public library—shows that I’m not alone. It’s a cliché to say that a book has “something for everyone,” but Orlean’s exploration of the library really is three books expertly braided together: a history of public libraries in the United States; a sociological exploration of the changing role and mission of libraries in the 21st century as some of the last truly public civic institutions; and a twisty true-crime mystery of the devastating 1986 fire that nearly destroyed the Los Angeles Public Library. The LAPL, both the towering Art Deco Central Library and the network of 72 branches in the city system, serves as the focal point for all three strands. Orlean’s careful research includes interviews with library staff present on the day of the fire, dives into city archives (Mary Foy, the first female head librarian of the LAPL who took the job at the fledgling library as an eighteen-year-old in 1880, was a particularly fascinating individual), and a lot of time spent sitting quietly in the library, observing. My favorite parts of the book are these almost anthropological slices of daily life at the LAPL, as Orlean follows and records a series of interactions between librarians and the many, many people from all over the city who make use of the library. She grounds all of these investigations in the physical space of this institution, from the particular smell of books rescued from the fire to the busily humming computer rooms where librarians help community members access the internet for free. Whether your personal experiences with public libraries were as vivid and formative as mine or not, Orlean’s book is a fascinating and thoughtful exploration of these spaces and their role in American life.Want to check out The Library Book? Order a copy through interlibrary loan!


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