The Library Book

On April 29, 1986 the "Central" main branch of the Los Angeles Library burned. It was a loss of the equivalent of 15 branch libraries. "The greatest loss to any public library in the history of the United States." The 200 librarians who worked there had lost 400,000 books and had to figure out how to save the 700,000 damaged books that could be retrieved from the building. There were other losses. Three-quarters of their microfilm melted, all of their art books were a loss and twenty-thousand photographs became unidentifiable due to water removing the labels. But more so, the people who worked at the library and those who visited it weekly, some even daily, had no place to come. They were a community displaced but not dispirited. People show more donated their personal books, children sold lemonade, bodegas sold t-shirts, and TV land held a telethon - to raise funds for books!

The debate about whether to rebuild, to move, or even what to replace was a huge question. And as the book continues, you find out the LA Library has always been a quagmire of debate and decision... and delight. It is a fascinating history. In fact, I think I enjoyed the telling of the librarians more than the recounting of the library itself. They were amazing people, so ahead of their time. They were asking questions early on about what a library's place is and what else it can, or should be, that really benefited their patrons.

Susan Orlean is one of those authors who I just read their books, no questions asked. I don't read the flap, I don't question the price on it, I just add it to the pile. She is always worth it. If you are a library patron or a book person, I highly recommend this one. show less

The fire at the Los Angeles Central Library in April of 1986 was a huge, devastating loss, not just for the library's patrons, but for all lovers of books. Who hasn't felt a twinge of sadness and regret when reading about the destruction of the Library of Alexandria--all those ancient manuscripts, history, literary masterpieces which will never be known. The LA County Library fire was the biggest library fire ever in the United States. I was living in LA (West LA) at that time, a graduate student at UCLA, teaching Russian language to undergraduates, and beginning work on my dissertation. Libraries meant a lot to me, as they do to most book lovers. We grew up in them, discovered other worlds in them, felt safe in them. So I was somewhat show more bemused to find that I had no memory at all about the fire--although it was in all the papers (I subscribed to the LA Times then). It may have been I was too caught up in my graduate school problems, and was safely ensconced in UCLA's main library to worry about it, but more likely is that because the Chernobyl incident happened that same week, it overwrote all my memories of the LA fire.

This book is very immediate, it puts you there while it was happening, and everything that happened afterwards. It is also a history of that particular library, its architecture, its collection, its librarians -- all of it fascinating and awe-inspiring. It is also the story of the man accused of setting it, another misfit and wanna be actor, among the thousands wandering LA on any given day. Truly an intriguing story.

The one thing that was not delved into enough was that this catastrophe could have been prevented if all the warnings about faulty wiring, piles of books left where they shouldn't be because of lack of space, and other fire hazards had been properly addressed in the decades before 1986. The 'real' culprit (despite the arson angle presented) was the lack of concern on the part of those in charge of public safety and building inspections. In the end, the book serves as a warning: if you care about public libraries and everything they make available to the public, then protect them! Arson had very little (if anything) to do with this fire, for decades it was a disaster in the making. show less

In an engaging style without melodrama, Orlean weaves the story of the 1986 LA Library fire with the co-history of the library itself and the city of Los Angeles. While I can't say it made me *like* LA, this book left me with an appreciation for the city and with a lot to ponder about the role of libraries as places of radical inclusion and spaces for connection to community as well as to books and information.

Of course, this is from someone who started listening to this book on the drive up to LA for the express purpose of visiting the Central Library with her family, but I suspect there will be something in the story (Arson! Mystery! Prevarication!) to engage even those not already in love with libraries.

This excellent book centers around a devastating fire that occurred at Los Angeles' massive Central Library in 1986, damaging or destroying hundreds of thousands of books. It doesn't just tell the story of the fire, though, but weaves a great many related subjects around it: the history of the the Central Library and of the Los Angeles library system going back to the 1800s; the period of recovery from the fire and the salvaging of an astonishing number of books; the library as it exists today, including a look at its day-to-day operations, the variety of services it provides, and the experiences of the librarians who work there; the role of libraries in communities in general, and the author's personal relationship to them; the life of show more Harry Peak, who was accused of starting the fire, but never convicted; and even the disturbing history of book-burning.

Orlean jumps around between all of these subjects from chapter to chapter in a way that seems like it could have felt disjointed, but instead feels engaging and natural . Her writing is really, really good, full of lots of very thorough factual material, but also a great deal of emotion, personal engagement, and thoughtful, intelligent consideration. As a book-lover, I found the whole thing deeply interesting and resonant. Although, also as a book-lover, I found parts of it very upsetting, as well. It says something about how utterly, mercilessly vivid her description of the burning library is that I genuinely felt a little nauseated while I was reading it. show less

“The idea of being forgotten is terrifying. I fear not just that I, personally, will be forgotten, but that we are all doomed to being forgotten—that the sum of life is ultimately nothing; that we experience joy and disappointment and aches and delights and loss, make our little mark on the world, and then we vanish, and the mark is erased, and it is as if we never existed. If you gaze into that bleakness even for a moment, the sum of life becomes null and void, because if nothing lasts, nothing matters. It means that everything we experience unfolds without a pattern, and life is just a wild, random, baffling occurrence, a scattering of notes with no melody. But if something you learn or observe or imagine can be set down and show more saved, and if you can see your life reflected in previous lives, and can imagine it reflected in subsequent ones, you can begin to discover order and harmony. You know that you are a part of a larger story that has shape and purpose—a tangible, familiar past and a constantly refreshed future. We are all whispering in a tin can on a string, but we are heard, so we whisper the message into the next tin can and the next string. Writing a book, just like building a library, is an act of sheer defiance. It is a declaration that you believe in the persistence of memory."

I love thinking of a library as filled with defiance and memory.

Many (most?) of my 75er friends have read and loved The Library Book, and I can now join their number. An arson mystery? A history of libraries? An inside look at library administration? A dissection of the terrible fire at the Los Angeles Central Library? A history of that library? Some colorful tales of LA's librarians and library administrators? A physics lesson on burning books, and how to fight and investigate fires involving books? She covers a lot of territory in this fairly slim volume, all with a current of writing that irresistibly pulls the reader along. The quote above is an example of the deep thinking and thoroughness she brings. The Library Book came after she had decided not to write any more books, and was inspired by warm memories of going to the public library with her mother as a child. Nonfiction page-turners exist in an elite group (e.g. Erik Larson, Candice Millard), and now Orlean has added one that uniquely appeals to those who love libraries and books. show less

There are innumerable reasons to read/listen to this paean to the Los Angeles Central Library, and appreciation for your own local facility will be evoked as well. The writer tells two stories here: the history of the LA library and the 1986 arson fire which destroyed so much of its collection and damaged the historic building, and the man who might have set the fire. Each chapter begins with a small list of titles from the vast collection and their Dewey Decimal number, and Orlean has picked some intriguing tomes, ancient and recent. The 1986 fire happened at the same time as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and thereby received very little attention outside of the city. Harry Peak, an unemployed actor, was seen and identified by several show more witnesses, but Orlean here is very convincing about previously held arson myths and about the difficulty of identifying the criminal unless they are caught with the matches and the flame. She tells winning stories of the shift from male to female in library management, and about how modern facilities proudly offer so many patrons so many critical services. Andrew Carnegie would be mystified and proud! There's so much to absorb here that even a non-reader could appreciate Orlean's fine storytelling. show less

This investigation into the LA Library Fire of 1986 combines interviews with legend with stories told by witnesses into one beautiful and thoughtful work. The main suspect is presented in an unexpectedly positive light and the devastation wrought by the fire is detailed horrifically. As a a lover of books and a future librarian, it is fascinating to read about the librarians and history of that specific library both before and after the fire.