Library: An Unquiet History (2003)

This probably should have been a long article. There is some fluff and belaboring of points (e.g. Jonathan Swift's Battle of the Books in chapter 4). I've read long, mostly academic, books on libraries and loved them, and I did get some neat tidbits out of this one, but it never really felt full or deep enough to justify its length.

As I said, the neat tidbits were fun. I enjoyed reading about the Ptolemies in Egypt, who confiscated all books of visitors to Alexandria. They were taken to the library, copied and sometimes the originals were kept (p. 29). This helped increase the library's holdings. Battles also suggests the possibility that the hoarding of these texts may have contributed to the loss of so many ancient works. Had they been in private hands or in other locations, they might have survived longer (p. 31). I really enjoyed the description of an early Vatican book organization system, with sacred books and profane books laid out on tables in a specific relation to each other (pp. 78-79). ( )

A necessarily idiosyncratic, but quite fun, short history of libraries. A couple teensy errors/typos crept in, and of course anybody writing this book would have focused in different places, &c., but overall, not bad at all. ( )

In my quest to read some non-fiction I ended up giving up on The Blind Watchmaker and turned to a book that had been waiting on my shelf for many months. It's a relatively brief and interesting history of libraries, literature, biblioclasms & librarians. Very interesting bits on ancient libraries and harrowing bits about modern destruction. The style was smooth and charming. (October 05, 2005) ( )

Boring. Not the book I expected it to be. Could not get through the first chapter.

Library: An Unquiet History was a fun book to read, as it jumps from one vignette to the next, highlighting times of turbulence and uncertainty in libraries' history, from the relatively light "Battle of the Books" of Jonathan Swift's time, to the darker episodes of systematic library destruction during World War II and beyond. Battles illustrates the truth of Borge's statement, "the library is unlimited and cyclical" as libraries fall and decay and are rebuilt throughout the ages. He makes these stories relevant by highlighting the fact that the fear for the modern library--that it will be rendered obsolete by the digital era--is a fear echoed earlier in history, as various technological advances were made. The only thing I'd fault is that sometimes the stories don't seem to relate to one another, and there are large jumps across time and topic that slightly lack coherency. A good, light read on library history. ( )