The Library Book

I absolutely loved this book.

It wasn't quite as true crime as I was expecting (although to be fair– I shouldn't have been expecting that much true crime going into it), but I loved it. This was an ode to books, to reading, and to libraries. I won't lie, it did make me look up an MLIS and contemplate a brief career as a librarian.

Sigh.

I think this is a book that all book lovers should read. It made me feel so warm, so sad, so angry, and so hopeful at times. It's not too long and Orlean's voice is absolutely radiant.

I know this one has been one that I've been looking forward to reading and I highly, highly encourage all of my fellow bibliophiles to pick it up.

Awesome read. Orlean tells a lot of history about American libraries and significant figures that have shaped them. She has also made me better understand the civic importance of libraries and all that they contribute to the communities they're in.

I am not too sure about this book if I am being honest. Like I cant really say what I liked or even disliked about it.
It was supose to be really good. So I feel somewhat let down by it all if I am totally honest.
I like the fact that it involves book so much tho. And it isnt all scary scary vrime but also i just dont know. I dont know what I think

“The library is a gathering pool of narratives and of the people who come to find them. It is where we can glimpse immortality; in the library, we can live forever.”

This is a weird book to rate, because the book's blurb indicates it's about the Los Angeles Public Library fire in 1986, and while that's certainly covered, there's also quite a bit of other stuff in here that may or may not interest the average reader. I, however, loved it all, because it spoke to all the reasons why I work in a library and spent the (considerable) time and money to get a degree in the field. If you want to read about a crazy library fire and also the history of libraries and the many different ways libraries have evolved over the years, you will find the same pleasure in this book that I did.

Interspersed with the chapters about the leadup to the fire, the firefighters battling the fire, and the aftermath and the impacts it had on the librarians and the community, you'll get a profile of a man who was the prime arson suspect, the history of libraries in general and the history of Los Angeles Public Library in specific, and the author's experiences with visiting the library today. It hops around a ton and covers a lot of ground, but I don't think any of it ever bored me. I especially liked the discussion around homeless/displaced people in the library, because it's a tough topic without an easy answer.

If you're looking for a book strictly about the fire though, this one may not be for you. While the chapters on the fire itself were fascinating, it doesn't feel like there was enough material there for a full book experience. The topics covered were interesting, but I can see how some of the material may be boring or dry for anyone not already in the library field or interested in how libraries have evolved over the years.

Support your local libraries. Even if you don't think you need their services, vote locally and ensure they receive the funding they so desperately need to serve the ones who depend on them.

I spent hundreds of afternoons hanging out in my local library as a kid. I loved this book doubly, though, because as an adult I've come to realize how utterly unlike anything else libraries are. They're a rare treasure to accept anyone and give knowledge and resources out for free. I even heard about this book when my librarian recommended it to me. The book isn't for everyone, but it is for library lovers, and I hope everyone becomes a library lover

I'd actually give this a 3.5. I wanted to like this book. I love libraries and book people and history of public institutions. But this book just never caught my attention. It was well written and researched, but the narrative just never went anywhere. It took me months to finish. It felt like it should have been a New Yorker article instead of a 300+ page book.

Wonderful book for lovers of books and libraries (aside from the trauma of reading about a horrible library fire), which has now provided me with a reason for wanting to go to Los Angeles, a place I never had the slightest wish to visit. Some sections, especially towards the end, were a bit thin and could beneficially have been filled out more. And Orleans's personal distaste for the lower classes does come through, as other reviewers have noted (she herself baldly states that she's afraid of homeless people), although the librarians don't generally seem to share her prejudice. Aside from these drawbacks, I found it full of fascinating information and stories and would gladly gobble up more “library books.”

A nice dedication about finding and loving libraries again. Does do a good job showcasing some of what libraries do and exploring the history of the LA library history. The history was unexpected to me and so it does kinda have an element of true crime - it wasn't solved and really wasn't a fulfilling ending to the true crime bit.

Otherwise nice book - probably recommend to other librarians & library/book lovers.


Rec by a patron.

Usually when I start complaining about a book feeling disjointed, I start thinking about how it could have been rearranged better so it would have felt more cohesive, and I usually wind up frustrated because I can't think of a better way. BUT! I have solved my own problem with The Library Book! I wish this had been a series of vignettes in a different order — one about the fire itself, one about the arson case and its lack of resolution, one about the man suspected of the arson — and then once the reader is expecting little vignettes instead of one big narrative (as I was, going in), then it's a perfect fit for a section to talk about the history of the L.A. library building, one for homelessness as a library issue, one about the history of the librarians and the sexism that pervaded libraries everything, etc.

Because in truth, each of these sections were interesting, and I enjoyed learning about them even though I have zero ties to Los Angeles, but Orlean jumped around in time/subject so much that we're reading about Suspected Arsonist Harry Payne (sp? I listened to the audio) in the beginning of the book and in the last chapter too, and there just was not enough about the fire itself to be a whole book, and that was the book I thought I was getting.

(Though mad respect for the former librarian who decided he'd walk across America to get to his new job instead of doing something reasonable like taking the train, and that he chose clothes that he liked but that were ridiculed by everyone else. Young Allie had a thing for weird clothes.)

This was a pretty good book overall. Orlean interweaves the story of the library's burning in the 80s, the history of the LA Library system, and lots of information about libraries today into a pretty engaging story. The book really suffers when she veers from the facts into weird, gimmicky, first person attempts at profundity, such as the chapter dedicated to her burning a book in her back yard or a very strange interlude late in the book wherein she imagines the events that caused the fire.

It was very interesting and full of amazing facts. It wanders a bit, but I was ok with it. It took me awhile to get into the book.

An ode to libraries wrapped in a history lesson disguised as a crime thriller.

As an avid patron of the library from toddler storytimes to getting my own library card on the bookmobile in elementary school to working in educational publishing for years to serving as a trustee today, I was geeked out to read Susan Orlean's “The Library Book.”

At first, the book walloped my expectations from the author's description of meditative trips to the library with her mother to the early, rather wild history of the LA public library to the fire that wreaked havoc on the main branch in 1986.

Somewhere between 1/2 to 2/3 of the way through, however, the book seemed to loose its momentum. Perhaps it's because the denouement of who lit the fire fizzled in real life it perhaps it's because the author was t sure how to wrap up the book.

So, check this book out from your local library because it's definitely well-written and interesting, even if you're not a library but like me.

As a library employee—parts of this book made me literally cry. The author does a wonderful job illustrating the value of our public libraries to our communities and even teaches us some history while she's at it.

Loved this book! It covers so much information about libraries while focused on the fire at the Los Angeles public library in 1986. If you like libraries, you will enjoy this book.

Well, this was a hell of a book to finish on the day that Notre Dame was on fire. A fascinating blend of history, true crime (kind of, though not really enough to shelve it as that), a story of recovery from disaster, and a meditation on what a modern library means to its patrons and employees. I love Orlean's style and this was fun but also educational, without ever being dry or boring. I love libraries.

The backdrop of the story was the Los Angeles library fire in April of 1986. The investigation of the cause of the fire threaded with the history of libraries in the United States makes up the narrative. The book which I read as an audiobook was read by the author herself. The possibility of arson in the library and the tale of the most likely person to be the arsonist definitely made it an interesting read. The book brought home the fact that libraries may be the reservoir of all kinds of information but, in the end, are run and maintained by people. There is politics and intrigue wherever there are social interactions and are the most alive of places. The story was fascinating for me but I really felt that the narration could have been livelier. It had the potential to engage me more with its in-depth research into the history of the libraries in the country. Maybe if I had actually read it as a book, I would have appreciated it better.

Really this 2.5 rounded up to 3 stars, because wow did that feel like it took forever to get through.

I wanted to love this book. So much. From the moment I read a review months ago (before it was named any book club's pick). I even specifically made a trip to the book store to pick a hard copy when I saw that not only did they have only 1 in stock at the time, but it was also a signed copy. I mean it's a a book about books and libraries. Why wouldn't I want to love it.

Unfortunately, love is not the word I'd use to describe my reading experience. Sure there were points that I really liked it and there were parts that I enjoyed. But the meandering path that the narrative took to get from beginning to end was excruciating. It felt like one of those Family Circus comics where Billy takes the longest, most out of the way routes to get from A to B. Part of that I blame on the PR and dust jacket descriptions that made it sound like this books mostly focused on the 1986 fire at Los Angeles' Central Library. Made it sound like this was a cold case, an unsolvable mystery with some other anecdotal information thrown in. Starting out that's what it was. The focus was on the fire and what happened that day; how it was buried in the news cycle because bigger news happened a world away. And then the author made a hard left turn into tangent-ville. There's a section on the history of book burning (which, ok I can kind of see that connection, but there was too much). Then there's all the stuff on the history of the LA library system and how it's changed and how it all works today. So much so that we went huge section of the book without even a side mention of the fire, Harry Peak, the investigation, the lawsuits etc. But I also put some of the blame on the author. I know she loves using note cards to organize her thoughts/narrative order, but it seemed there was no order. One page she's talking about the fire, 3 pages later she's talking about interviewing a current librarian about their new social program and 10 pages after that she's babbling in great detail about what happened in 1923. It was that minutia on things that didn't matter to the over all story that left me not feeling bad about putting the book down.

While I appreciate the vast amount of research the author accumulated and I understand wanting to use as much of it as possible, I feel this was really two books that shouldn't have been squished into one.

I was expecting this book to be about the fire at the LA Library back in the 80's and it was, but so much more. It was fascinating to learn about the history of one of my favorite places!

This nonfiction book about libraries got me weirdly emotional, though to be fair, I was already intensely passionate about libraries. I recommend picking it up. Preferably a library copy, so you can say you're reading the library book The Library Book.

In The Library Book, Orlean describes the history of public libraries, but more specifically the Los Angeles Central Library, which was devastated by an enormous fire in the spring of 1986. She looks at the impact of the fire and the arson investigations following it. She also writes about the contested and evolving role of public libraries, with research spanning centuries.

She runs through past and present senior staff members at the Los Angeles library, and how their perspectives each impacted the library. She talks about building rentals, renovations, and construction, before and after the fire. She details library programs created in response to LA's development and larger political and cultural factors.

Given the number of topics addressed and interviewed integrated, this book could have easily been a scattered mess. But Orlean skillfully weaves together different subjects and settings. She creates a layered and complex sense of what libraries are—the purposes they serve, the challenges they face, how they have changed.

I especially enjoyed a short chapter (22) about reference librarians answering calls in the InfoNow department. It was a brief but accurate glimpse into what it's like to field questions from library patrons. It was consistent with my experiences, anyway.

I was glad Orlean took a moment to showcase the value of there being a place people can contact/visit to ask...well, pretty much anything. And I was glad that she took that same moment to share how bizarre and funny patron interactions often are. I believe work in a library requires viewing and treating people with patience and dignity. But also, work at a free public institution invites an abundance of weird, dumb possibility. The Library Book captured this ambiguity well.

This is a compelling text about the history and future of public libraries, including their connections to technology and social services. But it also discusses arson at length, so it gives you a lot to consider. I really enjoyed it.

Prior to the arrival of this book, I was unfamiliar with the Los Angeles library fire of 1986. I'd never noticed journalist and author Susan Orlean before. When I read the description for The Library Book, however, I was intrigued. This sounded like a fabulous, riveting book. Here was the story of a great library on fire, and the investigation of how that fire started.

But that's only about thirty percent of the book. The other seventy percent is the story of individual librarians, the history of arson, personal reflections about the evolution of libraries, and whatever else the author wishes to discuss. The book is bogged down with so much behind-the-scene details of your average library that I was bored. Now I should mention that I have worked at a library for over eleven years. I love being a librarian. It's easily the best job I've ever had that I've been paid for doing. This connection was part of my initial interest in this book. And I imagine that some of The Library Book's biggest supporters are librarians. Finally, here is a book that champions what we, as librarians, do daily.

Despite Susan Orlean's expertise in writing, however, I don't think she does the subject justice. Ultimately, her story is about Libraries in general, but often she uses the Los Angeles Public Library staff as her example. Without a doubt, LAPL does many great things. They've been behind some wonderful initiatives. But Orlean's portrayal of librarians perpetuates so many of the stereotypes that I caught myself rolling my eyes frequently. Imagine, shushing librarians chastising a patron for eating a bag of chips!!! The horror.

Even while propagating the image of these old-fashioned librarians, Orlean is trying to convince the reader how cool libraries are because the librarians have tattoos, and because they're filling a hole in social services and have embraced modern technology, and because librarians have tattoos (seriously, I don't know how many times she mentions this). She makes some good points throughout, but I couldn't help but wonder, who cares? Is this why readers picked up this book? So they could get a behind-the-scenes look at a library's shipping and receiving department? So they could hear about what one library's user policies are from its security staff? So they could read an entire chapter on Overdrive? Maybe library users are hungry for this info, but as someone living it day-to-day, I found it tedious.

What I'd personally wanted from this book was a specific story: the story of the Los Angeles Public Library fire. I'd wanted the harrowing account of the fire itself, as well as the aftermath. I'd wanted to hear about the crime and criminal who set the fire. And that story is here, but in limited detail. In fact, even that story is incomplete, because while the beginning of the book leads the reader to believe there are definitive answers to the LAPL fire, Orlean eventually convinces the reader that it's largely speculation.

I do want to add here that some of the tangential information is interesting. I don't want a reader of this review to think that everything about that other 70 percent of the book is a drag, because it isn't. There are stories about the city's first female City Librarian, Mary Foy, the expansion of the library system under the direction of Mary L. Jones, and her subsequent ousting that put the eccentric and controversial Charles Lummis in charge. Parts of these histories, as well as others, are interesting and sometimes relevant to the story. The vast majority of this book, however, is trivia for the sake of trivia. It's rambling and probably not all that interesting to the ordinary reader. (Boy, that 4.19 average rating seems to disagree with me, however.)

No doubt Orlean is a wonderful writer and skilled researcher, but the story of “the Los Angeles Public Library fire” just isn't here. I wonder if she embarked on this journey unaware of where it might lead, and had to settle for a thinly veiled textbook about libraries in general. Maybe this was her story all along. If you haven't been to a library in ages, you may read this book and say to yourself, “Wow, libraries are cool.” Then again, as one Goodreads reviewer summed up in her one-star review, “If you didn't think libraries were boring before reading this book- you will now.”

This was very interesting and also validating! From the first chapter, I was afraid this book would end up being too...obvious? for me to enjoy as a librarian–there's a lot of impressed exclamation over all the weird/cool librarians do, and I was like yeah I KNOW SUSAN. Which of course I know that the vast majority of people reading this aren't librarians and it's great for them to learn more about libraries! But I just feared it would get a little tiresome. But luckily the book veers off in a ton of interesting directions and I learned a lot about arson and library history and Los Angeles history! (And had my librarian ego stroked a little bit!)

Susan Orlean is also a great interviewer who usually gets weird stories out of her subjects, but also humanizes them.

Anyway this was an interesting read for all lovers of books. And/or fires.