The Place To Be

If you love books, you have a warm spot in your heart for libraries of all kinds. School libraries, university libraries (think about the RARE BOOK ROOM and salivate!), public lending libraries, and perhaps best of all, idiosyncratic private libraries little known and rarely accessible. All at once the libraries I've known come at me together -- my elementary school library with Mrs. Brown, the librarian, and the goofy little filmstrip projectors with the "beep" signaling to advance to film to the next frame, my high school library with little of interest and too many rules, my hometown public library where I once did a Boy Scout landscaping project, my undergraduate university's library where I discovered WPA Guides while browsing one night after some heavy research, my grad school library filled with a priceless collection of legal antiquities (I used to study sitting at a 500-year-old table from a European manor house), and even my own (very) modest library that everyone else in my family refers to as the "playroom" because of the children's toys scattered about. But I know the truth -- it's the library, because it contains most of my books!

Mr. Manguel knows a thing or two about books, too. His "job" for the last thirty-odd years has been editor and critic, and the dust jacket dutifully notes his impressive accomplishments, but what impressed me more was how much he'd managed to read in his lifetime, and the impressive settings in which he did so. This book is a collection of Manguel's essays about libraries and reading, and it covers some real treats -- Montaigne's tower, the original Library of Alexandria (or what little is known of it) and its modern attempted reconception, the British Library, the Library of Congress, Ashurbanipal's library (yes, THAT Ashurbanipal), the Bibliotheque Nationale, Aby Warburg's library (most curious indeed), even Hitler's libary (now part of the Library of Congress). And then there are the fantasy libraries such as Captain Nemo's that I won't even try to describe. But the crowning glory is probably Manguel's own library, built in his home in rural France by incorporating a centuries-old crumbling monastery wall. Yeah, my library's like that, too!

As you might expect, Mr. Manguel has favored us with several passages worth quoting, giving me multiple blog posts from a single book. So stay tuned!