Without the library

The entire Seattle Public Library system was closed last week due to budget cuts. And not just the buildings were closed--you couldn't return books to the book drops or order anything from the library catalog. Luckily three of my books arrived the day before it closed, so the closure was not as painful as I expected it to be, and I had plenty to read at home anyway.

Here are the books I was reading during my library-less week. Both arrived at the last possible moment, for which I was very thankful, as they kept me busy. I also checked out The Little Prince, but I haven't got to it yet. You'll hear more about these next week.

I know libraries all over the place are seeing similar effects of budget cuts. And I can't possibly express how important I think libraries are.

Library adventures

It's been quite a while since I went to the library and brought home a stack of books to read. After finishing The Post-Office Girl, though, I was a bit at a loss, and felt the need for a novel to just sit down and read through. Most of the books on my to-read stack at home are nonfiction, somehow. Whenever I go to the library without a specific book in mind, I like to pick several, on the theory that at least one will catch my immediate fancy.I wanted a novel that wouldn't be a lot of work, maybe with a bit of romance. I have a vague notion that The China Garden, by Liz Berry, was on my to-read list, but it doesn't appear to be there. It's about an old English country estate, which seems exactly the thing to suit my present tastes. Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, by Elizabeth Taylor, is one I've been meaning to read since I saw the film, and though it's not quite the kind of book I want at the moment, it's the kind of book I may well want once I've satisfied my desire for fluff (respectable, well-written fluff, but still fluff). I've been meaning to read Georgette Heyer for a while, and her Regency settings fit well into my recent Jane Austen kick. Black Sheep, which is the book I settled on to begin reading, is perfectly lovely, and exactly what I want at the moment. And then I thought I'd like to read some more Neil Gaiman, so I found Interworld, which was co-written with Michael Reaves, as it was the only one to be immediately had.

There's something so satisfying about about a stack of library books.

Library: An Unquiet History

I heard about Matthew Battles's Library: An Unquiet History from Buried in Print, who read it for the Bibliophilic Books Challenge (for which it is also my fourth book). Somehow the book struck me enough to immediately go and order it from the library. It thus arrived, and I have now read it.

My first three books about books this year were stories (the Christopher Morley books and 84, Charing Cross Road), so it's a nice change to read a nonfiction book about books. Every single time, I forget how much I love this kind of nonfiction. Matthew Battles divides his story of libraries into more or less chronological chapters, beginning in ancient times, ending with the Internet. Apart from this chronological framework, each chapter has certain themes, such as book burning, library controversy, public libraries, and the destruction of books. The whole book is tied together by its constant questioning of what a library is, what people throughout history have believed to be the ideal form of the library, and what kinds of collections, intended as such or not, can functionally be called libraries.

Library sometimes feels disjointed, and I believe parts of it were previously published separately. It comes across as everything Battles wants to say about libraries (he's a librarian at Harvard), collected into one place, whether it entirely belongs there or not. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it's all very interesting, but the book could have used a little more editing. Despite that, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Battles writes well--sometimes a little fancifully, but this is never dry nonfiction. As the book's subtitle suggests, the story of the library is really very dramatic, full of wars, burnings, bombings, political and social prejudice, and literary controversy. Despite this, one suspects that in the wrong hands, a book about libraries could still come out very quiet and dull. Matthew Battles's are not the wrong hands. There are stories here of the impressive lengths to which people will go to read, and to prevent people from reading, and it's all very often surprisingly moving. Books and libraries are powerful, and Battles clearly understands this and has managed to transmit it. Helpfully, he obviously loves libraries and is well read on the subject.

Near the end of the book, Battles discusses how the Internet fits into the story of the library. He says, "The digital objects of today are the incunabula of a not-too-distant tomorrow..." (pg 212). Thanks to Sam Starbuck we have a word for such digital incunabula--extribulum, which you can (and totally should) read about here. I get rather a lot of glee out of connecting other things to Sam Starbucks' work, so it was lovely to see this in Library. It's fascinating to me to consider the relationship between books and the Internet, and it's always good to see writers treating this subject well, since it's so often written about with a certain amount of histrionic the-world-of-books-as-we-know-it-is-ending/the-internet-is-making-us-stupider sentiment. Plus, I like to think my blog is an extribulum.

So, I thought this book was fun, informative, and intelligent, and I very much recommend it.

Location, location

Managed to spend a whole hour reading Greenery Street this morning, as I had to get up outrageously early to get into honors classes, and had to wait in line for ages. I'm still loving it.

Then after lunch passed a random book sale, which had lots of books all for under ten dollars. It's been quite a while since I browsed through a bookstore properly, so it was quite pleasant. I didn't buy anything, but I was rather fascinated by which books appealed. It was mostly nonfiction that struck my eye (though granted, the sale was mostly of nonfiction). I did consider buying a collection of Alan Bennett's writing, but didn't in the end.

After that I had to finish reading the assigned chapters of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. I contemplated reading outside, as it was quite sunny today, but it wasn't really warm enough. Next best thing (or maybe better!), I went to sit in the Suzzallo Library reading room. I'm sure you've all seen this webpage, the collection of beautiful libraries. Most of them are photos of centuries-old libraries in Europe, but Suzzallo Library makes it in. Deservedly so. Reading there is like sitting in a church. The ceiling's enormously high and there's all sorts of lovely details, carving in the walls, beautifully painted ceiling, stained glass. Something about those long wooden tables with the lamps built into them make me feel like I should be wearing a 1950s suit. And reading there makes you feel kind of virtuous and pretentious at the same time.Given my sudden desire to read nonfiction and my recent discovery of the joys of reading in Suzzallo, has anyone got any good nonfiction suggestions? I'd like to brush up my history, but I'd like books that have a specific focus, that take history from a certain angle. Ideas?

Something to look at

We all come across those books in the library that have been in exactly the same place for about thirty years and still have the old date stamp cards, with the last date probably being the last time it was checked out. Now there's a blog to document such books! Because you can have a blog for just about anything. Here we have Awful Library Books, and some of those are really just fabulous. Some I recognize from my elementary school library.

Just thought I'd post the link.

Friday Ephemera #9

Ok, so I know it's not Friday. It's not even Saturday. I plead circumstances, that whole moving into a dorm thing, I rather forgot to post this.This is Chetham’s Library, in Manchester, England. The image is from this collection of beautiful libraries, which I'm sure you've all seen before, but it's worth looking at again. Worth noting on that list is the Suzzallo Library reading room, which is University of Washington's graduate library. I've yet to study there, but I've wandered through it several times and it is definitely as fabulous as that picture makes it appear.

Damn economy

As of Monday, all Seattle Public Libraries are closed for a week, due to budget cuts. Even the book drops and the online catalogue are closed. And it's always the things like schools and libraries that get cut, isn't it? Why is that?

I have plenty to read at home, of course, and it's removing the temptation of the library, but I have to confess to a certain panic at the idea of being completely unable to use my library. That's never happened to me before. The library is a very solid, ever-present thing that's been a crucial part of my life since before I can remember, and for this week it effectively does not exist. I must admit to feeling a little cast adrift.

Booking Through Thursday--Libraries

I found an interesting Booking Through Thursday from last August, and thought I'd do it this Thursday.

Whether you usually read off of your own book pile or from the library shelves NOW, chances are you started off with trips to the library. (There’s no way my parents could otherwise have kept up with my book habit when I was 10.) So … What is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you? Do you have you any funny/odd memories of the library?

There's a library about three blocks away from my parents house, and I went there almost daily as a child. Most of the librarians still recognize me and say hi. The library was remodeled when I was eleven or so (and boy was it a chore having to take the bus if I wanted to go to the library), so it doesn't look as it did when I was small. The children's book section was at the back of the library by the windows that look down the hill, and they always had the same stuffed animals. I have very specific memories of looking for a book on King Arthur, books on the planets, of refusing to check out Anne of Green Gables because I thought it was stupid (I've no idea where I got this notion, and I've since dispensed with it). I remember the old computers, green font on black before it was PCs, but I'm too young to have ever known card catalogs. It must have been after they remodeled that I graduated to looking in the teen section for reading material (and it was there that I first discovered Pamela Dean's Secret Country trilogy), and somewhere along the way I drifted out of that section and wandered into the general fiction.

The old library was red brick and very square, and downstairs they had a room where they did events like authors speaking, and I remember pretty vividly once for some reason they had a fellow who brought in pot-bellied pigs. Now the library's all modern, giant glass windows, light fixtures that look like chocolate fountains and fried eggs, but at least it's not a really annoying kind of modern. It's managed to stay cosy, especially in winter. I used to go after school (two blocks away) all the time with my mother, and on weekends with my father. I remember being very excited when I got old enough (or maybe it was just that I'd had the library card long enough) to check out as many books at a time as I wanted, instead of having a limit. It was also very exciting (many years later) when the library started being open on Sundays (which had always seemed like the best day to be there, except that it wasn't open). I always got annoyed at school when we went to the school library and they made us check things out, because I already had books from the "real" library and I didn't need more. I think I've been through two library cards, though I have a vague notion that I found the old card after I got the new one. Mine is still older than the current edition of cards, which are blue. Mine is red, but scuffed in places where it's gotten white.

So many books

New books to read! Oh, it's so exciting.

I went to the library yesterday and came back with two books I've very much been looking forward to--The Light Years, by Elizabeth Jane Howard, first book of The Cazalet Chronicle, and Bloodhound, by Tamora Pierce. I watched the miniseries The Cazalets quite some time ago, and have been meaning to read the books since. It's one of those "sprawling family dramas" and starts in 1937 and goes, I think, through the war. I quite liked the miniseries, though it was occasionally a tad melodramatic (I don't know whether because of the story, which would be still true of the book, or something about the production). Anyway, it's always nice to have another World War II novel to read, especially after reading The Mitfords, which of course spanned the entire 20th century but World War II does always seem to be a focal point. Some day I suppose I ought to read one that's actually about the war, and not just the people at home during it.

Bloodhound is the sequel to Terrier (and second in a supposed trilogy), and written in journal format with, says a blurb on the back, "homage to the police procedural genre." It's set in Tamora Pierce's by now very well-developed world of Tortall, and like 200 years before the first books she ever wrote about that world. It's always kind of interesting to compare those books with these, because her writing has improved vastly. It is still, of course, young adult fiction (and fantasy to boot), which is certainly not great literature but inevitably very satisfying.

I would be tempted to put off The Dud Avocado again and start in one of these (oh no, more choices as to which one), but I am determined not to, and so now I have motivation to whizz through that and get it finished so I can read these. Nothing against The Dud Avocado, mind you, I'm actually really liking it and might have made the great push to finish it anyway.

It's been such a long time since I checked out any books from the library. Before these I didn't have anything checked out at all, even movies or cds. I really quite missed it; I used to love the library, I still do though I don't make it there quite so often.