"The Library Book," by Susan Orlean

As readers of this blog know or could guess, I love libraries, I go to libraries often, I borrow many books from libraries, and I support my local “Friends of the Library” organization. But did I want to read a nonfiction book about the catastrophic fire of 1986 that nearly destroyed the Los Angeles Public Library? I would have read an article in, say, The Atlantic about this fire, and would be somewhat intrigued by the mystery aspect of whether it was arson and if so who was responsible for it. But a whole book? The answer, it turns out, was emphatically YES! There is a reason that the respected New Yorker writer Susan Orlean’s “The Library Book” (Simon and Schuster, 2018) has been getting so much positive critical attention as well as much popular attention (being on bestseller lists, etc.). It is simply fascinating. Orlean spent several years researching the book, and much time interviewing various people at or related to the library (now rebuilt), including former and current librarians, and often just “hanging out” there, walking through the various sections, observing the librarians and the patrons, listening to the sounds of the library, smelling its scents, and in general immersing herself in the library and its history. Readers will also feel immersed in the library, this one specifically but also “the library” in its larger sense as well: the library as an institution, and all the libraries we each have visited. Orlean is excellent at conveying the atmosphere, the feeling of libraries, and people’s (including her own) visceral connection to libraries. She is particularly interested in public libraries, which have their own joys and issues that are somewhat distinct from, for example, university or school libraries; she doesn’t shy away from challenges that libraries and librarians face. The characters (librarians, patrons, investigators, architects, and more) whom she describes come alive. There is one main character: the main suspect in the fire, a young, somewhat lost would-be actor named Harry Peak. I won’t say any more about what Orlean (or the investigators) find out. And finally, the question of whether the fire was arson is an interesting one, but the joys of the book are much larger than the mystery/detective aspect of the story, just as this book is about, at the same time, one specific library but also all libraries. I very highly recommend this book to anyone who loves libraries.