Books and Libraries

The Public Library by Robert Dawson

/ Books and Libraries, Reading

★★★☆☆ | Reading and Books | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

The author, Robert Dawson, spent decades driving around the country taking photographs of public libraries in the U.S. This book is the result. He keeps a blog at https://libraryroadtrip.com which he continues to update.

The book is mainly photographs, but there are some good essays sprinkled throughout. I bought the book because of an E.B. White essay, which turned out to be a paragraph-long letter to children who had written him from a library. Ha.  I liked the Anne Lamott one the best — saving the Salinas public libraries that were about to close with a “read-in.”

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

/ Books and Libraries, Literary Fiction, Reading

★★★★☆ | Reading and Books | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads 

I read the first half of this short epistolary book as an excerpt in Stories of Books and Libraries by Jane Holloway. I bought the print edition because the library didn’t offer it and the Kindle version cost too much.  I read the rest of it over the course of an hour or two.  I suspected it couldn’t end on a bright note and I was right. I shed a few tears at the sudden ending. Such is the way of life.  Helene, as the crazy, run-at-the-mouth American contrasts nicely with the British reserve of Mr. Frank Doel.  We learn all these bizarre details about Helene’s life, but have to coax the smallest of things from Frank. The spare book without any explanatory text to accompany the letters worked perfectly.

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The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

/ Books and Libraries, Literary Fiction, Reading

★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads 

Sure, the plot was predictable. Yes, the genre here might be closer to chick-lit than I’m comfortable with. But, I still liked it. I liked the irritable, opinionated AJ Fikry, I liked his policeman friend, I kind of liked Amelia and Maya. Mostly, I liked the idea of an island bookstore owned by a cranky, book nerd. Oh, and all the literary references.

Spoilers follow …

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The Private Library by Reid Byers

/ Books and Libraries, Reading

★★★★★ | Reading and Books | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Reid Byers Website | Readwise

Two Quotes:

Book-wrapt — that beneficient feeling of being wholly imbooked, beshelved, inlibriated, circumvolumed, peribibliated … it implies the traditional library wrapped in shelves of books, and the condition of rapt attention to a particular volume, and the rapture of of being transported to the wood beyond the world.

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