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THE LIBRARY BOOK by Susan Orlean
Oct. 25th, 2019 04:00 pmAt around 11 AM on April 29,1986, the Los Angeles Central Library caught fire. It burned for nearly 8 hours and 400,000 books were destroyed, with 700,000 more damaged by smoke or water or both.
By the time news of the fire reached the East Coast, it was too late for that day's edition of the New York Times. The following day, the magnitude of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which had also happened on the 29th, was beginning to be understood and would dominate headlines, world-wide, for the rest of the week.
It was several decades later, when writer Susan Orlean and her family moved to Los Angeles--and her son was to interview a city librarian for a school project, that she became aware of this story and wrote her book.
And it was yesterday, at the October meeting of our book club, that I discovered it--because it's our club selection for next month.
At the moment, I'm only a few pages into it but already anticipate that it will be one of those which I'll only put down to attend to the necessities of life. You know, the stuff that's not automatic, the way breathing mostly is.
I'm not gonna be blazing through it, if you'll excuse the expression, but intend to savor the power and ride the momentum of Orlean's words as she rolls out her narrative like the boundless horizons of the city she's writing about.
At the moment, I've no idea where those horizons may ultimately lie, but I'm totally willing to follow her to them...
LPK
Dreamwidth
10.25.2019
By the time news of the fire reached the East Coast, it was too late for that day's edition of the New York Times. The following day, the magnitude of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which had also happened on the 29th, was beginning to be understood and would dominate headlines, world-wide, for the rest of the week.
It was several decades later, when writer Susan Orlean and her family moved to Los Angeles--and her son was to interview a city librarian for a school project, that she became aware of this story and wrote her book.
And it was yesterday, at the October meeting of our book club, that I discovered it--because it's our club selection for next month.
At the moment, I'm only a few pages into it but already anticipate that it will be one of those which I'll only put down to attend to the necessities of life. You know, the stuff that's not automatic, the way breathing mostly is.
I'm not gonna be blazing through it, if you'll excuse the expression, but intend to savor the power and ride the momentum of Orlean's words as she rolls out her narrative like the boundless horizons of the city she's writing about.
At the moment, I've no idea where those horizons may ultimately lie, but I'm totally willing to follow her to them...
LPK
Dreamwidth
10.25.2019
