Not only was learning about an enormous, populous library like LAPL interesting in terms of logistics, but it was also interesting from a societal standpoint. “Destroying a culture’s books is sentencing it to something worse than death: It is sentencing it to seem as if it never lived.” The Library Book by Susan Orlean.Īt your core you are a book about a library, which I found fascinating as someone who worked as a library page in my tiny local public library when I was in high school. And it was so, so sad to think of all those books going up in flames–all those stories left unread. As someone who doesn’t know much about the science behind fires, it was really interesting to read about how they were able to determine how the fire spread and possibly started simply from analyzing the destruction in the aftermath. There were some major Fahrenheit 451 vibes there, in a way that was both scary and fascinating. I can still vividly imagine the fire scene in my mind. You were so fun and suspenseful and thought-provoking to read, largely because you contain so many stories and topics all rolled into one, starting from the scene of the LAPL fire. What begins as a book about a library transforms into a who-done-it narrative of arson–ultimately one that is left pretty ambiguous. Yet you are so much more than merely a book about a fire in a library that occurred decades ago. Somehow I had never heard about the fire that destroyed so much of the Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) on April 29, 1986, burning more than 400,000 books and damaging 700,000 more. This category also encompasses books about libraries, so you can imagine my delight when I stumbled across you in audiobook form on the Libby app. One of my favorite genres of books–if you can call it a genre–is books about books.

Susan orleans the library book