Orlean is not a librarian but she took on a long, anthropological study of librarians and libraries (even travelling the world to various library conferences and spending many, many hours in the stacks). The facts! Having worked in the industry for eight years I was slightly gobsmacked by how much there was to learn. Orlean’s book is highly-readable and I am somewhat in awe of her ability to write something so readable, with light, conversational prose that is so incredibly well-researched and full of facts. The reason I thought Orlean’s book was fluffy to begin with was my fault not hers: I thought I was reading something scandalous and thrilling about library fires but in fact I was reading something enormously interesting about all things libraries, fires included (there’s been a few). It seems that you can’t write a book about a library fire without also writing a book about – to name a few – aerospace technology, the first libraries of America, book burning across time, Ray Bradbury, various animals involved in library work throughout the world, library boats, ebooks and map hoarders. She learns about the interesting history of this library in particular and sets out to write a book about the fire – what happened, why. Orlean moves to LA and discovers libraries again after a hiatus. This fire is where the story starts for Orlean, but it is also why.
At its end, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more.
The fire at the centre of this story burned at the Central Los Angeles Public Library for seven hours on April 29, 1986. It started with a small glow for Orlean, a glow from a fire that grew to become a ravenous, curious and perplexing beast. And then I picked it up and devoured every word. I put it down a few times over the Christmas period in lieu of other reads. I said that The Library Book starts with a small glow and this is true on two counts: it started small for me, as something a bit light, that I almost (how tragic) dismissed as fluffy.
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