Date: 28 August 2020
Location: Zoom
About a dozen Bookers met via Zoom to share a Happy Hour and discuss The Library Book by Susan Orlean.
About nine of us actually read the book, and we had our normal and typically far-ranging discussion. One interesting aspect of this meeting is that everyone was able to connect with good audio and video. It does make it nice when we can all hear and see each other with reasonable fidelity.
The main focus of the book centered on the terrible fire in the main Los Angeles Library in 1986, which destroyed about 400,000 books and many valuable documents and other archived items of interest. Also, Orlean dwelt at great length on the history of the LA library itself and on many of the interesting characters involved in its establishment and operation over the years. She also gave a lot of information about the day-to-day running of the library and the library’s expanding range of services to the community.
Her depiction of the freeze-drying treatment of the surviving, water damaged books in the library was especially interesting.
As quickly as possible after the fire, the wet books were hard-frozen to stop dissolving of the paper and to prevent mold and fungus.
Later the books were dried through the process of sublimation in large vacuum chambers–removing great quantities of water from the books.
As is usually the case, our discussions were not limited to just the book. Several of us described childhood memories of visiting local libraries and the pleasure we got from our early childhood readings. We discussed library activities and organizations like the Friends of the Library and the impact of the pandemic on fundraising activities such as the library’s annual Vive le Libre Gala. Orlean also mentioned in the book the building of thousands of libraries across the country by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation. The Carnegie Library building in Huntsville was demolished in 1966 to build a parking garage, but the original building in Decatur still remains and is now the home of Decatur’s Carnegie Visual Arts Center.
Our overall review of The Library Book was rather mixed. I think we all appreciated the research that Orlean did into the history of the LA library and libraries in general and into the facts about the fire itself. While much of this was interesting, especially to avid book lovers, the book itself often seemed sort of a hodgepodge of disparate facts and comments. Most of us probably felt the book was worth reading, but we didn’t really love it.
— Bob