Chapter One Hundred Four: Library: An Unquiet History

I forget now where I first read about Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles, but as soon as I read the title I knew I had to read this book.  It was the perfect choice to fill my post-Harry Potter void--Harry Potter is such a hard act to follow that I wanted something completely different, so non-fiction seemed like the way to go, especially a book about libraries, which I love almost as much as I love that series.

But enough about Harry Potter--here's why I really enjoyed Library: An Unquiet History: it made me think about not only the history of libraries but also the reasons for their existence.  I somehow had never really stopped to wonder why people or governments have bothered to create private or public libraries.  It just seems so obvious to me that libraries are an excellent idea that I never thought more deeply about the reasons for their existence.  Of course, no one can really answer definitively why anything exists, as the reasons are often complex and interconnected, but Battles does interweave some of the more salient reasons for the creation of various libraries as he traces their history.  (Some of these reasons include: concentrating power in the hands of a ruling class, trying to enlighten the uneducated masses by allowing them access to appropriate literature, and wanting to create a cultural or religious repository to preserve traditions.)  Battles also discusses the related reasons why various people and groups have destroyed libraries--I did not realize just how many libraries have been destroyed during the 20th century, and I can only hope the 21st century will see a decrease in that sort of behavior.

Library: An Unquiet History also prompted me to think about books as objects.  While I have thought a little about this before reading this work, Library really brought the dominance of the codex (i.e. a book that is printed on paper and bound into a cover) to the forefront.  But of course books do not have to be codices--they could equally well take the form of papyrus scrolls, clay tablets with cuneiform writing, or digital documents, to name a few.  It was interesting to stop and really visualize what a library full of scrolls or tablets would look like, never mind what it would be like to sit with a clay tablet in my lap and read from that instead.  I certainly prefer the physicality of the codex to an e-book, which is not really a tangible object and which also requires a non-human interface (a computer, a smartphone, an e-reader, etc.,) to be accessed, while a codex is directly accessible to the reader with no third parties required.  While I always knew I prefer paper books to e-books, Library really inspired and helped me think about why that is the case.  I was particularly moved when Battles mentioned stories of people during various 20th-century wars who, when faced with a choice between freezing and using their books for fuel, sometimes chose to be cold rather than burn their books.

I know this post has been longer than usual, but this little book really gave me a lot to consider.  I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves books or libraries--and even if you're not convinced you'd find it interesting, I'd encourage you to give it a try as it raises some really interesting ideas.

Chapter One Hundred Three: Harry Potter

So I was seized once more with a bout of the Harry Potter bug, which, like mononucleosis, never leaves your system once you've contracted it and can flare up at really any time.  So I've spent the last month re-reading these delightful books.  If you haven't read them, read them.  If you have read them, read them again.  They have humor, they have deep feeling, they have action and adventure and drama and magic--what more can I ask for, really?  (I can ask to live in Harry Potter's world, I suppose, but I don't think that will happen any time soon.)  Every time I finish re-reading the series, I'm struck anew with a feeling of emptiness that it's over, and I know that sooner or later, I'll have to return to them to get my fix.  And I notice new details every time!  Small details, usually, which is all the more impressive to me, that Rowling works so many little details in across so many pages.  Anyway, I am quite literally a fanatic when it comes to these books, and I highly recommend that everyone read them.