About The Book
Inspired by the process of creating a library for his fifteenth-century home near the Loire, in France, Alberto Manguel, the acclaimed writer on books and reading, has taken up the subject of libraries. "Libraries," he says, "have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I’ve been seduced by their labyrinthine logic." In this personal, deliberately unsystematic, and wide-ranging book, he offers a captivating meditation on the meaning of libraries. Manguel, a guide of irrepressible enthusiasm, conducts a unique library tour that extends from his childhood bookshelves to the "complete" libraries of the Internet, from Ancient Egypt and Greece to the Arab world, from China and Rome to Google. He ponders the doomed library of Alexandria as well as the personal libraries of Charles Dickens, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. He recounts stories of people who have struggled against tyranny to preserve freedom of thought-the Polish librarian who smuggled books to safety as the Nazis began their destruction of Jewish libraries; the Afghani bookseller who kept his store open through decades of unrest. Oral "memory libraries" kept alive by prisoners, libraries of banned books, the imaginary library of Count Dracula, the library of books never written-Manguel illuminates the mysteries of libraries as no other writer could. With scores of wonderful images throughout, The Library at Night is a fascinating voyage through Manguel’s mind, memory, and vast knowledge of books and civilizations.
My Thoughts
From the first sentence I was hooked: “The library in which I have long last collected my books began life as a barn sometime in the fifteenth century, perched on a small hill south of the Loire.” As someone with a house foll of books in crates and a barn (not 15th century unfortunately) I have eyes on for a library one day, this book is right up my alley.
Manguel is a lover not just of books, but of libraries as actual existing things. Not the idea of a library as one might romanticize it, but the very real decisions that go into designing and constructing it. An unabashed lover of libraries of all sizes and shapes, from national collections to small personal alcoves filled with paperbacks, Manguel extoles the virtues of the library owner and user. From fifteen perspectives, he explores what a library is. Myth, order, space, power, shadow, shape, chance, workshop, mind, island, survival, oblivion, imagination, identity and home.
If you are a lover of books as objects, libraries as places, and deep research, this is a book for you.