There is a secret formula that decides when I chose to read a book that’s been recommended, only I’m not sure exactly how many recommendations it takes. It’s at least three, if I have no familiarity with the author. If I do know the author — or at least idolize them, as I do Susan Orlean — all it takes is knowing she has a new book.
How perfect is it that I was able to check out The Library Book from my library?
“We can’t keep this one on the shelves,” the librarian said as she checked me out. She’s the one who, when I give her my name, always asks, “How are we spelling that?”
Orlean’s books are the perfect triad of research, essay, and commentary. In this case the research is about the fire at the Los Angeles Public Library in 1986, the essay is about Orlean’s mother, and the commentary is about the sacred space of libraries — the space where book and reader meet.
In Maryanne Wolf’s Reader, Come Home, she quotes literary critic Michael Dirda on the thrill of physical books. He says, “Books are home — real, physical things you can love and cherish.”
That’s why Susan Orlean wrote The Library Book, because of the real, physical books inside them and what happens when those are destroyed. After moving to Los Angeles she took her son to the library, and it reminded her of all the times her mother took her to the library in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Even though the L.A. Central Library was new to her, Orlean knew she was home.
All the things that are wrong in the world seem conquered by a library’s simple unspoken promise: Here I am, please tell me your story; here is my story, please listen.”
I don’t think physical books are the only way to read. I love ebooks for the ease of a search tool, especially when I’m reviewing a book. I love audiobooks for the way stories can be so easily rewound, thirty seconds at a time or a whole chapter, and the way the words integrate themselves into my bike rides or road trips.
But a physical book orients itself into my consciousness by the way it’s laid out. Where does Orlean mention her mother’s dementia? Oh, it’s in the middle of page 92, on the left. That scene with the security guard from Texas who wants to retire to Sri Lanka and feels perfectly confident moving to a place he’s never been because, as he tells Orlean, “But I’ve seen the pictures, and I’ve read the books.” — that’s also on a left page, 248, at the bottom.
I suspect Orlean and her publisher wanted this book to be checked out because it has visual gifts that don’t translate as well on a screen. For example, there is no table of contents. The book does have numbered chapters, but each one opens with library cards, as if pulled from an old-time Dewey Decimal file. The titles signal what’s in the chapter. So in the chapter with the security guard, two of the books listed include these:
Daily Activity Patterns of the Homeless: A Review (1988)
By Reich, Shane
362.509794 R347
Madame Chiang Kai-Shek: China’s Eternal First Lady (2006)
By Li, Laura Tyson
92 C5325Li
Likewise, the inside back cover has a replica of a library date card, with checkout dates and signatures. Each one but the last is scratched out, as if the previous person had turned it back in. That graphic tells a story that unfolds within this larger story.
AUG 24 1950 Ray Bradbury
10/31/55 Edith Gross
4-28-86 Susan Orlean
SEP 10 2010 Austin Gillespie
The part of The Library Book that surprised me most is in chapter 5, when Orlean burns a book, for research:
Burning a book was incredibly hard for me to do. Actually, doing it was a breeze, but preparing to do it was challenging. The problem was that I have never been able to do harm to a book. Even books I don’t want, or books that are so worn out and busted that they can’t be read any longer, cling to me like thistles.”
If you have never been to your local library, now is your chance. Get a library card! Make a regular date to browse and find books you didn’t know you were looking for. If they don’t have The Library Book on the shelves, the heroes who work behind the desk will be happy to order it for you through Interlibrary Loan. (At my library this service costs 75 cents.)
Do it for Orlean, who ends the Acknowledgments this way: “Mom, I made a book for you.”
January Pages
Finished
Poetry
My People, Langston Hughes, photographs by Charles R. Smith Jr.
Not A Copper Penny in Me House: Poems from the Caribbean, Monica Gunning, illus. Frané Lessac
Poetry for Young People: Emily Dickinson, People: Emily Dickinson, edit. Frances Schoonmaker Bolin, illus. Chi Chung
Adult
All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren
A Wrinkle in Time, Madeliene L’Engle (Writing Toward Joy workshop starts Monday, February 4, with this book as our text)
Forgiving God, Hilary Yancey
The Library Book, Susan Orlean
Early Readers and Picture Books
Only One Woof, James Herriot (Join us for next week’s Children’s Book Club, February 8!)
Middle Grade and YA
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte (I can make a good case that this classic is actually YA.)
Made Progress
The Odyssey, Homer, transl. Emily Wilson (Listening along with Overdue’s subpodcast: Stop! Homer Time)
Your turn
1. When is the last time you checked out a book from the library? If your answer isn’t “last week,” it’s been too long.
2. Did you make some time for deep reading this month? What stories stirred your soul?
3. Share your January pages. Sliced, started, and abandoned are all fair game.
Photo by stavropoleos, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome, author of The Joy of Poetry.
Browse more Reader, Come Home
“Megan Willome’s The Joy of Poetry is not a long book, but it took me longer to read than I expected, because I kept stopping to savor poems and passages, to make note of books mentioned, and to compare Willome’s journey into poetry to my own. The book is many things. An unpretentious, funny, and poignant memoir. A defense of poetry, a response to literature that has touched her life, and a manual on how to write poetry. It’s also the story of a daughter who loses her mother to cancer. The author links these things into a narrative much like that of a novel. I loved this book. As soon as I finished, I began reading it again.”
—David Lee Garrison, author of Playing Bach in the D. C. Metro
- Perspective: The Two, The Only: Calvin and Hobbes - December 16, 2022
- Children’s Book Club: A Very Haunted Christmas - December 9, 2022
- By Heart: ‘The night is darkening round me’ by Emily Brontë - December 2, 2022
Glynn says
It’s been about a year since I checked out a library book. However, I usually check the Friends of the Library book sale room every few weeks and wander around the library to see what’s going on.
Two books really stirred my soul this month. One was a collection of poetry – Otherworld, Underworld, Prayer Porch by David Bottoms. The other was a novel – A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon (most known for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time). The poems reminded me deeply of my own childhood and family. The novel was funny, poignant, and insightful about a family, with the most admirable character being the one the rest of the family didn’t like – a man from the working class who ends up holding the family together.
January reading:
Fiction
A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
Coming Home – Seven novellas about tiny houses
The Boy Who Hit Play by Chloe Daykin
Dancing Priest by me (I reread my first novel)
Mystery
Death of a Tin God by George Bellairs
The Belting Inheritance by Julian Symons
Good Deeds & Bad Intentions by Caimh McDonnell
The Favor by Jonathan Dunsky
Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective by Catherine Louisa Pirkis
Where the Fire Falls by Karen Barnett
The Case of Jennie Brice by Mary Roberts Rinehart
Quick Curtain by Alan Melville
Something Blue by Emma Jameson
Poetry
The Singer, The Song, and The Finale by Calvin Miller
Otherworld, Underworld, Prayer Porch by David Bottoms
Non-fiction
The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War by Andrew Delbanco
Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, edited by Claire Breay and Joanna Story
Behind the Throne: A Domestic History of the British Royal Household by Adrian TInniswood
Faith
The Book of Joshua
Run to Win by Tim Challies
Megan Willome says
What did you think of your first book, upon rereading it?
I loved “Curious Incident,” so I’m glad to know about this other novel by Mark Haddon.
Glynn says
Rereading Dancing Priest, I was surprised by how fast it moved. I was also surprised by how little I would change. And a third thing – the parts, usually crowd scenes, that so moved me to tears that I forgot who wrote it.
Haddon has also written a novel called The Red House and a collection of short stories called The Pier Falls (the title story in that one rather knocked my socks off). He has another book publishing this spring, called The Dolphins, I believe.
Megan Willome says
The crowd scenes are great. You also do mayhem quite well.
Good to know about Haddon’s other work.
Ann Kroeker says
I put Susan’s book on hold the minute I heard about it. Just got it this week from my local library. I’ve heard her interviewed on several podcasts, so I feel like I know a lot about the book, but Megan, the way you described the location of certain scenes on the page—I love that, how he book feels like an intimate space we inhabit while we read it.
Megan Willome says
Ann, I’ve listened to a few interviews with her, and she’s a great interview (probably because she does it for a living). Hope you enjoy the book! It did make me appreciate those “intimate spaces” books create.
Maureen says
I’ve finished Dani Shapiro’s ‘Inheritance’, which I enjoyed. A memoir, it’s a quick read that raises a number of questions for anyone who’s had or is thinking of having a DNA test. I’ve almost completed Johann Hari’s ‘Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and The Unexpected Solutions’. This is a fascinating book for a lot of reasons, among them that depression is not caused by “chemical imbalance”; it’s deeply researched and well-sourced in science. I’ve started the excellent ‘Ninth Street Women’ by Mary Gabriel, about five painters who played a seminal role in the modern and abstract-expressionist art movements but at the time did not receive their due. I’m still reading ‘Hue’. Among poetry collections I read is Tony Hoagland’s ‘Recent Changes in the Vernacular’.
Maureen says
I think I mentioned last time that I was reading ‘In Extremis’, about journalist Marie Colvin. I finished that and recommend it. Colvin had an incredible reporting life.
Megan Willome says
Maureen, thanks for reminding us about the Marie Colvin book. I don’t know her at all, and it sounds like I should.
That book about depression also sounds interesting.
Laura Brown says
My most significant read in January was Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff, a small, slim book of brief pieces (many less than a page) reflecting on, railing against, coming to … a settlement with? … the death of his son at age 25 in a mountaineering accident. The arc of the book is like a long psalm. It asks some hard, anguished questions and contains some beautiful thoughts and sentences.
Also read:
Twirl by Callie Feyen
What Do We Know? by Mary Oliver
Winter Hours by Mary Oliver
Started:
Mindsight by Dan Siegel
Stories from the Edge: A Theology of Grief by Greg Garrett
The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
Megan Willome says
How is Greg Garrett’s book?
I took a class with him at Baylor and also did a consult with him on a manuscript at a conference, years ago. He didn’t want to look at it because it was a novel for children, and I argued that good writing is good writing. He read it and gave helpful feedback.
lynn says
I go to our local library every 2 weeks to tutor a new English speaker but rarely check out a book…but buy (too many for Marie Kondo) books on amazon 🙂
Recently read an earthy and humorous autobiography, Dallas Doc, by David Carlton DVM. Finishing the upbeat, Life Without Limits, by Nick Vujicic, who’s missing arms & legs but doesn’t let that stop him.
Working through Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design, with chapters and responses contributed by Ken Ham, Hugh Ross, Deborah B. Haarsma, and Stephen C. Meyer.
Currently reading, True You, by Michelle DeRusha, with companion journal.
I ‘d like to order Dancing Priest and The Library Book soon!
Megan Willome says
Lynn, thanks for adding your list to ours!
I ignored our library for years, and it still sometimes lets me down when it comes to its selection of grownup books, but I spend a lot of time downstairs, which is where all the juvenile books are located.