The Library Book by Susan Orlean

The Library Book by Susan Orlean will be published next month by Simon&Schuster and it is one of the most beautiful and important book that you will find around if you love libraries and books.
If you are in love for books and if you suffer to seeing them destroyed, it will be painful sometimes, leaving you breathless at some point, because this one is also the story of a big fire: the one that took place in the Los Angeles Public Library on April 29 1986.

200 employees, many branches, the Public Library of Los Angeles started another day optimistically. Weather was good, warm although the month was April, people serene, life was good.

A library is a special place for a lot of people and for the most diversified reasons. You find in a library students in search for the best book for a thesis, bookworms, the ones who, for killing a hour, decide to go to the library, the safest place of this world for reading.

There were many people in the library, when in that morning the fire alarm signaled that something was wrong.

No one took particularly notice of it: it happened every day that the alarm for a reason or another let them know that existed making some noise.

Anyway, firefighters arrived to the library with the idea of sorting out the problem in a second for continuing their morning day, when something went wrong: nothing to do, the fire alarm didn't want to be fixed. It sounded as if there was a real problem in the library. No one was seeing anything but for precaution the library was evacuated.

At first it was difficult to understand where the problem was but then, dramatic moments, firefighters understood that there was a real fire.

All Los Angeles firefighters available tried their best for stopping this fire for more than seven hours.
It was so big, it was so immense, and because of the meteorological conditions we can call it "The Perfect Fire."

A firefighter said, interviewed  by the author, that the fire became at some point of the color of ice. He hadn't never seen a show like that one.

Los Angeles Public Library had an extensive collection of cookbooks, the biggest one in the world. All gone; a total of 400.000 books were killed by the fire, 700.000 damaged; most of them treated for two years in special places, and cuddles like premature babies, before to see the light again.

A fire like this one, so, a news like this one, you can think was in the first pages of all the newsmagazines of the world: no, because unfortunately another tragedy in Europe devastated profoundly minds, spirits and bodies of Europeans putting everyone in panic: Chernobyl. So the only newsmagazine that treated the news, largely and pretty cheerfully was the Pravda that for obvious reasons didn't want to remark the Ukrainian tragedy.

The Boston Globe wrote that the events in Chernobyl and Los Angeles had a "Ghostly Symmetry" because "Each raised the primal fear of a fire that was beyond control, along with our dread of menacing and unmanageable power."

The shock was total and complete. Stress unimaginable. A lady skipped her period for four months, other ones, apart developing post traumatic stress disorder, suffered also of physical illness caused by smoke. Some people, including firefighters spent days to the hospital treated because of smoke ingested.

In the while: who caused that fire? Suspects became also shadows, and librarians tried their best when possible to put in bad light other colleagues. The situation of the 200 librarians of the Los Angeles Public Library became so heavy that most of them searched for a job in other places without too many compliments, while, Harry Peak, a beautiful boy in search of fame, became the first, and main suspected of the Los Angeles Public Library's fire, finishing in jail for a lot of time.
Harry is dead but the author spoke with his sister Debbie. A long conversations with a special taste of beer, melancholy; a disgraceful haunted existences, their ones, tells, Debbie, where tragedies are common in the family. Harry would have been the only one in grade to make the difference; good at school, he wanted to become an actor, Hollywood so close, at just few miles from the town where they lived in, it was a difficult career. Harry was unlucky in the private sphere as well, becoming later homosexual. If stunningly beauty in their little town, there were many beautiful wonderful young boys in Hollywood and he was one of the many beautiful young boys who wanted to try to come out; who wanted to become a name. Let's leave alone the story of Harry, now; what to do now that most of the books of the Los Angeles Public library gone?
Established a committee, librarians of course knocked at the doors of influential people where money more available and "important." Hollywood.
Letters were sent to George Lucas and other eminent directors and stars and in total the library thanks to compassionate actors, directors, in a word, celebrities accumulated 10 million of dollar. It was created a Telethon for other funds, in total 2 million of dollars. The library received  little donations from passionate and devoted people in love for books, who read the news or that had memory of their time spent in that library.
Also a little donation made the difference.

The author tells at first that when little she loved to spend with her mother several days per week, a lot of time to their library. They didn't have a lot of books at home. Some encyclopedias, erotic books but the rest of books borrowed from the library at home.

Growing up, Susan tried all her best for building, buying books, her own library. She started to buying books; they are fresh, so cleaned; she forgot the devoted library where her mother accompanied her all the weeks when she was more little; at the same time that moments remains so precious for the author and her mother; now that her mother is old, sick and unfortunately she doesn't remember the past as she loved to do before, these ones are the instants that the author loves to remember with more intensity. 

It was for case that Susan discovered the story of the fire at the Los Angeles Public Library. It was an age that she didn't visit a library when some day her son told her he needed to go to the library. She accompanied him and the story started from...there. This book was born thanks to the indirect help of her son.

The author remembers that when the big fire of the Los Angeles Public Library took place she lived in New York City, but she didn't remember this news. No one treated this topic at first, but just the following days.

Beautiful also the story of the Los Angeles Public Library. I would have wanted to know the first two librarians: the second one was a drunker, for just a year at the library, the first one in love for smoking, he stayed closed to his office most of the time and when called he cried: "I guess that I should help, isn't it true?" Amazing.

Women in the case of the Los Angeles Public Library made the difference and were innovative.

Yes, because at first this library was born with an annual fee of five dollars.
It meant that just rich people could visit the library, cutting out a great portion of citizenship.
Not only: men could read books; women had just special places assigned to them (they were not free like men) in the library with magazines available to them. Children were banned.
The managers made the difference deleting the annual fee, opening to everyone, children included if more than 12 years old.
It was with them that the Public Library became important and plenty of great, good, rare books.

Someone steal books from the library? Of course. Massively also! You will read. If in the UK people love to steal Terry Pratchett, in the Los Angeles Public Library tastes are different but disappointment the same. Sometimes books are replaced, but it's not said.

Let's speak of books and their durability: The Da Vinci Code is a book very read and resists more or less a year in the public library before to be classified as used book. I love to ask when I order used books the ones owned at some public libraries. They lived a lot of adventures, experienced a lot of houses, spent time in a lot of tote bags, discovered a lot of owners; they don't have a precise soul, don't you think so? I love them, because they traveled a lot before to reaching me. And they're free. Their identity can't be classified. They were books that everyone owned for a while.

You can't believe it, but also people from the studios stole books. The modality: two people, one waiting outside, close to a window, and another one in the library launching the book to him.
When at the library they noticed this, let's call it, custom, well, they changed some guidelines.

A library is not just important for common people, lucky ones but also for homeless. The Los Angeles Public Library pays extra attention to them.

The shipping department of the Los Angeles Public Library is immensely interesting like all the little branches that a library knows in the various corners of the city.
You will discover great people, with immense personal stories and a great fascination for books. I don't want to tell you all the book, but you know, I am tempted.

The intense, felt, engaging writing-style of Susan is immensely beauty.
The New Yorker's forma mentis of the author: "I want to discover everything, tell me also the littlest thing that you remember, because it means the world to me" will keep you there, reading without interruption 'till the end.

You will also read of an experiment made by the author. Susan decided of burning a book for trying to see what she would have proved, and it was devastating.

When culture is killed, people are all more poor. This is a fact.

A chapter is dedicated to all that "people" who with cruelty during the centuries tried their best for killing libraries, books from the face of the Earth for a reason or another.

You will love and adore this book. Trust me!

More than highly recommended.

I thank NetGalley and Simon&Schuster for this eBook.

Anna Maria Polidori