8 ms·
Every Library Has a Story to Tell
- cafard 9y agoManguel's The Library of Night is worth a look, as is The Phantoms on the Bookshelves by Jacques Bonnet. And if you go to the University of Chicago Press web site, the month's free ebook is The Palace of Books by Roger Grenier.
- spinchange 9y agoUCP's monthly free ebook page http://press.uchicago.edu/books/freeEbook.html http://press.uchicago.edu/books/freeEbook.html
- Jun8 9y agoThanks for the link, I jumped at this, but, alas, they require one to create an Adobe ID and use Adobe Digital Editions.
- cafard 9y agoYes, I haven't got around to reading it. Oh, well.
- Jun8 9y ago"I have always imagined Paradise as a kind of library." But also consider being on a deserted island with a library of all the books ever written (including manuscripts, etc.) and the lifespan to read it all: it's both an exhilarating and frightening thought. The library as a prison of the mind, trapped in other people's thoughts. For a writer the best book is the unwritten one, e.g. the blank book that Winston Smith cherishes in 1984.
- lainga 9y agoThat sounds like Borges' Library of Babel.
- Luc 9y agoHere's a few pictures of Manguel's old library: https://thesleeplessreader.com/2012/09/24/the-library-at-night-by-alberto-manguel/ https://thesleeplessreader.com/2012/09/24/the-library-at-nig... It doesn't look like 35k books. Must be very efficiently stacked in there.
- Freak_NL 9y agoVery efficient indeed! I would guess the wide bottom shelves hold double rows at least. If I use my own meagre collection of not even 1000 books as a guide, I would estimate that that room can hold about 20000 books if used as efficiently as possible. That room looks blissfully comfortable.
- komali2 9y agoSometime during year one at my university I was wandering the stacks, pulling books out at random to see what kinda stuff there was. It was 7 stories of stacks, including the basement which had these crazy moving shelves. At one point I'm at a shelf and pulling out thin volumes with titles like (remembering poorly) "Shift calculations of blah blah style concrete," "weather effects on bloo blee cement," "compression formulas for heehaw company concrete," and so on. Book after book. Next shelf, same thing, entire volumes of concrete and cement research and data. All with different titles, different content, different authors. As I moved down more I realized the entire row was books on concrete. How? was all I could wonder. How could there possibly be this much published information on concrete? Who dedicated significant amount of time to compile research, stick it in a thin volume, and then have it placed among a thousand others? What librarian chose these books? I had a mild plan when going into college of reading a whole lot of everything I could get my hands on, but it was only then that I really grasped just how much information is available to mankind. It's truly unassailable. (probably relates well to the other article on the front page right now about the last man to know everything)
- imaadrashied 9y agoOh man this makes me nostalgic. Had a similar experience while taking a break from studying. Picked a random row of books only to realize it was entirely dedicated to genital reconstruction and sex-changes. Being in college, my curiosity was piqued. I may never unsee some of the pictures in those books. Edit: Spelling
- njarboe 9y agopiqued?
- ASalazarMX 9y agoI'm sorry your curiosity declined after college.
- pattisapu 9y ago"The number of books is infinite." -Joseph Joubert