‘A library is a good place to soften solitude; a place where you feel part of a conversation that has gone for hundreds and hundreds of years even when you’re alone.’

The Library Book is, in essence, a homage to public libraries.

Orlean’s book is a bit like a lucky dip where every prize is a winner; she explores many different threads generated by the extraordinary fire that all but destroyed the Los Angeles Central Library on April 29, 1986.

How did the fire start? Was it started with intent? Who was Harry Peak and why was he blamed for the fire? What was lost and what effect did the fire have on the people who loved and worked in the library? As staff stood in tears on the sidewalk watching their library burn, one librarian said the breeze was filled with ‘the smell of heartbreak and ashes.’

We are reminded of the unique role that libraries fulfil:

‘The publicness of the public library is an increasingly rare commodity. It becomes harder all the time to think of places that welcome everyone and don’t charge any money for that warm embrace.’

And she explores the conflicts that can occur as libraries across the globe have become de facto community centres for the homeless.

Throughout her book Orlean scatters gorgeous jewels of knowledge and questions regarding all manner of subjects: death, grief, community and the importance of books and libraries to our cultural DNA and how the burning of books has been used so effectively as a weapon of war, because ‘people think of libraries as the safest and most open places in society. Setting them on fire is like announcing that nothing, and nowhere, is safe.’

The overview of how the Los Angeles Library began and the people who have been it’s librarians is fascinating, particularly the changing role of women. For example, Tessa Kelso was appointed librarian in 1889. Her vision was to expand the library to include lending sporting equipment and make the library ‘the entertainment and educational centre of the city.’! Or another hero librarian, Althea Warren, who in 1935 said that librarians should ‘read as a drunkard drinks or as a bird sings or a cat sleeps or a dog responds to an invitation to go walking, not from conscience or training, but because they’d rather do it than anything else in the world.’

The future of libraries is bright. In the United States, public libraries outnumber McDonalds. Worldwide, there are 320,000 public libraries serving hundreds of millions of people in every country on the planet.

For anyone who loves books, reading and especially libraries, this book is an absolute treasure.