276°
Posted 20 hours ago

The Library Book

£9.9£99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

A good fifty years before women gained suffrage, the first four head librarians in Los Angeles were women, until the times caught up with them. When the council decides to close the library, their unlikely friendship really blossoms over a united cause. Along the way, Orlean introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters from libraries past and present—from Mary Foy, who in 1880 at eighteen years old was named the head of the Los Angeles Public Library at a time when men still dominated the role, to Dr.

Maggie takes Tom under her wing, he appreciates her home cooked meals and she senses Tom isn’t happy at home and she leaves it up to him to tell her what’s going on.Tom likes Farah Shah, she is a popular girl, out of his league but he decides one day to go to the library in the hope of clapping eyes on her. Not only was this a comprehensive and an extensive investigation into how the fire possibly started, it also focused on the interviews of the prime suspect, Harry Peak, and what type of man he was. When I read the summary of this book, there was a lot of emphasis placed on the library fire, which really drew me in.

I wasn’t much of a reader as a kid - I remember some lovely walks I took alone or with a friend to the library as a child to listen to ‘the storytelling lady’. The changes that libraries have undergone over the years, the introduction of technology, and the initiatives to keep them a vital part of our communities also kept me glued to the page. I held my Moms hand as we walked in and as so as I saw my section, I begged to let go of her hand as I nearly ran to grab new books that my parents and I would read together. Tom lives with his difficult and worrying alcoholic father, Paul, who neglects him, they have deep money troubles, their home is at risk and there is often no food.

Orlean sensibly leaves it to the reader to decide whether Peak could have been the culprit, or if he was simply an attention-seeker. Over the story, thanks to the alternating chapters between Maggie and Tom, readers learn so much about this aged character and I think the changes she undergoes made me warm to her even more.

When they threaten to close the library, Maggie, Tom, Farah, Christine and the members of Maggie’s book group start a petition and come up with ideas to save the library. I found the reason for opposition to Lummis’s appointment to be rather comical: "… he never set foot in a library school, wore eccentric corduroy suits and was known to drink and swear on occasion. Orlean weaves the past, present, and future in her story seamlessly as I read through her book over the course of one day.Orlean moves smoothly between dealing with the fire and its aftermath, the life of the resurrected library today, and its foundation and subsequent history. But then in our own time, during WW2, the Holocaust attempted to wipe out an entire people, including the books. In the 1940s, for instance, a schoolteacher named Mabel Riddle, with the support of the Catholic Church, began a campaign to collect and burn comic books because of their energetic portrayal of crime and sex. For the millions of us who cherish our local libraries, this is the love letter we've long held in our hearts but didn't have the words--or background knowledge--to say it. When he saw her watching he quickly started perusing books in his immediate vicinity, not realising he was hovering suspiciously in the romance section of books.

It was not until Andrew Carnegie made libraries his philanthropy of choice that the Los Angeles library modernized. Maggie is maintaining a sheep farm by herself and dealing with the isolation and loneliness that can come with age and circumstance. On the surface, you would not expect Tom and Maggie to become such close friends and the familial relationship that develops shows just how much each character needed one another – they just didn’t realise it. Most nights, if his dad is not at work, he will be drinking and lying on the couch until he passes out.A story with a focal point but one that goes back and forth, with so much interesting tidbits in between.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment