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effexLibrary: An Unquiet History
Matthew Battles
2004, 256 pages
I picked this up, appropriately enough, at the Library of Congress bookstore. I mean, a book about libraries! At the Library of Congress! Clearly we were meant to be.
The book doesn't really have a cohesive narrative/driving point other than 'libraries, they're awesome!' - Battles covers the great libraries of antiquity (Alexandria, the Qin imperial archives, collections of Aztec codices) and the burnings thereof, then winds his way through ancient Rome, medieval Europe, the Islamic golden age, the Renaissance, the colonial US, the US during Jim Crow, Nazi Germany and the Jewish ghettos, and eventually into the modern era, covering the emergence of the book, the emergence of the library, the librarian, the public library, the library catalog, and some awesome librarian feuds. It's a lot like listening to someone knowledgeable ramble on their favorite thing.
There's a lot of casual referencing and asides that only make sense if you know who the Medicis are, what the Crusades were, where Bosnia and Herzegovina are, etc, but it's otherwise easy to follow and an entertaining read.
My two main complaints are 1) the Western-centrism (libraries only exist outside Europe/US if they burned, books apparently never made it south of Egypt or Mexico, etc) and 2) the book design. Seriously, the kerning in the middle chapters was terrible and what's up with the typeface used for the title? It's bad.
Next up: The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene, selected because I'm writing Puella Magi Madoka Magica fic for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
scifi_fest and need to brush up on my space/time.
Matthew Battles
2004, 256 pages
I picked this up, appropriately enough, at the Library of Congress bookstore. I mean, a book about libraries! At the Library of Congress! Clearly we were meant to be.
The book doesn't really have a cohesive narrative/driving point other than 'libraries, they're awesome!' - Battles covers the great libraries of antiquity (Alexandria, the Qin imperial archives, collections of Aztec codices) and the burnings thereof, then winds his way through ancient Rome, medieval Europe, the Islamic golden age, the Renaissance, the colonial US, the US during Jim Crow, Nazi Germany and the Jewish ghettos, and eventually into the modern era, covering the emergence of the book, the emergence of the library, the librarian, the public library, the library catalog, and some awesome librarian feuds. It's a lot like listening to someone knowledgeable ramble on their favorite thing.
There's a lot of casual referencing and asides that only make sense if you know who the Medicis are, what the Crusades were, where Bosnia and Herzegovina are, etc, but it's otherwise easy to follow and an entertaining read.
My two main complaints are 1) the Western-centrism (libraries only exist outside Europe/US if they burned, books apparently never made it south of Egypt or Mexico, etc) and 2) the book design. Seriously, the kerning in the middle chapters was terrible and what's up with the typeface used for the title? It's bad.
Next up: The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene, selected because I'm writing Puella Magi Madoka Magica fic for
scifi_fest and need to brush up on my space/time.
