The worst thing about experiencing a fire (assuming all living things are safe and outside) is the waiting, not knowing what survived, if anything. Then there are the worries about smoke and water damage. People don’t really think about water damage but that can be even worse than the smoke. Because of my own fire experience, my love of libraries and books and the fact that I live in Los Angeles, I was interested to read Susan Orlean’s The Library Book. This non-fiction work deals with the 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Public Library. Trust me when I tell you that you don’t need to have experienced a fire firsthand or live in Los Angeles to find The Library Book a fascinating read.

The fire took place on April 29, 1986 and burned for 7 hours. Four hundred thousand books were destroyed and another seven hundred thousand were damaged. Most people didn’t hear about the fire because the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster happened a couple days later and that was the focus of the news. To this day, over thirty years later, who started the fire at the Los Angeles Public Library and why continues to be a mystery.

Susan Orlean masterfully weaves the investigation of the L.A. Public Library fire with history and facts about libraries. Both aspects, as told here, are compelling partly due to the skilled writing and storytelling of Susan Orleans, author of The Orchid Thief. The book is also peppered with her own library experiences and also explores the role of libraries in their communities and how they achieve their objectives. Ms. Orlean’s love and appreciation of books and libraries shines through the words on these pages.

“It wasn’t that time stopped in the library. It was as if it were captured here, collected here, and in all libraries—and not only my time, my life, but all human time as well. In the library, time is dammed up—not just stopped but saved.”

The book recounts, in an extremely engaging manner, the five year long investigation into the fire. It details one suspect’s varying explanations of where he was and what he was doing on that fateful day, which is captivating in itself. What I found especially intriguing was the history of the L.A. Public Library and the various personalities that were at the helm during its early years. Also of interest was the discussion of libraries across the world and how books get to people in remote places.

The Library Book is an engaging read that will astound you with all sorts of facts and figures interspersed through excellent storytelling that will deepen your appreciation of books and the role of libraries in the human experience.

“In Senegal, the polite expression for saying someone died is to say his or her library has burned. When I first heard the phrase, I didn’t understand it, but over time I came to realize it was perfect. Our minds and souls contain volumes made of our experiences and emotions; each individual’s consciousness is a collection of memories we’ve cataloged and stored inside us, a private library of a life lived.”

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

What a wonderful book. Like the author, how did I not know about the LA Library fire? She gives a wonderful history about libraries, and how meaningful they are. Thank you. I am looking forward to its publication so that I can buy it as gifts for my librarian friends and for myself to underline.

Wow, this book says it all about libraries! Susan Orlean not only takes you into your own memories of being in a library as a child, but weaves a mystery of the Los Angeles City Center Library into a fascinating history of libraries. If you thought with today's technology that libraries are all but dead and gone, read this book how today's libraries are an extension of the community and providing a gathering center for us all.
There is so much positive information here about our culture and the use of libraries, but it's never boring. A great read.

I love libraries. I remember story times from my childhood library fondly, took my own daughter to our library for the first time when she was a few months old, and am often that patron with an armful of checked out books. Many of my friends from my MFA program went on to library school, and honestly, I should have done the same, because libraries are my happy place.

The Library Book is Susan Orlean’s nonfiction book about: the fire that nearly destroyed the Los Angeles Central Library in 1986, the history of the Los Angeles’ libraries, and the vitality of libraries in general. If you’ve read any of her other work, you know that her writing is engaging in a flitting way. One chapter about finding the arsonist responsible can lead to another about other infamous library fires. There is nothing dry about this book; I especially loved the sections about spirited head librarians throughout the history of Los Angeles Central Library, and would have happily read whole biographies about many of them.

My stepson recently asked why we went to the library when we could just buy the books we want online (and do, indeed, buy a lot of books). “Because the library is the best thing ever!” I replied. I’m not sure it was a convincing argument, but maybe when he’s older, I can recommend this book, which illustrates the beauty and charm of local libraries everywhere.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an arc.

Fascinating story about the fire and supposed arsonist, but what was more interesting to me was the creation of the library and the people who run it today. Terrific read and worth the five stars!

I worked at the Los Angeles Public Library's Gardner Branch as a page in the late 1970s and it remains one of the trippiest jobs I've ever had. The library system seemed to take pleasure in staffing each branch with the least likely people for the location's demographic, which was pretty funny. The patrons--mostly Holocaust survivors, gays, seniors, and struggling middle classers, adored the African American clerk with the towering platforms, huge Afro and a gift for recommending the right book, (I even remember her name, she was so awesome.) In a neighborhood where you'd have to drive miles at the time to meet a Latino, Asian Pacific Islander or Mormon, they were all at that branch, a UN of readers and oddballs.. There was a patron with an artificial leg who loved to station himself right around a corner of the reading room and take his leg off so that patrons heading for the new fiction would be surprised by a pink leg with a shoe, sock, and garter standing alone. The shrieks! You couldn't make this stuff up.

So when I heard that Susan Orlean, whom I adore, was writing a book about the fire at the Central Library, I could not wait to get my mitts on it.

If anyone could write about the colorful development of the Los Angeles Public Library with verve, it's Orlean. The 1986 fire itself and the search for the perp is an intriguing story, but most moving is the response from the community in the form of individuals, corporations and businesses that stepped up in surprising ways. A local meat packing plant opened its freezers to freeze sodden books so that they might be saved--who had any idea about that? ARCO cleared offices so that the library staff would have a place to work. Hundreds of citizens
helped prepare and pack books for storage.

So Susan has a number of threads going in "The Library Book"--the fire, city and library history, and lots of statistics. Toward the end, I felt they were becoming so tangled that it was hard to stay with it. Orlean's strengths as a writer are on display in the first sections of the book; the emotional wallop of the fire to workers, patrons and citizens; tracking the characters who created and grew the library; digging into the one suspect in the terrible fire, all this is great. But toward the end the book reels out of control, badly needing an editor's steadying hand.

Orlean's "Rin Tin Tin" is one of the most moving pieces of non-fiction I have ever read, and I just enjoyed it again. I wish "The Library Book" could be pulled back and the last section reconsidered. That would shoot this book to the top along with her other books.

Al these years later, I'm still friends with several people I met at the Gardner Branch. Such is the power of the library.

Thanks to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for allowing me to enjoy this book.

I can't say enough good things about this book!

In "The Library Book", Orleans tells the story of the 1986 fire that devastated the Los Angeles Public Library, destroying 400,000 books and damaging 700,000 more. That sounds like a straightforward enough story, but Orleans is able to turn it into something so much more; she weaves in history, mystery, humor, and her own love of books and libraries to make it something extraordinary.

Too often, nonfiction books are dry and don't engage the average reader. This book, however, draws you in and makes you care. You care about how the fire started, you care about the fate of all of those books, and you care about the people involved. It's a true story that reads like fiction, and it was a pleasure to read.

This stands as the single most highlighted book in my history on a Kindle! I suppose that is not a surprise, given the content of the book. I just adored it! It is nonfiction that reads like fiction and, although it sounds like it's gonna be about the fire in the LAPL central branch in 1986 (and all that came before and after that), it's truly a book that celebrates books and libraries and the role they play in our lives. LOVED it!!! ♥

This book is a winning combination of love-letter-to-libraries (and librarians!), history of the Central Library in downtown L.A., and mystery account of who started the very destructive fire in 1986.

I've always been an avid library patron, wherever I've lived. The riches of civilization, spread before you for the taking, and you've already paid for it through your taxes! Even in these days when I download 90% of my books from the library onto my Kindle, I still go from time to time to browse or pick up holds or people-watch. As Orlean points out, the library is where all segments of society meet and hang out, near each other, if not actually together. The homeless, the students, those learning English as a second language, moms with kids, computer users, people who just want to hog a chair and table all day or the best armchair by the window.

A good read for any book- or library-lover. And if you're a librarian (or just wish you were), Orlean's discussion of libraries as centers of information and community will be heartening.

Any subject Susan Orlean writes about is on my read pile. Taking areas of interest such a orchids and their power, RinTinTin, and this new book The Library Book she creates a readable and fascinating story that will have you thrilled and better for having read it.

I've known about Susan Orlean for some time now, mostly framed by the strange film adaptation of the Orchid Thief. This book is great, as someone that has done disaster planning for a library, it makes me very thankful to have sprinklers in our Central Library and made me realize what a firetrap our old building was. I learned a lot and was entertained at the same time.

Susan Orlean is one of favorites and she didn’t disappoint. She links in the importance of libraries with general culture, community and even her own life with ease.

I went into this book based solely on the author -- I like Susan Orlean's writing. If I had learned ahead of time that it is about the history of a library, I'm not sure I would have been very enthusiastic. I love to visit libraries, but reading about them strikes me as...boring. Well, have no fear -- The Library Book is just what you'd expect from Orlean, a writer of magazine journalism as well as books. It's lively and surprising and packed with information that you'll be sharing with everyone else. She starts with the story of how the Los Angeles Central Library suffered a massive fire in 1986. It destroyed hundreds of thousands of books and manuscripts and damaged hundreds of thousands more. No one died in the fire, but authorities determined that it was a suspicious fire that was most likely started deliberately. She follows this story throughout the book, but the really meaty parts of the story are the fascinating history of the library and the people who were involved, and the continuing story of the life of the library, and the many people who make it run. Many parts of the book could stand alone as magazine profiles. It's an unexpectedly energetic and revealing look at a library that's full of character and characters.
(Thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for a digital review copy.)

Susan Orlean first learned of the devastating fire in the Los Angeles Central Library in 1986 years after. Living in New York where the news of the Chernobyl disaster dominated the news, a library fire in Los Angeles didn't get much coverage. As with other library arsons, it was not an act against a person or people, but for reasons unknown, since libraries are burned because of problems with the ideas that might be contained therein.

Library visits were an important part of her life growing up, but she was now a purchaser rather than a borrower, but once started, she knew she'd found her subject for her new book, one that would provide many avenues to explore. On a personal note, those of us who love to read probably first discovered that love in a library. As Orlean describes it, "... I wanted to write this book, to tell about a place I love that doesn't belong to me but feels like it is mine." I remember the light coming through the windows that Rhode Island summer of 1949, when my mother first took me to a library, and the books she chose for me. We had 2 weeks to read and return the books, but I wanted to rush back after two days and get more. The love of books was already in my DNA as part of my heritage, but it was fostered and nurtured in the various libraries I haunted growing up.

As with her other books, Orlean leaves no avenue unexplored in covering her subject, whether it be the fire itself and its possible origins and the methods employed by arson inspectors, the person charged with the arson, but also the characters who played a large part in the development of libraries and of this one in particular, the architecture, the art, the efforts at reconstructing the collection lost in that fire. But most importantly, the role of libraries in communities worldwide and their changing roles in this age of instant information via a handheld device. New library buildings are replacing outdated ones, serving their communities in updated ways, and attracting a new generation of librarians who can envision the future ("A number of them had tattoos. Many said they were drawn to the profession because it combined information management with public good.") In the final analysis, this is Susan Orlean's love letter to libraries and what they represent beyond their role as depositories of paper and ink. The importance of the nonjudgmental openness of their nature, their availability to all and the help they can provide for those who have no other recourse, the shelter some seek within their walls, the peace one feels on walking in the door.

Only Susan Orlean can write a book about the history of a library and make a reader not want to put the book down. To some degree, a very small degree, the book is a bit of a mystery; Who is responsible for the LA library fire? Orlean begins and ends the book with this question, but in between this question, we learn about the first librarians and their quirks and how they impacted the library. For those of us who love visiting the library, the book is creates a rather personal experience. The book is fascinating because it covers so many years, so many people, not only staff, but others who use the library. We watch the library transform into both a shelter for the homeless and for the long standing visitors of the library. Throughout the book, we are reminded of the vital role libraries have for communities.

This book is mildly interesting. The Central Library fire is interesting for the descriptions of the fire and its terrible consequences. After that are many chapters related to the people involved in the fire and its aftermath. Some are interesting, but since I love books and libraries I kept reading. However, I felt the book was too long and too involved.

Central Library in downtown LA is the library. There was a large mysterious fire in the 80's that led to an arson investigation, but was it arson? The library fire and aftermath, the building's history, the librarians, the patrons: all of this is described in this love letter to all libraries. Such an enjoyable book!

I adore Susan Orlean and her circuitous way of telling a story. Usually. But . . .

The Library Book tells the story of a fire at the Los Angeles Public Library in 1986. Fire investigators ruled it an arson and a court case followed. The facts and mysteries surrounding the fire lead Orlean to discussion of the library which include the founding of the first library in Los Angeles, the naming of the first head librarian, which leads to a discussion of every head librarian to follow up to the present day. Because the building itself becomes a character in the story (although not to the extent that I would have expected or hoped), the reader learns about every iteration of home to the LAPL. Orlean introduces us to many of the varied departments in the library from maps, to teen books to music. We meet the patrons, the librarians, the homeless and the security that pass through the doors. I love books. I love libraries. But . . . And, that's the rub. This book explores just too much of everything to be the love letter I hoped and wished it would be.

A fascinating and thorough history of the Los Angeles Public Library and the fire that nearly destroyed it in 1986. The narrative meanders a bit to peripheral topics but it is always relevant and interesting. Very well done.

There is just so much that is packed into this wonderful read. Using the fire of 1986 at the Central Library as the foundation, Orlean covers among many other things:

- The curious arson case that followed the ravaging fire
- The history of the LA Public Library and the large cast of fascinating characters that were instrumental in its founding and development
- The myriad of services currently provided at the Central Library and many of the women and men who work hard day in and day out to provide them
- Book burnings throughout history
- Different ways that public libraries are actively working to understand and meet patron needs of today and the future

To understate things a bit, as a librarian I enjoyed this all immensely. However, thankfully you do not need to be actively employed as such in order to adore "The Library Book." Any frequent or infrequent library user will both delight in this work and gain newfound appreciation for these public hubs of information, learning, and community.