English language
Published Feb. 19, 2022 by Profile Books Limited.
Brief observations: In general, this book is both intriguing and intellectually challenging. A few chapters may have a quite sluggish pace. The work is ambitious and aims to comprehensively address a wide range of topics, presenting those topics in a somewhat logical manner. phrazle.co
This book covers the evolution of the Library from the status symbol of the nobility, through professional personal libraries of scholars and merchants, subscription libraries and all the way to the public good that they are today, with additional insights of the value different people place on them. I find it quite surprising just how late fiction was allowed into the hallowed halls of libraries.
The book's subtitle "A Fragile History" is especially poignant. The author really managed to show the difficulty of preserving books, especially entire collections through the ages. With all of the neglect, theft, war, elitism and censorship it is surprising there are any books older than 100 years left in the world. By the end I got a real sense of the libraries perseverance and the herculean effort needed to preserve them.
Considering that we are all book lovers on this website I can recommend this …
This book covers the evolution of the Library from the status symbol of the nobility, through professional personal libraries of scholars and merchants, subscription libraries and all the way to the public good that they are today, with additional insights of the value different people place on them. I find it quite surprising just how late fiction was allowed into the hallowed halls of libraries.
The book's subtitle "A Fragile History" is especially poignant. The author really managed to show the difficulty of preserving books, especially entire collections through the ages. With all of the neglect, theft, war, elitism and censorship it is surprising there are any books older than 100 years left in the world. By the end I got a real sense of the libraries perseverance and the herculean effort needed to preserve them.
Considering that we are all book lovers on this website I can recommend this book to literally everyone here.
Quick impressions: Overall, this is an interesting but also dense book. Some chapters can be a bit slow. It is an ambitious work that strives to cover a lot of ground, and it does so in a relatively coherent way.
(Full review with reading notes on my blog soon.)
