What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorA Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf · 129 pages
A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers of and characters in fiction, the m
The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading
Phyllis Rose · 271 pages
"Phyllis Rose embarks on a grand literary experiment--to read her way through a random shelf of library books, LEQ-LES. Can you have an Extreme Adventure in a library? Phyllis Rose casts herself into the wilds of an Upper East Side lending library in an effort to do just that. Hoping to explore the "real ground of literature," she reads her way through a somewhat randomly chosen shelf of fiction,
The Shadow of the Wind
Carlos Ruiz Zafon · 486 pages
Barcelona, 1945—just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother’s face. To console his only child, Daniel’s widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona’s guild of rare-book
The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber
Nicholson Baker · 355 pages
The essay entitled "Discards" references library catalog retrospective conversion projects and discusses Harvard University's disposal of its card catalog in particular.
The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future
Robert Darnton · 218 pages
"In The Case for Books, Robert Darnton offers an in-depth examination of the book from its earliest beginnings to its shifting role today in popular culture, commerce, and the academy. In a lasting collection drawn from previously published and new work alike, Robert Darnton lends unique authority to the life and role of the book in society. The resulting book is a wise work of scholarship - one t
Library: An Unquiet History
Matthew Battles · 258 pages
On the survival and destruction of knowledge, from Alexandria to the Internet. Through the ages, libraries have not only accumulated and preserved but also shaped, inspired, and obliterated knowledge.Matthew Battles, a rare books librarian and a gifted narrator, takes us on a spirited foray from Boston to Baghdad, from classical scriptoria to medieval monasteries, from the Vatican to the british L
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
William Joyce · 56 pages
Morris Lessmore loves words, stories and books, and after a tornado carries him to another land, dreary and colorless, he finds a single book in color that leads him to an amazing library where, he learns, the books need him as much as he needs them.
This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All
Marilyn Johnson · 280 pages
Buried in info? Cross-eyed over technology? From the bottom of a pile of paper and discs, books, e-books, and scattered thumb drives comes a cry of hope: Make way for the librarians! They want to help. They're not selling a thing. And librarians know best how to beat a path through the googolplex sources of information available to us, writes Marilyn Johnson, whose previous book, The Dead Beat, br
The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield · 424 pages
Sometimes, when you open the door to the past, what you confront is your destiny. Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchanting stories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate lives for herself. Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about her extraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past she has kept secret for so long.
The Most Beautiful Libraries Of The World
Jacques Bosser, Guillaume de Laubier · 248 pages
Housekeeping vs. the Dirt
Nick Hornby · 176 pages
A follow-up to The Polysyllabic Spree features a collection of essays that surveys the author's stuffed bookshelves as well as the wide range of books that he purchases and reads within the confines of his busy lifestyle, in a volume that serves as a literary barometer for today's readers.
Books for Living: Some Thoughts on Reading, Reflecting, and Embracing Life
Will Schwalbe · 342 pages
From the author of the international bestseller The End of Your Life Book Club , an inspiring and magical exploration of the enduring power of books - a must for all passionate book lovers, exploring books as diverse as The Girl on the Train , The Little Prince and David Copperfield . 'I've always believed that everything you need to know can be found in a book.' Will Schwalbe Why is it that we re
My Reading Life
Pat Conroy · 331 pages
Bestselling author Pat Conroy acknowledges the books that have shaped him and celebrates the profound effect reading has had on his life.
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
Anne Fadiman · 144 pages
In these eighteen essays, Anne Fadiman "recounts a lifelong love affair with books and language."--Jacket. Ex Libris recounts a lifelong love affair with books and language. For Fadiman, as for many passionate readers, the books she loves have become chapters in her own life story. Writing with remarkable grace, she revives the tradition of the well-crafted personal essay, moving easily from an
I Work at a Public Library: A Collection of Crazy Stories from the Stacks
Gina Sheridan · 157 pages
From a patron's missing wetsuit to the scent of crab cakes wafting through the stacks, Sheridan showcases the oddities that have come across her circulation desk: encounters with local eccentrics; bizarre reference requests; and heart-warming stories of patrons who roam the stacks every day.
Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home
Susan Hill · 236 pages
Early one autumn afternoon in pursuit of an elusive book on her shelves, Susan Hill encountered dozens of others that she had never read, or forgotten she owned, or wanted to read for a second time. The discovery inspired her to embark on a year-long voyage through her books, forsaking new purchases in order to get to know her own collection again. A book which is left on a shelf for a decade i
The Rights of the Reader
Daniel Pennac · 208 pages
The Library Book
Alan Bennett, Rebecca Gray · 190 pages
Whether brand new or steeped in history, real or imagined, libraries feature in everyone's lives. In memoirs, essays and stories that are funny, moving, visionary or insightful, twenty-three famous writers celebrate these places where minds open and the world expands. Public libraries are lifelines, to practical information as well as to the imagination, but funding is under threat all over the
Upstream: Select Essays
Mary Oliver · 185 pages
"'In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.' So begins Upstream, a collection of essays in which beloved poet Mary Oliver reflects on her willingness, as a young child and as an adult, to lose herself within the beauty and mys
A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books
Nicholas A. Basbanes · 638 pages
The passion to possess books has never been more widespread than it is today; indeed, obsessive book collecting remains the only hobby to have a disease named after it. A Gentle Madness is an adventure among the afflicted. Author Nicholas Basbanes, a dedicated bibliophile himself, begins his book 2,200 years ago in Alexandria, when a commitment was made to gather all the world's knowledge benea
Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books
Leah Price · 208 pages
As words and stories are increasingly disseminated through digital means, the significance of the book as object, whether pristine collectible or battered relic, is growing as well. This book spotlights the personal libraries of thirteen favorite novelists who share their collections with readers. Photographs provide full views of the libraries and close-ups of individual volumes: first editions,