She eventually gave in and her successor, a colorful, controversial former newspaperman, Charles Lummis, bordered on the wacky.

She refused to leave, keeping her library keys as a petition circulated in her support, signed by 1,000 women. Mary Jones, who took over the top library post around 1900, was fired in 1905 because the library head said he preferred to have a male librarian in charge. All the female chief librarians had their battles with the library board. One, Mary Foy, was only 18 when she got the job in 1880 at a time when librarians catered to men and few chief librarians in major cities were women.

The most enjoyable part of the book surrounds the Los Angeles library system's feminist beginnings, several chief librarians having been women. In L.A.'s case, the library is reaching out to immigrants and the poor, including the homeless who increasingly spend their days in public libraries around the nation. Orlean shows how libraries are embracing new roles in the information age with computer labs, e-books and services that go far beyond the core mission of lending books. kind of guy, I harbored doubts that even a skilled writer like Susan Orlean, best known for 'The Orchid Thief,' would be able to sustain readers by writing about libraries in general and Los Angeles' Central Library, the crown jewel in a city that has many branch libraries, in particular.Īnd I had a hard time imagining she could come up with a book that would rope in readers outside the city known for freeways, smog and suntans. Though I dig books, am a library nut and an L.A. I waded into 'The Library Book' with trepidation. The book dives deep into the work and devotion of librarians, knowledgeable and ever-patient, whether going through map collections or fielding questions such as, 'How long do parrots live?' Let's just say arson is a difficult crime to prove. The suspect, Harry Peak, suffered from an inability to keep his alibi straight. It would eventually lead investigators to focus on a troubled, rootless, name-dropping would-be actor. But librarians remembered a blond young man who was shooed out of the closed history stacks. The library staff worried that it might be a disgruntled employee. After the fire, the city posted requests for clues on billboards and on radio ads. Orlean turns this into a whodunnit, focusing on the search for an arson suspect. One of the most complicated blazes the fire department ever tackled, it exceeded 2,000 degrees and destroyed or damaged more than 1 million books. But, as it turns out, it is so much more.Īt its core, it's the story of one of the worst building fires in L.A. history, a 1986 conflagration in the city's Central Library, an architectural landmark. Just as the name implies, Susan Orlean's 'The Library Book' (Simon & Schuster, 317 pp., ★★★½) celebrates the love of books and the wonder of public libraries.

Susan orlean the library book