"The Library Book"

The core theme of Susan Orlean’s “The Library Book” (2018) is the devastating damage to the Los Angles Central Library building and its book collection by suspected arson on April 29, 1986. The damage was exacerbated by the necessity for oceans of water to extinguish it, in this case over a seven-hour period of time. If you do not remember the event, as I did not, it may be because, horrible as it was, it was largely overshadowed by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine just three days earlier. . If ever there was something good to come of disaster, it is the writing of this book by Orlean. The warmth of it in telling Central Library’s story, while also telling the story of Libraries as centers for community good, makes it a must read. That is what Melanie, until recently Youth S…