#books about libraries | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

beartrice-inn-unnir · 10 months

Note

👋 for the book reader asks: 3, 7, and 12?

3. What’s something you read recently and wanted to argue with (either with the book or the author or the fans)?

Maybe the Library at Mount Char - I liked it a lot, but I have a whole collection of books I call “Books about Libraries that are really Private Archives”. LaMC is only the most recent addition that I’ve read.

And it’s true, for a long long time up to the very recent past, libraries were usually private collections of resources which were only available to small affiliated groups. The Public Library is recent idea and the huge swathe of public social services the average (American) Public Library provides shouldn’t fall entirely on this one underfunded organization that can have insufficient training in social work etc. See this excellent Vocational Awe article for more info.

But I still want to read a book with a magical library that’s open to the public, that provides services and educational events, that supports its community, but isn’t hard to find. I really love a lot of these magical private library books, but the ubiquity of access is really important to the modern library (in some places anyway), and I’d love to read something that shows that someday.

5. What book do you love but usually not recommend because it’s weird or intense, etc?

I utterly adore Katherine Addison’s The Witness for the Dead, but it’s so hard to describe (and, as a result, to recommend) - the setting is so lush and the characters are such a product of their setting and life-experiences. It’s a non-violent crime novel. It’s very religious and spiritual. There might be werewolves. There are murderous ghouls. There’s opera and air-ships. It’s a detective novel. It’s a political thriller. It’s slow-moving and deeply kind. The protagonist is having a very long week. It’s only 232 pages long.

12. What book have you re-read most often?

I pick up Connie Willis’s To Say Nothing of the Dog whenever I need a break from other things in life, so probably every few months on the outside 😹 I love that if I ever don’t understand what’s happening, the protagonist understands even less than I do. He’s overtired and overworked, and it’s made him into a soppy romantic who keeps mishearing people but is too polite to ask for clarification. I relate.

Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword and Tamora Piece’s In The Hand of the Goddess are two other comfort rereads that I have as audiobooks, so they probably are the stories I’ve read/heard the most often by sheer numbers.

#reader asks #the library at mount char #Scott Hawkins #books about libraries #the witness for the dead #katherine addison #to say nothing of the dog #connie willis #the blue sword #robin mckinley #in the hands of the goddess #tamora pierce

12 notes · View notes

wellesleybooks · 1 year

Text

This Display May Be Long “Overdue”

All hail the librarians!

These books feature librarians, real and imagined, solving crimes, saving lives and traveling far and wide. They always provide readers with the books they need.

Our event with Marie Benedict, co-author of The Personal Librarian is on Sunday, February 12th, at 2 pm. Details here

#librarians #bookstore display #books about librarians #books about libraries #fiction #nonfiction #wellesley books

29 notes · View notes

rockislandadultreads · 1 year

Photo

Read-Alike Recommendations: The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk

Join us this Thursday, January 12th, at 5pm for our inaugural 150th Book Club meeting where we will be discussing The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk!

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals from its war wounds, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer's son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julian Carax. But when he sets out to find the author's other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax's books in existence. Soon Daniel's seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona's darkest secrets - an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.

This is the first volume in “The Cemetery of Forgotten Books” series.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues - a bee, a key, and a sword - that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth.

What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians - it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also of those who are intent on its destruction. Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose - in both the mysterious book and in his own life.

The Librarian Spy by Madeline Martin

Ava thought her job as a librarian at the Library of Congress would mean a quiet, routine existence. But an unexpected offer from the US military has brought her to Lisbon with a new mission: posing as a librarian while working undercover as a spy gathering intelligence.

Meanwhile, in occupied France, Elaine has begun an apprenticeship at a printing press run by members of the Resistance. It’s a job usually reserved for men, but in the war, those rules have been forgotten. Yet she knows that the Nazis are searching for the press and its printer in order to silence them.

As the battle in Europe rages, Ava and Elaine find themselves connecting through coded messages and discovering hope in the face of war.

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

What is the purpose of a map?

Nell Young’s whole life and greatest passion is cartography. Her father, Dr. Daniel Young, is a legend in the field and Nell’s personal hero. But she hasn’t seen or spoken to him ever since he cruelly fired her and destroyed her reputation after an argument over an old, cheap gas station highway map.

But when Dr. Young is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library, with the very same seemingly worthless map hidden in his desk, Nell can’t resist investigating. To her surprise, she soon discovers that the map is incredibly valuable and exceedingly rare. In fact, she may now have the only copy left in existence... because a mysterious collector has been hunting down and destroying every last one - along with anyone who gets in the way.

But why? To answer that question, Nell embarks on a dangerous journey to reveal a dark family secret and discovers the true power that lies in maps...

#readalikes #mystery #mysteries #fiction #books about libraries #books about books #library books #book recommendations #book recs #reading recommendations #reading recs #TBR pile #tbr #to read #booklr #book tumblr #book blog

26 notes · View notes

pensivegladiola · 1 year

Text

Bibliophile Books:

Novels centered around books and libraries

#books #literature #book recommendations #books about books #literature recommendations #bibliophile #books about libraries #books & libraries #novels #fiction #book covers #pretty books

2 notes · View notes

feypact · 7 months

Text

public libraries in the usa offering free digital library cards to people not in their areas (as of october 2023):

brooklyn (13-21yo us residents)

seattle (13-26yo us residents)

boston (13-26yo us residents, EDIT: just commonly banned books)

los angeles (13-18yo california residents)

san diego (12-26yo us residents, not the whole collection just commonly banned books)

these books unbanned cards (unless otherwise stated) get you access to each library's complete libby/cloud library collection, no hoopla/kanopy/physical copies included.

ebook collections are expensive to maintain (many american libraries have annual fees for non-residents because of this) but because of an uptick in book banning (particularly brutal in mississippi last summer) larger libraries have opened their doors more, which is very kind of them!

i've used my seattle card for the last several months and their libby collection has about three times the books that my local library does, which is wonderful for accessing more niche titles or skipping a waiting list. would love to hear of similar ebook initiatives internationally!

i use library extension (firefox/chrome/edge compatible) to check all my collections (+ the internet archive) at once, works for several different countries highly recommend it.

spotify seems to be offering 15hrs/month of audiobook listening to premium subscribers and while that does seem useful if you're already paying and are after a new release with a long library waitlist, libraries are better for everything else.

#library tag #banned books week #banned books #emmybody talks #for international users... your mileage may vary!#i mean i suppose you could lie about your age/location to get some of these. i doubt theyd check i would just feel bad. personally.#post brought to u by banned book week but also being moderately annoyed at ppl mad about the spotify thing #libraries are wonderful but they have their own limitations and i think using both is good!

32K notes · View notes

dontdenymeshakespeare · 4 months

Text

Favourite Reads of 2023

View On WordPress

0 notes

bachiles · 11 months

Text

I Detect a Theme

If you look at the picture of this stack of books that recently came home with me from the AAUW Used Book Sale, you will notice a distinct theme. I love reading books about books, bookstores, and libraries. They are definitely some of my favorite books to read and to enjoy because I love all of those things. So when I was going through the 30,000 or so books at the sale my eyes were drawn to…

View On WordPress

#AAUW Used book sale #book sale #books #books about books #books about libraries #sisters

0 notes

deadsetobsessions · 5 months

Text

Danny no longer has a haunt. So… he decides to find another one. And while he technically has a whole world (other dimensions aren’t an option because he’s going to stay near where Jazz’s grave is, damn it) there’s only a couple of other places with enough ambient ectoplasm to sustain him. Nanda Parbat, Tokyo, and Gotham.

Nanda Parbat had a weird old musty immortal that kept trying to summon him and exchange power for the ability to “take a worthy body and rain as much destruction” as he’d like. As if Danny would need a body to bring the world to its knees.

Tokyo… it’s too far from Jazz’s grave. He could ask Wulf or even open his own portal but when Danny tried it out, Tokyo was too peaceful. Obviously there’s crime, but nothing… nothing big like Danny’s used to.

Danny ends up picking Gotham, even if the sewer zombies and the weird group of rich fruit loops with an adoption problem creeps him out. So, he destroys the portal, packs up his parents’ house and sells it, and hauls ass to the cesspool calling his name. His family’s stuff is stored respectfully in a vault located on the deepest parts of his personal haunt in the Infinite Realms.

And honestly, he’s doing better. Sure, he’s got a shitty apartment near another revenant’s almost-haunt and he feels like he’s drowning all of the time, but Danny isn’t in danger of turning into Dan, he’s catching up on royal paperwork, and he’s got like a job as a barista. In his own coffee shop that paid for using his parent’s money (who, despite their hazardous everything, made a crap ton of money off of their more normal inventions).

Gotham’s got some pretty interesting local gangs, most of which respected the sanctity of Danny’s cafe. Sure, they tried blowing it up and tried extorting money from him in the form of “protection costs” but after three months of failure, they gave up.

(Really, the local gangs gave up when they saw him take three shotgun shells to the chest and continued to work.) (They didn’t know it never hit him. Intangibility is extremely useful.)

The Rogues, on the other hand, just gave Danny flashbacks. Their gimmicks are different, sure, but after years of Box Ghost, Skuller, Lunch Lady, etc., Danny’s more than done with costumed villains. They don’t bother him either. Some of the reason is probably due to Harley and Ivy, who had walked into the cafe and (because they were bruised and scratched up from a fight) triggered Danny’s mother hen tendencies. They were promptly fed and watered and caffeinated and their hyenas were also similarly taken care of. They declared the cafe under their protection and that was that.

Red Hood stops by, and begins to interrogate him. But when Danny met his… helmet eyes? The crime lord paused, paid for his coffee, and sat in a corner table of the cafe for the rest of the day.

And he kept coming back?

But Danny figures it’s because Hood was a revenant and people who had come close to death tends to feel more comfortable around him.

(Considering this is Gotham where people almost die every other day? Yeah, he’s pretty much friends with everyone. Or at least, less likely to get shot.)

(Hood does stay because of the King’s presence and the Pit calming itself, but also Danny’s hot and he’s got a sleeper build and Hood definitely did not imagine himself in the place of the heavy box he saw Danny lift effortlessly onto a table. No.)

But of course, the peace couldn’t last forever. But by then, Danny was so antsy, he welcomed the trouble with open arms.

It starts with a clown. Danny knows who he is. He knows who Danny is.

So, Danny has no idea why the clown thought it would be a good idea to aggravate the owner of Gotham’s official neutral grounds. See, Clovkwork? Danny’s learned how to gauge his own political importance!

“HAHAHAHAHA! COME OUT, DANNY-BOY! LET ME TELL YOU A JOKE!”

Danny comes out and grabs a chair, and with a flat expression, says, “you’re not funny and I hate clowns.”

And then he swings and slams the chair into the Joker’s face. Over and over again until Danny’s sure the clown won’t get back up. The thing about Gotham’s outdoor chairs is that they’re mad out of steel and are bolted down to the ground to prevent undedicated thieves (dedicated thieves can and will steal the bolted down steel chairs). The Joker’s hired muscle just watched this scrawny twenty-something year old yank the steel chair and take some of the fucking ground and the bolts with it and beat the fuck out of their boss who is the literal Joker.

They surrender on the spot and is taken to jail. Danny just smiles at the officers who come by and since he’s got pretty privilege and they don’t want to mess with the guy who, again, owns one of Gotham’s official neutral ground and also beat up Joker without breaking a sweat, the officers just lets him go with a warning.

And then the bats comes, and wow, Danny’s playing mentor to a formally dead person again!

But before that, the Red Hood asks for an autograph on the Gotham Gazette article with a picture of a tired Danny standing over Joker’s prone body. Then Hood stammers through asking Danny out (which Danny said yes to because he’s tired, not blind, and Hood is built like a brick house and HOT).

Batman interrogates him. Danny, who can tell that this man needs therapy and is Sad TM, tells Bats that Danny’s died before and that’s why he’s like this. He also calls Batman a furry, but like in a nice way. And then he kicks Batman out with a coffee and a file on Nanda Parbat.

Now, Danny’s got a date to prepare for and he realizes that maybe this is what Jazz wanted for him- to be happy and mostly safe and happy. (Or, happier, he thinks. It’s been a long time since he’s been truly happy, but this might be a good start)

#bamf danny phantom #danny phantom #dc x dp #jason todd #Jason takes him to a library and they pick out books for each other #Danny asks him on a second date and they talk about the book over coffee #and then they watch the stars (Danny uses his ghost powers to clear a patch of sky)#but Danny just kind of watches Jason’s face and goes yeah this is just as good #Danny dngasf #Danny will throw hands with a clown #Danny thinks the Gotham Rogues are kinda cute #with their gimmicks #unimpressed bc they’re kind of obvious #and he’s seen worse and better #danny is Gotham’s Mom Friend

3K notes · View notes

dangdfeng · 1 month

Text

I don't remember if I made a post about this before but I had scanned the entirety of The Art of Dreamworks Trolls World Tour and put it on my archive.org collection last year. The Trolls franchise has kind of blown up since then so I want to alert new fans since this particular book is quite a hard find

#The Art of Dreamworks Trolls World Tour #trolls #trolls art book #trolls world tour #dreamworks trolls #broppy #dreamworks #troll world tour art book #queen barb #queen poppy #original #photoset #scans #im hoping to donate my copy to the SVA library if they get back to me about that

1K notes · View notes

gothedrals · 2 years

Text

I miss you blockbuster I miss you cds I miss you little buttons that played song previews in walmart I miss you vhs tapes I miss you blocky tv with rabbit ears that only had 10 channels I miss you scratched dvds from the library I miss you envelopes of developed photos from a film camera I miss you flip phones covered in stickers I miss you physical media

#edit for clarification: I do still engage in physical media. i know many of these things are still around today #i still buy cds and vinyl and read paper books from the library and I own a film camera #this is moreso about the culture as a whole shifting to value convenience over experience #listening to cds on my own will not change the culture back to when physical media was the norm for everyone #I’m a nostalgia-ridden person there’s a specific feeling I’m missing that I can’t achieve by myself #g

32K notes · View notes

the-ratmans-shiny-rock · 1 year

Text

Actually so mad at all these grown ass people ridiculing tsats and nico and will for not acting like adults?? They're 2 traumatised 15 years olds, they're navigating their first relationship while navigating their traumas and being dorks because God forbid a teenager acts like a teenager and not a 31 year old.

YES, nico and will ARE allowed to gush about star wars and talk about singers and fictional charaters they would date because all teenagers do that and it is not out of charater it's just a NEW PERSPECTIVE.

You're allowed to critique any peice of media but if you're gonna do it when you've only read the FIRST FEW CHAPTERS and it hasn't even been out for a week yet?? Yikes my dude

3K notes · View notes

stuckinapril · 2 months

Text

Cultivating an obsession w studying & absorbing knowledge & learning more about the outside world is the only way. Make it ur never ending infatuation

#I literally have love playlists about ochem #If u weren’t raised by a mother who intentionally took u to libraries so u could be around books like me #Then u’ll just have to be ur own bookworm mother

736 notes · View notes

rockislandadultreads · 2 years

Photo

Into the Stacks: Fiction Picks that take place in a Library

The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

After the tragic death of his beloved musician father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house--a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous. At first, Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world, where "things happen." He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many. And he meets his very own Book--a talking thing--who narrates Benny's life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.

The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurczyk

What holds more secrets in the library: the ancient books shelved in the stacks or the people who preserve them? Liesl Weiss has been (mostly) happy working in the rare books department of a large university, managing details and working behind the scenes to make the head of the department look good. But when her boss has a stroke and she's left to run things, she discovers that the library's most prized manuscript is missing. Liesl tries to sound the alarm and inform the police about the missing priceless book but is told repeatedly to keep quiet to keep the doors open and the donors happy. But then a librarian goes missing as well. Liesl must investigate both disappearances, unspooling her colleagues' pasts like the threads of a rare book binding as it becomes clear that someone in the department must be responsible for the theft. What Liesl discovers about the dusty manuscripts she has worked among for so long—and about the people who preserve and revere them—shakes the very foundation on which she has built her life.

The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams

Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life in the London Borough of Ealing after losing his beloved wife. He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading while he spends his evenings watching nature documentaries. Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a list of novels that she’s never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list, one after the other. As each story gives up its magic, the books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she’s facing at home. When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list… hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too. Slowly, the shared books create a connection between two lonely souls, as fiction helps them escape their grief and everyday troubles and find joy again.

The Night of Many Endings by Melissa Payne

Orphaned at a young age and witness to her brother’s decline into addiction, Nora Martinez has every excuse to question the fairness of life. Instead, the openhearted librarian in the small Colorado community of Silver Ridge sees only promise. She holds on to the hope that she’ll be reunited with her missing brother and does what she can at the town library. It’s her home away from home, but it’s also a sanctuary for others who, like her brother, could use a second chance. There’s Marlene, an elderly loner who believes that, apart from her husband, there’s little good left in the world; Jasmine, a troubled teen; Lewis, a homeless man with lost hope and one last wish; and Vlado, the security guard who loves a good book and, from afar, Nora. As a winter storm buries Silver Ridge, this collection of lonely hearts takes shelter in the library. They’ll discover more about each other, and themselves, than they ever knew—and Nora will be forced to question her brother’s disappearance in ways she never could have imagined. No matter how stranded in life they feel, this fateful night could be the new beginning they didn’t think was possible.

#Fiction #magical realism #Library #libraries #books about libraries #to read #tbr #booklr #book tumblr #Book Recommendations #reading recommendations #book recs #booktok #historical fiction #Highly Rated #highly recommend #to be read #books to read #public library

94 notes · View notes

incognitopolls · 7 months

Text

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

#polls #books #libraries #incognito polls #anonymous #tumblr polls #questions #tumblr users #literacy #polls about interests

2K notes · View notes

nelkcats · 1 year

Text

Haunted Library

A long time ago Ghostwriter and Phantom had some kind of rivalry with each other, the ghost was still upset with the halfa for sending him to prison while the halfa was still upset about being forced to celebrate christmas.

The ghosts watched them closely on days of truce, waiting for them to behave; the other days however, weren't their problem, so the rivalry just continued to grow.

Until eventually they got tired of fighting and made a deal of sorts, which ended with Danny opening a library in Gotham; It turns out that Ghostwriter had wanted to open one in the human world since a long time, but there were many things that prevented it, such as being human for example.

So yes, Danny ended up owning a giant library full of mini-portals to the Infinite Realms, Ghostwriter lectured him for hours on the proper handling of books, and while he didn't directly give out the originals there were plenty of copies of unpublished works, courtesy of the ghost personal library.

Danny doubted that people would pay much attention to such copies since those could be borrowed but not taken from the place or they would have an angry ghost haunting them.

Upon learning of the announcement of a new library the bats were suspicious, but they put it as a minimum priority. Noticing this, Jason couldn't help but take an interest and check it out for himself.

The place turned out to be excellent, albeit understaffed if you count the owner being the only one present managing everything, but the place was huge, Jason couldn't help but feel like a little kid in a candy store: this was so organised! the chairs were also comfortable! the atmosphere and decorations helped to feel relaxed too.

He cleared his throat in embarrassment at his own thoughts before heading to the Jane Austen section, gaping at the sight of copies of first editions and some books that hadn't even been published, how was that possible?

He looked at the owner but he only greeted him with a smile and decided to look away from him; In the end, he decided that this library would be his, perhaps not directly, but no one could approach such a sacred place with bad intentions. Not even the bats.

And as such, both Danny and an invisible Ghostwriter looked at Red Hood routinely coming in to read on some couch, no one else seemed concerned so they just let it be.

Danny was pretty sure he was the same guy who came to him in the morning asking for recommendations, the corrupted ectoplasm of him was a bit of a giveaway, but the guy was cute, so he just let it slide.

3K notes · View notes

dontdenymeshakespeare · 4 months

Text

Christmas & Birthday Book Haul

WARNING: I’VE INCLUDED FOUL HEART HUNTSMAN BY CHLOE GONG IN THIS POST. BECAUSE OF THIS THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR THE THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS DUOLOGY AND FOUL LADY FORTUNE IN THE BLURB I’VE GIVEN, As always I’ve combined these two lists because my birthday is two days after Christmas. They are in no particular order. As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh Salama Kassab is a pharmacy…

View On WordPress

1 note · View note