Susan Orlean has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. She is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including The Library Book, Rin Tin Tin, Saturday Night, and The Orchid Thief, which was made into the Academy Award-winning film Adaptation. She lives with her family and her animals in Los Angeles and may be reached at SusanOrlean.com and on Twitter @SusanOrlean.
"A book lover's dream . . . This is an ambitiously researched,
elegantly written book that serves as a portal into a place of
history, drama, culture, and stories."
--Jeffrey Ann Goudie, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"A flitting and meandering masterpiece . . . Compelling and
undeniably riveting . . . This is a joyful book, and among its many
pleasures is the reader's ability to palpate the author's thrill as
she zooms down from stratospheric viewings of history, to
viscerally detailed observations of events and people, and finally
to the kind of irresistibly offbeat facts that create an equally
irresistible portrait of the author herself."
--J. C. Hallman, San Francisco Chronicle
"A lovely book . . . Susan Orlean has once again found rich
material where no one else has bothered to look for it. . . . Once
again, she's demonstrated that the feelings of a writer, if that
writer is sufficiently talented and her feelings sufficiently
strong, can supply her own drama. You really never know how
seriously interesting a subject might be until such a person takes
a serious interest in it."
--Michael Lewis, New York Times Book Review
"A sheer delight. . . . Orlean has created a book as rich in
insight and as varied as the treasures contained on the shelves in
any local library."
--Chris Woodyard, USA Today
"Captivating . . . A delightful love letter to public libraries . .
. In telling the story of this one library, Orlean reminds readers
of the spirit of them all, their mission to welcome and equalize
and inform, the wonderful depths and potential that they--and maybe
all of us, as well--contain. . . . In other hands the book would
have been a notebook dump, packed with random facts that weren't
germane but felt too hard-won or remarkable to omit. Orlean's
lapidary skills include both unearthing the data and carving a
storyline out of the sprawl, piling up such copious and relevant
details that I wondered how many mountains of research she
discarded for each page of jewels."
--Rebekah Denn, Christian Science Monitor
"Exquisitely written, consistently entertaining . . . A loving
tribute not just to a place or an institution but to an idea . . .
What makes The Library Book so enjoyable is the sense of discovery
that propels it, the buoyancy when Orlean is surprised or moved by
what she finds. . . . Her depiction of the Central Library fire on
April 29, 1986, is so rich with specifics that it's like a blast of
heat erupting from the page. . . . The Library Book is about the
fire and the mystery of how it started--but in some ways that's the
least of it. It's also a history of libraries, and of a particular
library, as well as the personal story of Orlean and her mother,
who was losing her memory to dementia while Orlean was retrieving
her own memories by writing this book."
--Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
"Like an amble through the rooms and the stacks of a library, where
something unexpected and interesting can be discovered on any
page."
--Scott Simon, NPR's Weekend Edition
"Moving . . . A constant pleasure to read . . . Everybody who loves
books should check out The Library Book. . . . Orlean, a longtime
New Yorker writer, has been captivating us with human stories for
decades, and her latest book is a wide-ranging, deeply personal,
and terrifically engaging investigation of humanity's bulwark
against oblivion: the library. . . . As a narrator, Orlean moves
like fire herself, with a pyrotechnic style that smolders for a
time over some ancient bibliographic tragedy, leaps to the latest
technique in book restoration, and then illuminates the story of a
wildly eccentric librarian. Along the way, we learn how libraries
have evolved, responded to depressions and wars, and generally
thrived despite a constant struggle for funds. Over the holidays,
every booklover in America is going to give or get this book. . . .
You can't help but finish The Library Book and feel grateful that
these marvelous places belong to us all."
--Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Vivid . . . Compelling . . . Ms. Orlean interweaves a memoir of
her life in books, a whodunit, a history of Los Angeles, and a
meditation on the rise and fall and rise of civic life in the
United States. . . . By turns taut and sinuous, intimate and epic,
Ms. Orlean's account evokes the rhythms of a life spent in
libraries . . . bringing to life a place and an institution that
represents the very best of America: capacious, chaotic, tolerant
and even hopeful, with faith in mobility of every kind, even, or
perhaps especially, in the face of adversity."
--Jane Kamenski, The Wall Street Journal
"When Susan Orlean fishes for a story, she reels in a hidden world.
And so the latest delightful trawl from the author of Rin Tin Tin
and The Orchid Thief starts with the tale of the 1986 fire that
damaged or destroyed 700,000 books in the Los Angeles Central
Library. But The Library Book pans out quickly to the fractious,
eccentric history of the institution and then, almost inevitably, a
reflection on the past, present, and future of libraries in
America. Orlean follows the narrative in all directions,
juxtaposing the hunt for the library arsonist--possibly a
frustrated actor--with a philosophical treatise on why and how
libraries became the closest thing many of us experience to a town
hall."
--Hillary Kelly, New York Magazine
"Of course, I will always read anything that Susan Orlean
writes--and I would encourage you to do the same, regardless of the
topic, because she's always brilliant. But The Library Book is a
particularly beautiful and soul-expanding book--even by Orleanean
standards. You're going to hear a lot about how important this
story is, for shining a spotlight on libraries and the heroic
people who run them. That's all true, but there's an even better
reason to read it--because it will keep you spellbound from first
page to last. Don't miss out on this one, people!" --Elizabeth
Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love and Big Magic
"Engaging . . . Bibliophiles will love this fact-filled, bookish
journey."
--Kirkus Reviews
"Mesmerizing . . . A riveting mix of true crime, history,
biography, and immersion journalism. . . . Probing, prismatic,
witty, dramatic, and deeply appreciative, Orlean's chronicle
celebrates libraries as sanctuaries, community centers, and open
universities run by people of commitment, compassion, creativity,
and resilience."
--Booklist (starred review)
"After reading Susan Orlean's The Library Book, I'm quite sure I'll
never look at libraries, or librarians, the same way again. This is
classic Orlean--an exploration of a devastating fire becomes a
journey through a world of infinite richness, populated with
unexpected characters doing unexpected things, with unexpected
passion."
--Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City, In the Garden
of Beasts, and Dead Wake
"Susan Orlean has long been one of our finest storytellers, and she
proves it again with The Library Book. A beautifully written and
richly reported account, it sheds new light on a thirty-year-old
mystery--and, what's more, offers a moving tribute to the
invaluableness of libraries."
--David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Lost
City of Z
"This is a book only Susan Orlean could have written. Somehow she
manages to transform the story of a library fire into the story of
literacy, civil service, municipal infighting and vision, public
spaces in an era of increasingly privatization and social
isolation, the transformation of Los Angeles from small provincial
hamlet to innovative collossus and model of civic engagement--and
the central role libraries have always and will always play in the
life and health of a bustling democracy. Beyond all that, like any
good library, it's bursting with incredible tales and characters.
There could be no better book for the bookish."
--Dave Eggers, author of The Circle and The Monk of Mokha
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