by Nicholas Basbanes
Hooray! I have been looking forward to reading this ever since I finished A Gentle Madness. Yay!
FINALLY finished! This book was long and slow going, but very very good. Depressing in parts, mind you – nothing makes me sad in quite the same way as reading about the destruction of books – but good. I utterly adore Basbanes.
Basically, he traces the history of the library from the Library at Alexandria to the present (well, okay, to the year 2000 or so, when he wrote it). I really enjoyed reading it, even if it did take me ages and ages to finish it. I ripped through two fiction books in a matter of days after finishing this, I think out of the sheer joy of reading something lightweight after reading this weighty, well-researched tome.
