Checking out Library books

As a librarian, I get a kick out of books about libraries – the one I am currently reading is The Midnight Library by Matt Haig and it starts with a line that caught my fancy: “Between life and death there is a library.” An excellent beginning, I thought, and promptly checked the book out.

Of course, there are drawbacks to reading books about one’s chosen profession or hobby or hometown.  When you know something well there is a greater risk of coming across a statement in the book that you know to be wrong and that wrongness will jolt you right out of the story. Sometimes you can’t ever go back.

To avoid that sense of falling out of the story, the safest sort of book-set-in-a-library for me is one that features a library not found in the everyday. 

Maybe a library where the librarians steal books to keep the universe in balance would be the ticket.  Really – alternate realities and dragons included as well.

Welcome to The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman – the first of a series. We meet librarian Irene Winter and follow her career across worlds and time in pursuit of the books needed to keep chaos and order in balance.

The Invisible Library series is up to seven books - and with an unlimited number of worlds, it could go on for a long time!

Another library fantasy series is The Great Library series by Rachel Caine. The first book, Ink and Bone, introduces us to a world where the Great Library of Alexandria didn’t burn, but instead is the controlling institution for much of civilization. This might be the only instance of a library that has its own standing army!

This is a limited series – five titles.

The time traveler in The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger is a librarian. The library is just a peripheral character – but a time traveling librarian? I’m in! 

This is a stand-alone book, but she has also written a number of other books, including a graphic novel: The Night Bookmobile. (I have just added it to my TBR list!)

Next on my list is Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. Now your first reaction might be: “She’s cheating, a bookstore isn’t a library.” You are right of course, but the patrons of this bookstore never actually buy anything, they just check them out. 

Also, there is a library in the basement where the books are chained to shelves (an ancient library tradition). So, this book keeps its spot on the list!

In The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, our hero – Zachary – finds a rare book in the stacks of his college library that appears to include an event from his childhood. There is also another library to be discovered. This is the second book by this author – the first being The Night Circus.

When writing a blog entry focused on books, one book always leads to another. In putting together my list of books-set-in-libraries, I discovered some I haven’t read – yet! This list is limited to those that fit my parameters, but if you search the catalog with the keyword LIBRARY you will find mystery, romance, adventure, history, and then some!

The Shadow of the Wind

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, 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 Julián 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.

Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

by Haruki Murakami

Hyperkinetic and relentlessly inventive, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is Haruki Murakami's deep dive into the very nature of consciousness. Across two parallel narratives, Murakami draws readers into a mind-bending universe in which Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters collide to dazzling effect. What emerges is a novel that is at once hilariously funny and a deeply serious meditation on the nature and uses of the mind.

The Library at Mount Char 

by Scott Hawkins

After she and a dozen other children found them being raised by "Father," a cruel man with mysterious powers, Carolyn and her "siblings" begin to think he might be God; so when he dies, they square off against each other to determine who will inherit his library, which they believe holds the power to all Creation.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow 

by Thomas Sweterlitsch

In the near-future around the tenth anniversary of a devastating, apocalyptic attack on Pittsburgh, one survivor - an archivist working in a perfect, immersive digital reproduction of the city - stumbles upon a dark and violent cover-up that unravels what is left of the life he knew.

The Archived 

by Victoria Schwab

When an otherworldly library called the Archive is compromised from within, sixteen-year-old Mackenzie Bishop must prevent violent, ghost-like Histories from escaping into our world.

- Meg, West Windsor Branch