The Library / Ray Bradbury. Books and roses / Helen Oyeyemi -- Treasure of Wisdom / Richard de Bury ; Umberto Eco ; John Bale -- A general in the library / Italo Calvino -- Community life / Lorrie Moore -- A morning in the Bodleian / Mary Arnold -- Girl reading / Elizabeth Taylor -- The man who liked Dickens / Evelyn Waugh -- Continuity of parks / Julio Cortázar -- The ex-wife / Ali Smith -- The public library / Isaac Babel -- Juliet / Elizabeth McCracken -- Enoch Soames / Max Beerbohm -- The Library of Babel / Jorge Luis Borges -- The Pleasure of Books / Michel de Montaigne ; Smauel Pepys ; Lady MAry Wortley Montagu -- From The uncommon reader / Alan Bennett -- The icon-painters / Maxim Gorky -- Two essays of Elia / Charles Lamb -- My mother and the books / Colette -- Forewarned / Saki -- From If on a winter's night a traveler / Italo Calvino -- My first Tolstoy / Teffi -- Lily Bart's hat shop / Fay Weldon -- Wuthering Heights / Jasper Fforde -- From 84 Charing Cross Road / Helene Hanff -- Unpacking my library / Walter Benjamin -- From Everyman remembers / Ernest Rhys -- Building a library / John Evelyn ; Seneca ; J.W. von Goethe -- The Gatsby Trial / Azar Nafisi -- The Library / Ray Bradbury.
Summary:
"The characters in the delightful stories collected here range all the way from the ink-stained medieval monks in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose to the book-besotted denizens of Ali Smith's Public Library and Other Stories. In these pages readers are invited to enter the interior lives of librarians in Lorrie Moore's "Community Life" and Elizabeth McCracken's "Juliet" and are ushered into a host of unusual libraries, including the infinite rooms of Jorge Luis Borges's "The Library of Babel" and a secret library in Helen Oyeyemi's "Books and Roses." Books exert their power in mysterious ways: an attempt by the military leaders of an imaginary nation to censor all of literature goes awry in Italo Calvino's "A General in the Library" and Julio Cortázar's mesmerizing "The Continuity of Parks" dramatizes the merging of the world inside and outside of a book. In Stories of Books and Libraries, a dazzling array of writers including Evelyn Waugh, Colette, Walter Benjamin, Isaac Babel, Teffi, and Ray Bradbury pay tribute to books and the magical places that house them" -- Amazon.com.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.