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The Library at Night | 
| Author: Alberto Manguel
Publisher: Yale University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $27.50
Buy New: $18.15
You Save: $9.35 (34%)
Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 10874
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9 x 5.6 x 1.3
ISBN: 0300139144
Dewey Decimal Number: 027
EAN: 9780300139143
Publication Date: April 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
Inspired by the process of creating a library for his fifteenth-century home near the Loire, in France, Alberto Manguel, the acclaimed writer on books and reading, has taken up the subject of libraries. “Libraries,” he says, “have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I’ve been seduced by their labyrinthine logic.” In this personal, deliberately unsystematic, and wide-ranging book, he offers a captivating meditation on the meaning of libraries. Manguel, a guide of irrepressible enthusiasm, conducts a unique library tour that extends from his childhood bookshelves to the “complete” libraries of the Internet, from Ancient Egypt and Greece to the Arab world, from China and Rome to Google. He ponders the doomed library of Alexandria as well as the personal libraries of Charles Dickens, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. He recounts stories of people who have struggled against tyranny to preserve freedom of thought—the Polish librarian who smuggled books to safety as the Nazis began their destruction of Jewish libraries; the Afghani bookseller who kept his store open through decades of unrest. Oral “memory libraries” kept alive by prisoners, libraries of banned books, the imaginary library of Count Dracula, the library of books never written—Manguel illuminates the mysteries of libraries as no other writer could. With scores of wonderful images throughout, The Library at Night is a fascinating voyage through Manguel’s mind, memory, and vast knowledge of books and civilizations.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
"Visitors often ask if I've read all my books;my usual answer is that I've certainly opened every one of them." December 3, 2007
72 out of 75 found this review helpful
In this wonderful tome ,Alberto Manguel has given anyone who loves books a fascinating look at books,libraries and the captivating world of books in general.
Books have been a major part of the author,s life,and he shares it with us on both a personal and worldwide basis. Generally speaking,anyone who loves books,can never resist the desire to have their own library.In this 373 page book ,he touches on just about every aspect of a library,both those which are personal and those which are public or private.The reader will constantly think of their own library as he discusses all these things. How and why the books are acquired,how are they arranged,how are they catalogued,how long are they kept,how hard were they to acquire,what will become of them,what about lending them,which are your favorites and why,where are they housed;you name it ,he talks about it.
I have a place in my library where I keep "Books About Books".I love to read about books and this one will be at home with them.
This book is beautifully written with a copious amount of amazing photographs. Because the author covers so much in the book,it never gets laboured and there is something new and interesting on every page.
Some of the things are simple ,such as the price-stickers,which he so aptly calls "these evil white scabs".They annoy me as well,and I have found a product called "Goo Gone" a great help in getting rid of them.This reminds me of those "evil doer of deeds" in some bookstores who price-clip the dust jackets because in their little minds they don't think the customers can handle the published price versus what they are asking. I am always interested in the published price of older books and their actions are nothing short of vandalism in what they do. Manguel also talks about items or bookplates readers leave in books as interesting as well, as notes made by other readers and previous owners or readers. Personally,I enjoy these things because they are a bit of the story of the life of that book.
He talks about libraries throughout history and even makes comments about things today,such as; an echo of Carlyle's complaint: "Every day the library is filled with,among others,people sleeping,students doing their homework,bright young things writing film scripts-in fact,doing almost anything except consulting the library's books." Ain't that the truth!!He tells us about the personal libraries of the famous (Rudyard Kipling) and the infamous (Adolf Hitler); with pictures.He talks extensively about his personal library from the time when he was a child to the present time. The reader cannot help but compare the author's to his own.
There are an amazing 44 pages of notes at the end covering 367 sources of information,photo credits and a detailed index. This alone is a treasure trove of information.
It's hard not to go on and on about this book.So,I'll leave it at this and just suggest to pick it up,and see for yourself what a treasure it is.
Overall, a mesmerizing gift from one booklover to all of us other booklovers
Consolation April 4, 2008
19 out of 25 found this review helpful
I can not imagine a better gift than this to buy for a person who loves collections of books, whether as a professional librarian or one who simply possesses a private library (big or small).
Alberto Manguel is a wise and learned author. The lessons of his well written book go beyond libraries and touch on what makes us human, and that which connects us, across time and as people, to our historical past.
The Romance of Reading July 20, 2008
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
Alberto Manguel has produced a romantic history of libraries which incorporates their best feature: the ability to wander down hitherto unsuspected byways and make new discoveries, often winding up far from your original objective but still satisfied by what you have found instead. This is a discursive history of libraries through various categories: Myth, Order, etc. with fascinating essays for each. Those who love reading and libraries will learn much history and philosophy and will recognize in Manguel a kindred spirit and friend.
 A wealth of erudite anecdotes about books and libraries, but not much more May 8, 2008
8 out of 12 found this review helpful
In part, its most successful part, THE LIBRARY AT NIGHT is a collection of anecdotes about books and libraries, a worthwhile addition to the pantheon of "books on books". To give you some idea of the broad array of bookish matters and historical or literary figures discussed at some length, here are ones that were new to me or which I found particularly interesting: Zumarraga, who spent seven years as head of the Inquisition in Mexico and tracked down and destroyed much of the vast literature of the Aztecs; Michelangelo's Laurentian Library in Florence; the Islamic libraries in Chinguetti and Oudane, in Mauritania; the repository at Dunhuang, along the Great Silk Road; Borges and his library; and Aby Warburg and his idiosyncratic library.
But Manguel clearly has tried to make THE LIBRARY AT NIGHT more than a collection of anecdotes; he interlaces his rich array of factual information with his personal observations and comments about books, libraries, civilization and culture, and humanity. I find this latter effort much less interesting or successful. Manguel seems to be a poet at heart, such that many of his "philosophical" forays flirt with nonsense and impart a tone that is a little too precious, at least for my taste. He has a smooth, flowing writing style, but like the waves at the shore it begins to lull you to sleep if you read more than a chapter at a time. And speaking of chapters, I find the "structure" -- fifteen separate chapters, titled "The Library as Myth", "The Library as Order", "...as Space", "...as Power", and so on through eleven more conceptual nouns until at last we arrive at "The Library as Home" -- too contrived.
I fear that I have been overly harsh. So I will add one more star to my overall assessment and move on.
The scream of a dying star July 1, 2008
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
Alberto Manguel's The Library At Night is a curious confection: ostensibly a love letter to bookishness, it rejoices in collections of books and their owners through many prisms; how they're collected, how they can be arranged (as many different ways as you like), how they represent knowledge, time or space - even how the space they occupy can express the personality or idiosyncrasy of their collector.
It will instantly appeal to those, like me, who aspire to have their own "real" library one day (I am hoping mine evolves from its current status as a mere collection of books on a few dusty shelves, though I don't know - and this is one aspect Manguel doesn't delve into - what it takes for a merely juvenile collection of books to matriculate to a mature library).
Manguel also describes libraries through the content of the books they hold, and his range is eclectic, from Greek poets, Arab philosophers and Jewish philanthropists to Anglo-Saxon fantasists like Shelley and, memorably, Stoker. Each new vista builds a new perspective, but curiously after these multiple shafts of light, while one is well illuminated, the general impression is no more specific than that libraries - physical libraries - are pretty neat and we'd be worse off without them.
Which, for a while, made me ponder what the point of the book really was. After all, who could disagree with that?
But then it occurred to me, as surely it did to Manguel, that *we* could, in the same way we've, collectively, disagreed that it's strictly necessary to have a record collection or a even a television any more. Books may not have succumbed quite so easily to the digital ether as did music or film - yet - but there's no reason to suppose that state of affairs is irreversible, and if dear old Amazon would kindly (!) sort out its Kindle supply chain, we might yet shortly see a precipitous decline.
Manguel's subtext is that this would be a frightful outcome. He is certainly more equivocal about digital libraries than he is about physical ones, and sees the advent of the electronic book as a threat to the legitimacy and, possibly, longevity of his bibliophilia. For what good are batty old books, occupying acres of floor-space, however splendid the architecture, when you can have millions of volumes on a portable hard drive?
This issue Manguel only really addresses obliquely, and many of his arguments to counter this position are fatuous (especially as regards the durability of electronic information). The gating issue will be whether les gens can be persuaded to curl up with a Kindle rather than a book. I haven't seen one yet, so I'm yet to be persuaded, and that question alone might save the library's bacon. But otherwise the digital realm solves many of the drawbacks (like an optimistic computer programmer, I suppose he would call them "features") of physical libraries that Manguel documents, such as their physical space and susceptibility to combustion. Such as their inherent need to be ordered one way, no matter how cleverly, to the exclusion of all others. Such as the extreme limitations they impose on the actual retrieval of information (imagine how powerful it would be to be able to Google search the text of an entire library. With a digital library, you can).
All told, Manguel adopts a narrow concept of the value of a library, suitable for dinner parties and night time expeditions, but which won't be familiar to the younger generation who have grown up with Google. Though I am sure he would hotly dispute it, I suspect Manguel would emphasise the space, spirit and idiosyncrasy of a library over its actual, textual content; he would accentuate the intellectual statement a library makes over the intellectual statements contained within it; he would value a book's spine as much as he would the pages bound by it. There is a place for that view - to a certain degree, I share it: I like visitors to my house to see my collection of books, which one day may be a library, and I don't expect them to open any of them.
But when using it in anger, when studying or writing; when I need to quickly find what I am looking for, my physical collection can irritate me intensely. At those points - real ones for genuine scholars, you would think - Manguel's cosy view seems Luddite and hopelessly outdated. For professional library users - as opposed to literate bon vivants - the Google revolution will bring only positive change to what used to be a rather painful and time-consuming endeavour.
Whilst this remains a heartfelt and warmly written elegy, it remains likely that, before long, its subject will be a bygone age. We will have to find new ways to represent our learning. The web is already generating them: perhaps Alberto Manguel should set aside his scepticism and sign up to LibraryThing, and catalogue his books there. Wonders never cease.
Olly Buxton
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