Stuart Kells. (2018). The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders. Catapult.

Stuart Kells. 2018. The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders. Catapult.

Stuart Kells, The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders. Catapult, 2018.

Stuart Kells. The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders. Catapult, 2018.

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Library A Catalogue of Wonders

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1. • value: world literature
2. • value: reading
3. • value: literary history
4. • value: Biography
5. • value: anthropology
6. • value: autobiographies
7. • value: Cultural anthropology
8. • value: World History
9. • value: Evolution
10. • value: Library
11. • value: library cards
12. • value: biographies
13. • value: human evolution
14. • value: public library
15. • value: classic literature
16. • value: Sociology
17. • value: biographies and memoirs
18. • value: science books
19. • value: history books for adults
20. • value: gifts for book lovers
21. • value: gifts for readers
22. • value: historical nonfiction
23. • value: sociology books
24. • value: book lovers gifts
25. • value: librarian gifts
26. • value: book gifts for book lovers
27. • value: classroom library
28. • value: bibliophile gifts
29. • value: librarian gifts for women

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Kells, Stuart
   • bioText: Stuart Kells is an author and book–trade historian. His 2015 history of Penguin Books, Penguin and the Lane Brothers, won the prestigious Ashurst Business Literature Prize. Rare, his critically acclaimed biography of Kay Craddock—the first female president of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers—was published in 2011. An authority on rare books, Kells has written and published on many aspects of print culture and the book world.
   • name: Stuart Kells

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title

The Library

fullDescription

A sharp and delightful celebration of libraries around the world, and throughout time—for the passionate bibliophile and literary historian.

“Excellent . . . Tracks the history of that greatest of all cultural institutions.” —The Washington Post
Libraries are much more than mere collections of volumes. The best are magical, fabled places whose fame has become part of the cultural wealth they are designed to preserve. Some still exist today; some are lost, like those of Herculaneum and Alexandria; some have been sold or dispersed; and some never existed, such as those libraries imagined by J.R.R. Tolkien, Umberto Eco, and Jorge Luis Borges, among others.
Ancient libraries, grand baroque libraries, scientific libraries, memorial libraries, personal libraries, clandestine libraries: Stuart Kells tells the stories of their creators, their prizes, their secrets, and their fate. To research this book, Kells traveled around the world with his young family like modern–day “Library Tourists.” Kells discovered that all the world’s libraries are connected in beautiful and complex ways, that in the history of libraries, fascinating patterns are created and repeated over centuries. More important, he learned that stories about libraries are stories about people, containing every possible human drama.
The Library is a fascinating and engaging exploration of libraries as places of beauty and wonder. It’s a celebration of books as objects, a celebration of the anthropology and physicality of books and bookish space, and an account of the human side of these hallowed spaces by a leading and passionate bibliophile.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: The New York Times Book Review
   • content: "In this free-roaming history of libraries, Kells, well read, well traveled, ebullient, and erudite, relishes tales of innovation, obsession, and criminality . . . Kells' revelatory romp through the centuries cues us to the fact that, as has so often been the case, libraries need our passionate attention and support, our advocacy, gratitude, and (given Kells' tales of book-kissing, including Coleridge pressing his lips to his copy of Spinoza) love."
2. • premium: False
   • source: The Washington Post
   • content: "A bright, idiosyncratic tour of a book historian's collected knowledge about libraries and bibliophilia . . . The book assembles snippets from a wide variety of disciplines into an eclectic history of libraries as cultural, political, aesthetic, literary, mnemonic, and, above all, personal phenomena dedicated to collecting and preserving the written word."
3. • premium: False
   • source: The National
   • content: "Book-trade historian Kells (Penguin and the Lane Brothers) blends scholarly expertise with sharp wit in this enjoyable history of libraries . . . Kells's passion for this subject suffuses this pleasurable book, calling readers to understand the importance of the library's role preserving humanity's history and why libraries are still relevant today."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Chicago Review of Books
   • content: "If you think you know what a library is, this marvellously idiosyncratic book will make you think again."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Booklist (starred review)
   • content: "The Library charts the transition between formats such as papyrus scrolls, parchment codices, moveable type, and ebooks. There are many whimsical detours along the way, and Kells even devotes a chapter to fantasy libraries . . . Kells translates his stunning depth of research into breezy digestibility."
6. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus Reviews
   • content: "There is so much to learn and enjoy in this book, with the impressive amount of research never weighing down the accessible writing . . . Kells makes an elegant plea for the future library--one that will resonate with most book lovers."
7. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly
   • content: "Rich with gossipy tales of the inspired, crazy, brilliant, and terrible people who have founded or encountered libraries through history . . . Kells's reflections are wonderfully romantic, wryly funny."
8. • premium: False
   • source: The Sydney Morning Herald
   • content: "The Library is a treasure trove and reaching the last page simply prompts an impassioned cry for more of the same."
9. • premium: False
   • source: Big Issue
   • content: "The Library is ultimately an engaging and well-written volume by a knowledgeable expert and passionate fan of the subject matter. The result is almost like poetry, a rich ode to all things books and everything we love about them. The enjoyment and engagement is so palpable you can almost taste it and Kells proves to be the perfect guide through the subject matter and history, which ironically could have been lost were it not recorded in this faithful tome. You could consider The Library the good book, except that that one was already taken..."
10. • premium: False
    • source: Good Reading
    • content: "Brimming with strange anecdotes about a small handful of books owned by a small handful of people; lost books yielding strange surprises, from discarded condoms to misplaced dental appointment slips . . . Kells's The Library is at its best when it recounts the stories of . . . ancient libraries, charting the accidental trails of books, and therefore ideas, through processes of translating, pirating and appropriation."
11. • premium: False
    • source: Fine Books & Collections
    • content: "A delight to read – informative and entertaining at the same time."
12. • premium: False
    • source: The Australian
    • content: "Penguin and the Lane Brothers is written in a conversational style, wearing the enormous amount of Kells' research lightly. It will be essential reading for all those fascinated by "books about books" and about the foundation stories of great businesses."
13. • premium: False
    • source: Otago Daily Times
    • content: "Kells unearthed a vast array of sources to reveal that the lesser-known Lane brothers, Richard and John (who were co-founders with Allen and held equal ownership), were not only instrumental in the hatching of Penguin but also the wings that made this flightless bird soar... It's...
14. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      February 1, 2018
      A bright, idiosyncratic tour of a book historian's collected knowledge about libraries and bibliophilia.More miscellany than catalog, the book assembles snippets from a wide variety of disciplines into an eclectic history of libraries as cultural, political, aesthetic, literary, mnemonic, and, above all, personal phenomena dedicated to collecting and preserving the written word. Australian book industry historian Kells (Penguin and the Lane Brothers: The Untold Story of a Publishing Revolution, 2015, etc.), an expert on rare books, invokes recognizable figures such as Borges and Tolkien as patron saints of the library, but he also spotlights less familiar libraries and librarians from the dawn of writing to the information age, with thematic interludes for all the strange, obsessive things people have done with books besides reading them. The author leads us through this labyrinthine account by his own associative logic rather than following a systematic design; paragraphs jump from one millennium to another and back again, while lists of names and dates exhilarate and disorient in equal measure, running headlong through the stacks of the world's great collections. Kells leaves the modern library to other writers to chronicle and analyze, bypassing current and future threats to global archives and ignoring the rise of the hip librarian. In adapting academic subject matter for a mainstream audience, the author risks boring general readers with an accumulation of arcana and irritating scholarly readers by omitting the sources and depth of coverage that characterize a reputable book history. Still, the narrative merits attention for the way it enlivens dense summaries on printing, the book trade, collecting, library design, and bibliography with tales of the disasters, discoveries, and notable book lunatics that populate library lore.Readers familiar with St. Gall, Poggio, Count Libri, and other such significant figures in the history of manuscripts may look to more specialist accounts, but budding book enthusiasts will find this an engaging bedside read.

      COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

15. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      February 12, 2018
      Book-trade historian Kells (Penguin and the Lane Brothers) blends scholarly expertise with sharp wit in this enjoyable history of libraries. From the ancient oral libraries of the Arrente people of Australia to the digitized collections of today, Kells consistently proves that “libraries are full of stories.” He takes the reader inside some of the most famous libraries in the world, such as the Vatican Library, the Pierpont Morgan Library, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. In addition to exposing a trove of secret doors, hidden staircases, and disappearing ladders tucked away in these libraries, Kells unmasks centuries-old tales of crimes (stolen books, modified dust jackets, spurious blurbs), forgeries (like the corset at the Folger Library once believed to have belonged to Queen Elizabeth I), and spicy tales of erotica (the Russian State Library stockpiled thousands of erotic works in storage during the Cold War). He enriches this cultural history by linking the evolution of libraries to the history of book design and the expansion of literacy among social classes. Kells’s passion for this subject suffuses this pleasurable book, calling readers to understand the importance of the library’s role preserving humanity’s history and why libraries are still relevant today.

16. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from January 1, 2018
      Libraries massively predate books, Kells asserts, if one defines a library as an organized collection of texts. He's thinking of the oral tradition: Warehoused as memories, legends, myths, prayers, parables, and poems were preserved and shared for generations. But as intriguing as this line of inquiry isleading Kells, an Australian historian of the book and a rare-book collector, to a stinging recounting of outsiders' attempts to understand the first Australians' Dreaming stories it is the physical book that delights and occupies himall the ways books have been made, amassed, sheltered, and accessed. In this free-roaming history of libraries, Kells, well read, well traveled, ebullient, and erudite, relishes tales of innovation, obsession, and criminality. Kells' scintillating, often irreverent catalog of wonders and bibliomaniacs begins with a reluctant cataloger, the future library director and renowned writer Jorge Luis Borges, whose tedious work at a municipal library in Buenos Aires inspired his indelible and disquieting short story, The Library of Babel. Kells will return to Borges after he tells the full story of the clay tablet, papyrus scroll, vellum and parchment codex, and printed books on paper, each technological advance paralleled by the evolution of library organization, design, and construction, including the development of the bookshelf and bindings that allowed books to stand upright. As soon as there were books, there were forgeries and thefts, yielding saucy bits of history. The rapid and constant proliferation of books means that libraries have their own Moore's law, Kells observes, necessitating structural and logistical evolution. As books multiplied, so did threats to libraries, from fires and floods to war and political change, not to mention the perpetual onslaught of voracious, book-eating insects. Kells, who will please readers of his fellow bibliophiles Alberto Manguel and Nicholas Basbanes, tells tales of the best and worst librarians in history, and outs library secrets, including the use of fake books, which he was pleased to see on a supersized scale at the Kansas City Public Library's splendid downtown branch. Kells also tracks the presence of libraries in literature, citing Hobbit libraries in Tolkien and Audrey Niffenegger's beautifully haunting illustrated novel, The Night Bookmobile (2010), among others. As Kells ponders the role of libraries now, he returns to Borges' vision of an infinite library, a prescient metaphor for the internet, which has created an even greater need for librarians and libraries and their arts of selection and curation. Much more than accumulations of books, writes Kells, the best libraries are hotspots and organs of civilizations; they are also places of solace and education, sources of nourishment for the human spirit, cultural staging posts in which new arrivals can be inducted into their adopted countries. Kells' revelatory romp through the centuries cues us to the fact that, as has so often been the case, libraries need our passionate attention and support, our advocacy, gratitude, and (given Kells' tales of book-kissing, including Coleridge pressing his lips to his copy of Spinoza) love.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

popularity

549

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1. • value: Biography & Autobiography
2. • value: Literary Criticism
3. • value: Sociology
4. • value: Nonfiction

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04/10/2018

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shortDescription

A sharp and delightful celebration of libraries around the world, and throughout time—for the passionate bibliophile and literary historian.

“Excellent . . . Tracks the history of that greatest of all cultural institutions.” —The Washington Post
Libraries are much more than mere collections of volumes. The best are magical, fabled places whose fame has become part of the cultural wealth they are designed to preserve. Some still exist today; some are lost, like those of Herculaneum and Alexandria; some have been sold or dispersed; and some never existed, such as those libraries imagined by J.R.R. Tolkien, Umberto Eco, and Jorge Luis Borges, among others.
Ancient libraries, grand baroque libraries, scientific libraries, memorial libraries, personal libraries, clandestine libraries: Stuart Kells tells the stories of their creators, their prizes, their secrets, and their fate. To research this book, Kells traveled around the...

sortTitle

Library A Catalogue of Wonders

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A Catalogue of Wonders

publisher

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tableOfContents

PREFACE
AN INTRODUCTION TO LIBRARY HISTORY
1. A LIBRARY WITH NO BOOKS
2. THE LAST DAYS OF ALEXANDRIA
3. THE PURSUIT OF PERFECTION
4. A DAMNED SEWERFUL OF MEN
5. FREE FOR ALL
6. WHAT THE BARBARIANS DID NOT DO
7. THE SECRET HISTORY
8. CHAMPAGNE BREAKFAST
9. THE QUINTESSENCE OF DEBAUCHERY
10. EXECRATION UPON VULCAN
11. GOING WITHOUT
12. THE INTERIOR OF A LIBRARY SHOULD WHISPER, NOT SHOUT
13. FOR THE GLORY
14. KILLING A MONK
15. A LOVE LETTER

bisacCodes

1. • code: BIO007000
   • description: Biography & Autobiography / Literary
2. • code: LIT007000
   • description: Literary Criticism / Books & Reading
3. • code: SOC002010
   • description: Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social