A series of meditations on libraries, public and private, personal and universal. Manguel’s writing meanders on occasion, but even in meandering it has a light poetic tone. As an Argentine living in France, he could reasonably be expected to write in any language but English, but as near as I can tell, this is the original language and the language of a writer for whom English is a second (or third?) language.
Manguel spends a great deal of time speaking about his own personal library (which appears alongside other better-known libraries in the illustrations that are generously scattered through the book), using it as a touchstone for his explorations into broader themes of memory, architecture, and the difficulty of containing the entirety of written literature let alone actually reading it. Overall, a great read and a delight for lovers of libraries.
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