I’m reading The Library Book by Susan Orlean, and although I’m not done yet, I’m ready to blog about it, which I know is annoying, because the book could turn on me completely before the end. After reading Ladder of Years, I refused to read anything else by Anne Tyler because the ending was so wrong, and even after an intellectual acquaintance gave me a plausible explanation for the ending being perfect, I still rejected it, and resolved to avoid reading books in which the author runs roughshod over her own creations.

The Library Book is not a work of fiction though, more like an extended New Yorker article, or a series of those, so it is unlikely to run aground. While many libraries are discussed, the focus is on LA’s Central Library, with a large portion addressing its huge fire in the 80s, which many of us do not remember, since it closely followed the Chernobyl disaster.

Writing the long, detailed descriptions of books and manuscripts and maps and media flaming, smoldering, and melting, becoming ash or sludge or vapor, sparked in Orlean the desire to burn a book herself, and she did so. It was quite a long process for her to resolve to do this, to choose a victim, and to devise a method, especially as she was living in LA during a high Wildfire Alert, when her neighbors might rightly wonder at someone setting something alight in a field.

This act of daring fired my imagination. How I would electrify the conversation in my circle if I engaged in book burning! It sounds dangerous, and more important, difficult. Could I convince myself to do that? Usually people I know looking for a challenge take up hot yoga, or travel to Machu Picchu.

Book burning is so forbidden, it’s hard to even think about it, at least for those of us living normatively. Dictators, armies, censors, and arsonists have burned books and other cultural materials for centuries, as is well-chronicled by Orlean. The huge troves of original, unique material destroyed by the Nazis alone is astounding.

Then again, once Susan Orlean burned a book, the act became derivative. For now I’ll continue to get my bucking norms kicks by occasionally writing in library books. I always use erasable pens!