I am addicted to this website – Awful Library Books http://awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com/
Made me think of those books we have lying around at home that are too funny to throw away, like my older sister’s copy of Brooke Shields’ “On Your Own” from the early 1980s. James Lileks (www.lileks.com) also has great images from retro cookbooks on his site.
I tore through this book on the weekend – it was impossible to stop thinking about it! The setting is an eerie, crumbling English manor house (Hundreds) during the dismal postwar years. At one time the house and the ancestral family – the Ayres – were shimmering examples of England’s aristocracy. Times have changed…the family has seen its share of tragedies and the house has begun to decompose, bit by bit. A local doctor is fascinated with Hundreds and with the Ayres. Doctor Faraday’s mother once worked as a nurserymaid for the Ayres family and he can recall a boyhood visit to Hundreds when the house was at its best.
Occupying Hundreds are the family, which has been reduced to the widowed Mrs. Ayres, Roderick (wounded in the Second World War) and his sister Caroline, and the handful of servants who remain in service at Hundreds. Frightening events start to plague the family (try to sleep after the experience in the nursery!) and we are left to wonder what is happening to the house and the family. I highly recommend this book.
It reminded me of another favourite read – the Children of Charlecote, in which four children grow up at Charlecote Park in the days before the Great War. In my mind, ‘to the manor born’ brought great expectations and great burdens. I never felt more sad than reading about the loneliness and literal hunger of the children growing up at Charlecote Park.
I read this interesting piece today – it’s very much like other pieces I’ve read recently, covering the typical issues of Google Books, the Internet, funding, etc. But this is from a corporate publication and it does a good job of summarizing the threats that libraries face and offers details about the NYPL’s strategies for remaining relevant. Public libraries seem to be doing much better than research libraries in this regard. According to the authors, “Research librarians must move beyond collecting and curating and become more adept at connecting with scholars.” Haven’t academic librarians always tried to connect with scholars? I wonder if there will ever be a time when we can stop fretting about the future of libraries…there are times that I feel we spend too much of our time worrying about how external forces are going to shape our future and not enough time charting a strong course for ourselves.
