Patience and Fortitude: Wherein a Colorful Cast of Determined Book Collectors, Dealers, and Librarians Go About the Quixotic Task of Preserving a Legacy
Nicholas Basbanes is one of my favourite writers on the subject of books. And I do like reading about books, their history, how people have collected them, and why people have collected them. I really enjoyed A Gentle Madness, so I was kind of saving this one for a bad time. I decided to read it because of the run of bad books I read earlier in the month, and because I've had it sitting around for six months and that's really unacceptable in my mind.
Patience and Fortitude is not so much about individual book collectors -- although they do figure in this work -- as about libraries. About how they are created, what they collect, how they last through the centuries. It's about the institutionalized collection of books, rather than pathological collection, which is where the name of the book comes from: Patience and Fortitude, the New York Public Library's guardian lions.
This is not a quick read. I am forcing myself to read it slowly, although it is tempting to read fast and devour the whole thing in a few sittings. But by reading it slowly I can enjoy reading good writing, and as my last few reviews here have noted, it's been a while since my bedside reading was anything spectacular. Some reviewers have dinged the book for being rambly, which I suppose it is. But one of the charms of the book world is heading off in one direction and finding yourself on another path by chance, then following that for a while until you come across another direction. So the rambly nature of the book appeals to me and seems appropriate.
Not to mention that I am in a certain amount of bliss from reading an author who knows how to use punctuation. Yes, it has been a bad book month.
# Posted by ayse