Author: Susan Orlean
Published: Published October 16th 2018 by Simon & Schuster
Format: Hardcover, 337 Pages
Genre: Non-Fiction
Described as an investigation into the fire of the Los Angeles Central Library on April 28, 1986, is misleading. Most of this book is a dry overwritten background of how the library started and more than you would want to know of previous head librarians and the temperatures ranges that they had to endure. What this has to do with the fire, I will never know. There is a sprinkling or two of who the suspected arsonist was, but that is only to keep the reader going in hopes that Susan Orleans would get back to the crime itself which turned out not to be the point of the book after all.
Using this book, and a tantalizing arson, the author instead devotes too much time to the “fascinating” world of libraries, librarians, and the politics within their walls. Unfortunately, the average reader will find this book dreadfully slow and boring.
After 330 plus pages, the reader is no closer in knowing who was responsible for over tens of millions of dollars in damage to both books and the structure. Sure, the name Harry Peak is bandied about, they were even on the precipice of a trial with defamation counterclaims, but there have been no formal charges and if it is true, that less than 2% of arson fires are ever solved, which they cannot say definitively that this was an arson, it is a guarantee that after 33 years, this one will not be either.
Do not waste your time on this book unless you are fanatical about the history of Los Angeles Central Library because the arson is just a lure to get you to open the pages of this book.
Using this book, and a tantalizing arson, the author instead devotes too much time to the “fascinating” world of libraries, librarians, and the politics within their walls. Unfortunately, the average reader will find this book dreadfully slow and boring.
After 330 plus pages, the reader is no closer in knowing who was responsible for over tens of millions of dollars in damage to both books and the structure. Sure, the name Harry Peak is bandied about, they were even on the precipice of a trial with defamation counterclaims, but there have been no formal charges and if it is true, that less than 2% of arson fires are ever solved, which they cannot say definitively that this was an arson, it is a guarantee that after 33 years, this one will not be either.
Do not waste your time on this book unless you are fanatical about the history of Los Angeles Central Library because the arson is just a lure to get you to open the pages of this book.
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