Posted on by Meghan G

The Library Book Book Review

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Title: The Library Book

Author: Susan Orlean

Publish Date: October 16th, 2018

Reading Format: Audio book

Summary:

The Library Book is a Nonfiction book about the fire that happened at the Los Angeles Library in the late 1980s. It tracks the day of the fire, the accused arsonist, and how the Los Angeles Library system works in modern day.

Review:

Nonfiction is usually a hard genre for me to tackle. If I do read Nonfiction it is normally one that is strictly historical. While there is history in The Library Book about the fire most of what Susan Orlean focuses on in her book is how the city of Los Angeles runs their library system. As a fellow reader I did find this part interesting because I got to see an in depth look of how a library functions.

I did listen to this on audio which made the experience of reading it easier. I typically can become quite bored with the overload of information over time. Susan Orlean did a good job of looking at the arson and also questioning if the fire that destroyed the Los Angeles library should have been considered an arson in the first place. This kept my interest going and while it did lag in some places I did want to finish it.

After reading The Library Book I think that I am now more willing to read more books in this genre. Though I’ll admit they will more than likely be in the audio book format going forward.

Rating:

3 out of 5

Happy Reading,

Meghan

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Posted on by Meghan G

TBR Thursday: Scandalous Women

Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History’s Most Notorious Women

By Elizabeth Kerri Mahon

I’m starting a new series for every Thursday where I go through the books in my collection that I haven’t read yet.  I wanted to do it this way rather than a collected one each month because I tend to change my mind and didn’t want to feel like those were the books I had to read. The first book I have chosen for TBR Thursday (by the way TBR means “to be read” for anyone not familiar with the term) is called Scandalous Women written by Elizabeth Kerri Mahon, and it is a book about different women in history and their major roles within it.

That’s right I wrote major.

Despite what we have often learned in our history classes, women did have a role in historic events that have often been untold even though they have changed the landscape of nations, empires, and cultures. From what I’ve seen when I’ve flipped through the pages so far is it looks as though the book is divided into different sections for each woman and I’ve noticed it has lots of names I’ve never heard of before, but does still include what you might expect for women of history such as Cleopatra and Marie Antoinette.

I originally found this book a little over a year ago while browsing the History section at Barnes and Noble, and I figure I should finally find the time to read it because I honestly feel like it is judging me while it has sat on my bookshelf untouched. The title alone caught my interest when I first came across it as I hadn’t seen a book with that subject matter before, and who wouldn’t want to read something with scandalous in the title?

My goal is to read Scandalous Women before the summer is over.  I think it will be an interesting and fun read, plus I may even learn something in the process and it could prove to be a good book to travel with.

Well I hoped you liked the first post of this series. I could probably do this every Thursday until I’m 80 because that’s how many books I own that I have read yet. Though I’m probably not the only one with this problem.

Happy Reading,

Meghan