Library: An unquiet history

The Book

Library: An unquiet history
Matthew Battles

I picked this book up in a discount bin a few years ago. I figured I would read it the summer before my first semester of library school and be ready to crush the program with my awesome knowledge of library stuff. So here I am, a week before my final semester of school, finally reading and reviewing this title. The plans of mice and men...

Technical Merit

Matthew Battles writes with that stream of consciousness style that I tend to gravitate towards. He weaves a poetic history of the library from the standpoint of the books themselves. He starts off very strong and inspiring, but wears down towards the end. For that reason, I give this title 3 out of 5 stars for technical merit.

The Review

Matthew Battles uses biblioclasm as his hook for this work. Books have been restricted, burned and censored since powerful men realized that their power could be limited by the knowledge contained in books. He begins with the most famous of all biblioclasms—Alexandria. From there, he continues throughout the centuries and regions, exposing ugly truths from cultures all around the globe.

My favorite quote in this book is from Herman Kruk, who lived in a Nazi-controlled Prague ghetto. He wrote specifically regarding the psychology of the ghetto reader, but it applies to all readers:

[O]nly two things are possible: reading for the purpose of intoxication—that is, in order to stop thinking—or the contrary, reading in order to ponder, to become interested in comparable fates, to make analogies and reach certain conclusions. (Pg. 178)

Those are the two polar extremes of the philosophy of books. Your answer to the question, Why are books here? will reveal what kinds of books you would include in your library. If people should be allowed to read for escape or pleasure, then all titles are permissible. If you hold a high philosophy of learning, that leads to more censorship with selection.

Granted, there are other considerations in play that just the one posed in the previous paragraph. However, this black-and-white, either-or view of books is what Battles seems to blame for the biblioclasms of history. While there is some validity in that statement, things are never so simple.

The one element that dissappointed me is Matthew Battles' treatment of web content. In the first chapter, Battles promised that he will get to the topic and show that web content is handled no differently than print. However, web content gets nothing more than a passing remark in the final chapter. I do not know if this was due to the editing process or if he thought his readers would forget this promise. I felt that the first statement was very ambitious and it piqued my curiosity. Unfortunately, it was ignored.

In the end, I certainly would recommend this book. It is a straightforward read if you can handle the stream of consciousness style that Matthew uses. It is an entertaining history of books, libraries and biblioclasm that I am glad to have read.

Have you read "Library" by Matthew Battles? What did you think of it?

I Read a Few Books

I have been busy during this intermediary period between Summer C & the beginning of Fall 2012. I have read & written several book reviews, all of which are on Religious topics so I will not be posting reviews here. However, if you're interested in a full review, feel free to click on my links!

Everything You Know About Evangelicals is Wrong by Steve Wilkens & Don Thorsen
A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis
The All-Sufficiency of Christ by C. H. Mackintosh
Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller

Mere Christianity: A Must-Read For the Thinking Man

Mere Christianity 

(C.S. Lewis Signature Classics) [Kindle Edition]

C. S. Lewis (Author)

Get it here!

A must-read for the thinking man

This blog post is a carbon copy from my religious blog entitled: We Talk of Holy Things.

I just finished teaching Mere Christianity to my Sunday School class. Actually, to be completely accurate, @mrskylarkk & I just finished teaching Mere Christianity to the High School Sunday School class. It was a phenomenal experience.

It is one thing to read a book & enjoy it yourself, it is another thing entirely to use a book as a text for pedagogy. One must know the material better than their students. One must know the chapters and how they relate to other arguments. One must be prepared for everything. As a result, One learns more than he has in previous readings of the same book. That happened to me.

C. S. Lewis, the author of this classic work, begins with a natural argument for morality--not Christianity, not even Deity. Slowly, the argument for an outside entity is built. Notice also that Christianity is in the majority throughout the first chapter. Christianity agrees with every religion (which well outnumbers atheists). In fact, Christians agree that there is one monotheistic God, and is still in the majority with Judaism & Islam. These things do not distinguish Christianity, these are things that are common to mankind.

What distinguishes Christianity is the relationship that Mankind can have with their Creator. Since the Creator is outside of the Creation, He has an ultimate goal. That ultimate goal is reanimation--to make Mankind back into a perfect image of Himself. That is the mere goal of Christianity; the point, if you will. By looking at the human experience in this way, it makes sense that Man has no meaning as long as he strives against God's will. If the painting ran away from the artist, would it ever be a masterpiece? The answer is no, and the same applies to Man's spiritual state.

Another thing to keep in mind with this piece of literature--& it should be treated as such, this is no self-help book--is its original presentation. Remember that Mere Christianity was originally conceived as a series of radio segments aired after World War II while Lewis was at Oxford. Hence, the chapters are short and succinct. In addition, the chapters build and never get too heavy. Further, note that Lewis is struggling to keep a fair & balanced view of humanity in a time when absolute devils were seen in positions of power. How many people must have thought they were in the presence of the Antichrist? While Hitler & Mussolini were antichrists, they certainly were not the apocalyptic Antichrist of Dispensationalism. But that is another topic for another time. What is to be remembered is the state of the world at the time of these discussions.