A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books

Dozens and dozens of beautiful libraries from many parts of the world. Go and look.

(Hat tip: Lance Knobel)

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 1:01 pm and is filed under A Fistful Of Euros, Europe and the world, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1. claudia Says:
   September 13th, 2007 at 3:50 pm

   Oh, Doug. You got me dreaming!

2. Doug Merrill Says:
   September 13th, 2007 at 4:23 pm

   Shhh! Not so indiscreet, your husband reads this blog too!

   Just kidding. What a beautiful set of photos, eh? Worth a thousand volumes, though fortunately the libraries have that many to spare. They even got the one I had hoped to suggest (the Riggs at Georgetown University) and the one it was a total privilege to be doing school work in for a couple of years, the Library of Congress. Though I wish I had known about the stunningly gorgeous Peabody in Baltimore when I was living in that part of the States.

   A high-end travel company should totally organize a tour based on gorgeous libraries.

3. Doug Merrill Says:
   September 13th, 2007 at 5:46 pm

   ps Claudia, wasn’t The Fourth Bear great fun? As someone who didn’t grow up with English nursery rhymes and fair tales, do you find yourself wondering about Fforde’s jokes?

4. Kimberley Says:
   September 13th, 2007 at 9:11 pm

   Thanks for linking to this, I immediately put the link on my own blog as well ‘cos I just had to share. Really, really gorgeous.

5. claudia Says:
   September 14th, 2007 at 3:11 pm

   You know, we used to drive past Melk monastery often and always admired it from a distance but never stopped. Next time, we will!

   Re Fourth Bear: I liked it even better than the previous one. Loads of fun. I think I miss some of the allusions but I have little kids who go to English-speaking schools - they bring those nursery rhymes home and I learn them with them. I’m sure there is a layer I’m not getting but it doesn’t diminish the fun for me - and sometimes, I will get it, albeit belatedly. Like, it did take me three books to figure out it is Mary, Mary, quite contrary… d’uh! [knocks head on table]

   [I think part of this is, when you start reading in a foreign language, you have to be able to read over words that you don't know, otherwise it will drive you crazy. Looking up every single word you cannot translate - well, only my brother does that. Once you have learned to ignore single words, you can also ignore concepts, as long as you grasp the overall meaning of the book. Mm. Thinking about this, that's probably a topic that probably deserves a post in its own right!]

   Anyway, I first fell in love with the Thursday Next novels and didn’t expect to like the Spratt ones even better, but I do. Sheer silly brain candy.