The Library Book is written by Susan Orlean and was published in 2017 by Simon and Schuster. The premise of the novel is two-fold. On the one hand, it is a story about the Los Angeles Public Library fire of 1986 and who set it. This fire is said to be the most catastrophic library fire in American history. At its worst, the fire was two thousand degrees and fire departments from around California were fighting it for more than seven hours. With the library being such a public space, the investigation into the fire went on for years and they are still not one hundred percent sure who committed the arson. As a journalist for the New York Times, Orlean takes her talents of finding a good story and takes the reader on a journey to discover who might have committed the crime. Besides investigating the fire, Orlean gives readers an insight into what goes on in different sections of the library. In addition to checking books out for patrons, the librarians in the Los Angeles Public Library also have to think about education for teens and adults, what to do about the homeless in Los Angeles, the landscaping around the libraries, as well as about fifty more things in a day.

Susan Orlean has been a journalist for the New York Times for about twenty-five years. One of the best things about this book is how she weaves her journalistic writing skills with her story-writing skills. Throughout the novel, I never felt like I was reading a newspaper article. The chapters switched between the story of the fire and current stories of librarians today. The stories about the fire always came at the perfect time, making the reader interested, but never letting them lose focus. Orlean also included two or three card catalog entries before every chapter. The entries could be used as a prelude to know what was going on in the chapter. If they were books about fire, the reader knows the chapter will have something to do with the fire; if they were books about cataloguing maps, the reader knows the chapter will be about a librarian today. For me, this also showed me that Orlean took time to research and make the book the best it could be.

So who is this book for? This book is for life-long book lovers, for weekend library patrons, for bookstore aficionados, for people interested in fires, for people interested in becoming librarians, for historians, for everyone. Even if you are not a fan of libraries or books, you will be a fan of this book.