Women and Books Discussing The Library Book by Susan Orlean

In-Person and Virtual Program

Join the book club for a hybrid (in-person and online) discussion of The Library Book by Susan Orlean. For adults.

This is a hybrid event and will be hosted in-person in the Community Meeting Room at West Hollywood Library as well as on Zoom. Please register at the link below to receive the link to the meeting via email.

https://library-lacounty-gov.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcrce2srDouH9aTyu_GZqZsrFCiAOBmnVz3

Co-sponsored by the City of West Hollywood Women's Advisory Board, Women and Books Book Club meets on the first Tuesday of the month to discuss literary works by and focused on women.

Please contact the library to borrow a print copy of the book. eBook and eAudiobook are available through Libby app/OverDrive.

Summary provided by the publisher:

On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, "Once that first stack got going, it was 'Goodbye, Charlie.'" The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who?

Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling book that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before.

Upcoming events