The House of Twenty Thousand Books (Hardcover)

from meandmybooks

A personal library is a funny sort of thing. The key word being "personal." A person who loves reading, doesn't, generally, love reading everything. Similarly, one person's absolutely fabulous library may be of little interest to another, even another very enthusiastic reader. My point here is th...

from dono421846

Too easily the consumer-minded of our society view libraries as mere aggregates of texts. There is little in principle separating a "library" in their minds from other collective assemblages of books, like the book store. This biography shows the deeper meaning of a personal library, his "working...

from jcbrunner

The German edition of this book sells it as a title about a man's giant personal library. In fact, it is a biography of the author's grandfather who embodied various contradictions. While his father barely managed to escape prosecution from Stalin's regime, the protagonist remained a staunch Stal...

from lisapeet

This was a great idea for framing an overview of Jewish/socialist physical and cultural history, family lore, and musings on the power of the written word-not so much a tour through a library as a series of Venn diagrams highlighting the macro and micro worlds of Abramsky's grandfather. I'm using...

from 3wheeledlibrarian

I enjoyed this book with its interweaving of Jewish history and books.