"Like all who possess libraries, Aurelian felt a nagging sense of guilt at not being acquainted with every volume of his."

Jorge Luis Borges, “The Theologians”

On libraries: They are magical →

The only thing missing from this awesome rant is the old, “Dude, someone should totally start a Netflix for books!” It’s been done already. It’s called a library.

View high resolution

booksnbuildings:

Library of the Colnaghi gallery. (via)

(via booklover)

View high resolution

I want to live here.

misplacedmemory:

garyoldman | les autres | Ohio Memory | feuilleton

Interior of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County “Old Main” Building, photographer unknown, 1874.

In 1874 the Public Library of Cincinnati took possession of a small building intended to be an opera house. According to John Fleishman, “the parcel at 629 Vine Street was transformed in two stages into a library building that startled America with its cutting edge design. Its vast Main Hall featured five tiers of cast-iron book alcoves that could house over 200,000 volumes.”

(via fyeakbookshelves)

Good reads: "Magic for Beginners," by Kelly Link →

It’s a little longer than most of my good reads, but “Magic for Beginners” is worth it. It won the 2006 Nebula Award and 2006 Locus Award for best novella and is the title story of her awesome second collection (which can be downloaded here under a Creative Commons license).

If you like this opening sentence you’re sure the love the rest:

Fox is a television character, and she isn’t dead yet. But she will be, soon. She’s a character on a television show called The Library. You’ve never seen The Library on TV, but I bet you wish you had.

Boy, do I ever.

"A single book struggles to balance on its spine; it pines for neighbors. Keep as many books as you have room for."

Mandy Brown, Ways of reading

"Libraries raised me. I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries, because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years."

Ray Bradbury

Neil Gaiman’s bookshelves are full of all kinds of amazing things. Maybe one day I’ll have a library like that myself.

Library inspiration. One day…

Online services apply Netflix model to books →

This idea sounds great. Here’s a suggestion for improvement: make the service free and build large buildings to house the books so that members can browse the shelves and pick out books they like. I’m surprised no one’s thought of it before.