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Reading Rooms
Fiction, poetry, and memoirs focus on the American public library and its influence
486 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 1991
76 people want to read
About the author
Susan Allen Toth
15 books24 followersDr. Toth graduated from Smith College and Berkeley and received a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1969. She taught English at San Francisco State College and now teaches at Macalester College in Minnesota. Toth has contributed articles and stories to a wide range of magazines and newspapers. She has written two memoirs—Blooming: A Small Town Girlhood (1981) and Ivy Days: Making My Way Out East (1984). She has also written a series of books on England, including My Love Affair with England (1992), England as You Like It (1995), England for All Seasons (1997), and Victoria, the Heart of England: A Journey of Discovery (1999).
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 28, 2018
What a book! Reading Rooms is packed full of essays, songs, poems, snippets of novels and memoirs, all relating to the library. It's broken up into sections - Small-Town Libraries, City Libraries, Love in the Library, and Mystery and Murder in the Library to name a few - and within each section is a handful of writings reflecting the theme.
There are plenty of well-known authors in this collection, including Stephen King, Eudora Welty, and Betty Smith. But there are also a handful of lesser-known authors such as Patricia McGerr, whose story surprised and delighted me. In fact, most of my favorite pieces were written by authors I hadn't heard of or authors I'm uncertain about.
The greatest, most beautiful surprise came from Stephen King's "It," which, surprise surprise, has a snippet about the library in it. Though I haven't read Stephen King for many years because he gives me nightmares, I couldn't help but read this piece because the writing was astonishingly beautiful. I had no idea Stephen King was so poetic. In this snippet of “It” he does one of my favorite writerly things and combines pretty phrases and words with slang. For example, he writes, "He liked the smell of the books - a spicy smell, faintly fabulous. He would sometimes walk through the adult stacks, looking at the thousands of volumes and imagining a world of lives inside each one, the way he sometimes walked along his street in the burning smoke-hazed twilight of a late-October afternoon, the sun only a bitter orange line on the horizon, imagining the lives going on behind all the windows - people laughing or arguing or arranging flowers or feeding kids or pets or their own faces while they watched the boobtube." holy moly that's some beautiful writing.
I also loved Pete Hamill's piece, "D'Artagnan on Ninth Street,” and in particular, these lines, "I can feel now the way my blood quickened as I...saw ahead the wild gloomy garden behind the library. As a gesture of support, I would run a finger along the menacing iron pickets of the garden's fence. I wanted that fence to stand forever, holding back the jungle... I sometimes imagined it spilling into the streets, marching steadily forward to link with Prospect Park. Or it would turn to the nearest target: the library itself. The vengeful blind force of untamed nature would climb those granite walls, seep under the windows and assault the books, those sheaves of murdered trees, sucking them back to the dark earth."
Reading Rooms was everything I hoped for and more. I mean, where else am I going to find such a strange compilation of authors and styles of writing about my favorite place in the world? It falls into that rare and awesome category of books that keep on giving long after they’re read. I not only jotted down a handful of names and books to look up, I also went on a wild and entertaining exploration of the Ellery Magazine thanks to Patricia McGerr. As a person who hasn't read a single adult mystery book, not even Agatha Christie (*gasp*) I'm now intrigued, which is the first step towards reading my first mystery. As for Stephen King, there are just too many scary things circling the island of beautiful writing, so I will continue looking at it from afar.
There are plenty of well-known authors in this collection, including Stephen King, Eudora Welty, and Betty Smith. But there are also a handful of lesser-known authors such as Patricia McGerr, whose story surprised and delighted me. In fact, most of my favorite pieces were written by authors I hadn't heard of or authors I'm uncertain about.
The greatest, most beautiful surprise came from Stephen King's "It," which, surprise surprise, has a snippet about the library in it. Though I haven't read Stephen King for many years because he gives me nightmares, I couldn't help but read this piece because the writing was astonishingly beautiful. I had no idea Stephen King was so poetic. In this snippet of “It” he does one of my favorite writerly things and combines pretty phrases and words with slang. For example, he writes, "He liked the smell of the books - a spicy smell, faintly fabulous. He would sometimes walk through the adult stacks, looking at the thousands of volumes and imagining a world of lives inside each one, the way he sometimes walked along his street in the burning smoke-hazed twilight of a late-October afternoon, the sun only a bitter orange line on the horizon, imagining the lives going on behind all the windows - people laughing or arguing or arranging flowers or feeding kids or pets or their own faces while they watched the boobtube." holy moly that's some beautiful writing.
I also loved Pete Hamill's piece, "D'Artagnan on Ninth Street,” and in particular, these lines, "I can feel now the way my blood quickened as I...saw ahead the wild gloomy garden behind the library. As a gesture of support, I would run a finger along the menacing iron pickets of the garden's fence. I wanted that fence to stand forever, holding back the jungle... I sometimes imagined it spilling into the streets, marching steadily forward to link with Prospect Park. Or it would turn to the nearest target: the library itself. The vengeful blind force of untamed nature would climb those granite walls, seep under the windows and assault the books, those sheaves of murdered trees, sucking them back to the dark earth."
Reading Rooms was everything I hoped for and more. I mean, where else am I going to find such a strange compilation of authors and styles of writing about my favorite place in the world? It falls into that rare and awesome category of books that keep on giving long after they’re read. I not only jotted down a handful of names and books to look up, I also went on a wild and entertaining exploration of the Ellery Magazine thanks to Patricia McGerr. As a person who hasn't read a single adult mystery book, not even Agatha Christie (*gasp*) I'm now intrigued, which is the first step towards reading my first mystery. As for Stephen King, there are just too many scary things circling the island of beautiful writing, so I will continue looking at it from afar.
April 26, 2025
The pieces featured in the collection brought back memories and rekindled goals and dreams. I’m nearing retirement age and libraries have been part of my life since my elementary school years. The day before I finished this book I received tragic news about a local library. Readers will understand the magic of reading the right book at the right time. This is that book and time for me. I believe there is a story here for anyone who appreciates a library.
August 27, 2022
I did read every page. All chapters were great until I came to the last one called Democracy In The Library. I didn't care for that chapter very much at all. But I still recommend the book. I enjoyed the rest of it.
November 10, 2009
This collection has been before-bed reading for months and, more than anything, I'm now happy to finally move it from my bedside table. I enjoyed many of these stories, essays, and poems about libraries. (Well, the poems didn't really do it for me.) I wish I had noted which stories I liked best, but the two authors that stick out most in my mind are Wharton and Welty.
No surprise - I loved seeing the library chapters from Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown and from Beverly Cleary's Beezus and Ramona. We have co-editor, John Coughlan, to thank for the Betsy-Tacy addition.
No surprise - I loved seeing the library chapters from Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown and from Beverly Cleary's Beezus and Ramona. We have co-editor, John Coughlan, to thank for the Betsy-Tacy addition.
August 13, 2016
Anthology of essays and fiction set in or dealing with public libraries. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary here, though Richard Wright’s piece on having to pretend to be getting books for one of his white co-workers so that he could read was powerful (his first pick from the library was Mencken’s “Prejudices” -- it was a word he could identify with -- and he was enthralled). Best quote, from Pete Hamill (contemplating his massive personal library and how much he spends on books): “If I hadn’t caught the book habit early in Brooklyn, I’d have a lot more money now, but I wouldn’t be a richer man.”
October 6, 2010
A great celebration of libraries with selections of all kinds of writing from all kinds of writers. I read it cover to cover a few years back & donated it to the local membership library where it was untouched. Perhaps at the Ben Franklin Library where there are chairs to sit around & read, someone will see it.
December 14, 2012
Just what it says. I didn't read every page, just the ones that sounded interesting. It's kind of fun to see the authors who've written about libraries. Some you'd expect (E.B. White for example), others not so much (Stephen King, Isaac Asimov, Nikki Giovanni).
October 27, 2009
A lovely literary collection of all things booky and library-ish.
January 6, 2013
I loved this! Fittingly, I happened across it in my small but thoughtfully-stocked small-town local library.
September 1, 2015
Collection of short stories, poems and vignettes about libraries, librarians, etc.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews