lin·gua·phile

The “something borrowed” at my wedding had better turn out to be a library book.

John Donne, from Devotions: Upon Emergent Occasions

Sometimes, I read Donne and wonder why in the world I work in any other period than the early modern period. Eventually I read a novel and remember why the eighteenth century is my home, but that doesn’t mean the beauty of these earlier works is in any way diminished. It’s good to know that Borges and I aren’t the only ones to think that paradise must be some kind of library…

Cascada - Everytime We Touch (by SteveAATW)

Why does nothing like this ever happen in my college library? It would make for a nice study break…

A friend’s facebook post inadvertently reminded me of a story I wrote a loooooooong time ago (aka less than five years ago) about the last librarian of the Library of Alexandria, who in this story (because what else would you expect from a story I was writing?) had quasi-magical powers which she was keeping secret so as not to be persecuted as a witch. 

I hadn’t even thought of this story in years, so naturally I decided I should read it now.

First sentence: “Hypatia loved her library.”

You know, I am sure that craftwise my writing has improved a lot since then, but apparently no matter what I will find myself writing about kickass career women with magic and libraries.

(Also, once I finish reading this story I am predicting that I will find myself reading a giant chunk of the old stories and stories-in-progress that I just rediscovered in the same folder on my computer…this will be an enlightening emotional experience.)

english-dreamer:

quietlywelldressed:

Australian National Library

Ugh. Reason number one for me to go to Australia…

I am 99.5% sure this is actually the Austrian national library. Because I have been there and this is what it looks like, which is to say, HEAVEN.

(Source: psychrophile, via the-eyre-affair)

playingjax asked: 1, 11, 31, 40. oh, and 14 because lol. (let's be real, i would ask for all of them, but i suspect i shouldn't)

1. What’s a question you’re afraid to ask? To whom?

Most of the questions I’m most afraid to ask are self-directed. Right now, probably, “Are you happy?”

11. Which fictional character would you most like to have lunch with and why?

Mmm, this is hard, there are too many! But right now, I think I would love to have lunch with Deryn Sharp (hero of the Leviathan books I keep nattering on about, and which every human being with any interest in World War I and/or quasi-steampunk and/or cross-dressing and/or ladies being awesome should go read!) in 1920s London. We would have been introduced by Dr. Barlow, who would’ve known me thanks to my mum’s interest in the implementation of medical fabrications in wartime (because obviously if I lived in this universe, my mother would be working for the Red Cross and would have known Florence Nightingale, while my father would be headmaster of a grammar school despite coming from a family of well-known botanical fabricators).*

Alek would have been called off on some kind of work that Deryn couldn’t help with because she was still injured from a previous incident, and she’d be spitting and cursing at anyone trying to keep her in bed and off her feet (my mother and Dr. Barlow included), and I would be assisting at the hospital while on holiday from university and offer to take her out for lunch, promising mum and Dr. Barlow that I wouldn’t let her out of my sight. Deryn would be torn between liking me for getting her out of “that barking infirmary” and disliking me for being something like a watchdog, but she’d find some kind of grudging respect for me when, instead of heading for one of the fancy eateries/tourist traps in the area, we ended up in a cozy out-of-the-way pub. We’d get to talking and I’d ask her about her adventures and she’d ask me about my studies and what started out as just lunch would end up turning into lunch and discussion and an afternoon pint, and we’d finally leave the pub just as the first of the post-work crowd started filtering in, chatting like old friends.

*In the real world, Mom is a nurse and Dad is a high school principal, but Dad’s ancestors came to California from Britain in the 1800s to set up a flower-growing/seed-producing business, which a branch of our family still sort of owns and operates.

14. What kind of underwear do you imagine Sherlock Holmes wears?

Depends if we’re talking Arthur Conan Doyle or BBC. I know nothing about Victorian undergarments but I suspect BBC!Sherlock wears unassuming yet comfortable briefs.

31. Describe your dream library.

Oh look, I’m going to cheat and answer this by quoting my own novel-in-progress, The Printer’s Tale, in which the main character accidentally stumbles into the (off-limits!) library in the manor house where she works:

Noelle lost her breath, and almost her lamp, in shock. Rather than opening into a closet, the door led to a railed and elevated platform that hugged the wall on three sides of an enormous room. The fourth side was all windows, opening up into a courtyard she could see only dimly in the dying light of the sunset and her own small candle. A few feet in front of her the floor just stopped, so Noelle could see down to the story below her. Near the windows was a space empty of bookshelves, full instead of plush armchairs and small low tables. Ladders descended from the ends of the platform closest to the windows, allowing the observer from the upper deck to return, if desired, to the floor below.

But this strange architecture was not what astounded her. No—what caused her to lose her breath, what made her fumble with the lamp in her hands so that the small light and shadow that it cast flickered along the walkway in front of her, were the books. Noelle did not think she had any way to comprehend the number of books that filled this space. The walls that the walkway hugged were lined from floor to ceiling with bookcases, and it seemed that almost every shelf was full. Noelle took a deep breath to steady herself and discovered that the room even smelled like books. She could feel the bite of the ink in the air, the tang of mellowed leather, and the indescribable scent of paper that was beginning to age.

40. Post a short excerpt of your life.

I find this question to be ambiguous, but mostly for a silly reason: the word “biography” doesn’t come into its current usage/frequency until the mid-to-late eighteenth century (and this is a century I spend a lot of time with!), and before then “a life” is what we would now think of as a biography. So my initial response to this question is to write an excerpt of my own future biography, written in the style of some mid-eighteenth-century writer like Samuel Johnson.

Which might sound something like this.

As a young woman, Miss C—— was overwhelmingly infatuated with all manner of marvellous tales, which, though they posed a real danger to her virtue, did not fail to kindle in her a fascination for the fantastic ultimately beneficial to her career as a fabulist. Close acquaintances of the family relay that once when gifted by an elderly relation with the funds to purchase a new frock, she expressed dismay toward the source of such benevolence and heartily implored that in future she might not be given any loose change but that which she would be allowed to spend on books. This earned the distaste of her elderly relation, but paradoxically gained her the respect of her parents, in particular her father, who made it his duty from thenceforth to supply her with whatever reading material she desired.

(Haha, wow, fictionalizations of my life into the eighteenth century and the early twentieth century are so much more fun to write about than my actual life, maybe I should start journaling all my life events as if they were happening in different time periods.)

klg19:

The mural in the lobby of my library: Butler Library, Columbia University, NYC; painted by Eugene Savage in 1935.

It is an allegory of Columbia, as Athena, fighting back the demons of ignorance and bringing knowledge to the masses. 

There are a lot of really delightful details in this painting, such as the hammer and sickle in the hands of the masses, and the sliver of landscape featuring the Empire State building (under Columbia’s shield) and the Hayden Planetarium (under the flame of the demons’ torch).

Yeah, I go to school here.

Author Ray Bradbury, whose birthday is today and who once said, “Libraries raised me.” Happy birthday, Ray. NYPL has plenty of books by him and about him. Check one out today. (via nypl)

fuckyeahbookshelves:

dreamersbuildfuture:

national library - wien

This library is seriously the most beautiful place in existence. This image doesn’t do it justice. If it weren’t in Vienna, I would get married in this library. (I still may get married in this library, even though it’s in Vienna.)

I need to know where this is, so I can get married there. It looks like a slightly less awesome (and smaller) version of the Prunksaal (former Hofbibliothek) in Vienna, and therefore like a slightly less awesome (and smaller) version of the Beast’s library in Beauty and the Beast.

fuckyeahbookshelves:

iwishyoubirds:

bookshelfporn:

Click through to Papervision3D Panorama for interactive 3D Bookshelf Porn. Amazing.

(via peopleasplaces)