Last week when I stopped at the library to pick up a couple of things, there was signage at the entrance that at 2 p.m., there was a schedule fire drill. I asked one of the librarians what was involved and she said “the drill rings, everybody goes outside and stands around until the bell rings to indicate they can come back in.” She said that they are usually very low-key.
But it made me think about what would happen if it were a real drill and the library was on fire. It reminded me of the ending scene of Legal Eagles, a wildly improbable film from the mid 80s. The bad guy sets a fire in a swanky art gallery in New York (where they just happen to be having a memorial service for one of the owners). As the funeral goers are rushing to get out, there is a quick shot of some folks trying to take some of the art with them:
So, here’s the drill. You’re in the library when the bells go off, somebody yells “smoke, smoke”. You have just enough time to save five books. What books will they be? I’ll get us started.
- Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
- The Martian by Andy Weir
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Us by Heather McGee.
Go. (elaborate if desired)
Trail Baboon 
Every title you named is available in digital form. If the copies in the library burn to ash, only paper has been lost. So, save lives. That’s what the alarm is about. Save lives.
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But that takes the fun out of it… pretend this if before digital.
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“You can’t burn books!”
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If I were at the physical library,I’d most likely be at the Highland Park branch,and in the cookbook section, so I’d grab the nearest ethnic volumes they’d have the toughest time affording to replace (I can think of a number of Eastern European books I don’t know the names of).
I have kept the books I read and own, because I don’t trust “the industry” to virtually maintain them. I fear we are going to experience an Alexandria Library event in the foreseeable future. I’ve had to track down books I love that “aren’t available” anymore because they are no longer “profitable”.
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I can easily expand the Thomas Aquinas warning, “Beware the man of a single book (hominem unius libri timeo)” to “beware the person of five books.” There’s absolutely no way I could prize five books over all others, nor would I wish to do so.
Aside from the literal fact that the library’s books are merely copies of ones that exist elsewhere, even in a metaphorical sense I could never single out five titles I valued most. I have thousands of books of my own—my personal library—and each occupies a space on a shelf because it holds something distinctive, some for the information it offers, some for the entertainment, or perspective, or insight they afford. But they are not in competition with each other and I don’t have a hierarchy of favorites.
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Five books that I would not want a good sized library (or the world) to be without (whether we’re talking about paper, digital, whatever):
The Land Remembers (Ben Logan) or How Green Was My Valley (Richard Llewellyn)
God’s Hotel (Victoria Sweet)
Dancing in the Streets (Barbara Ehrenrich)
something by Frederik Backman (My Friends is my current favorite)
Charlotte’s Web (E. B. White)
(this could change a couple of hours from now)
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Beartown by Frederic Bachman almost made my list. I am currently reading My Friends and had to take a little break because it’s a little depressing so far. Good but depressing. I am assuming, based on my experience with his other books that this will resolve but yesterday I just needed a break.
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Yes, that got really intense, I took a little break too.
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VS, I read My Friends earlier this year and felt the same way. I got to a point where I wondered if I wanted to go on. I did and it was worth it.
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i loved the land remembers. from 40 years ago
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1984
The Lord Of The Rings
Brave New World
Catch 22
Fahrenheit 451 (Since we’re on book burning)
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I’d look for for these first:
Castle Danger
Straight River
Dangerous Straits
Little Mountain, Big Trouble
The reason being that rebuilding the stock after a fire would take time and resources, and local indie authors might not be prioritized.
For the fifth title, maybe The Library Book by Susan Orlean would be an appropriate choice.
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I’d just take the 5 closest to me and get the heck out. 🙂
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I decided to turn the question around a bit and think of what books from my shelves I’d donate as essentials to a library that’s being built (or rebuilt).
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Little Women by Louisa My Alcott
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
and because I’ve decided to be extra generous: Alices’ Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
I left out Shakespeare because I figured any library would have that.
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Somehow, somewhere, my parents got a set of “The complete Works of William Shakespeare” or something like that. They’re still down in the basement. But I’m starting to think, I’m not sure we’ve ever cracked them open, even if we had the best of intents… maybe we donate them.
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Depending on long they have been sitting in the basement, and if your basement is anything like ours, I doubt that those books are still viable.
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Oxford Press Barnes & Noble $14.98 is what mine says.
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OT – This story made me think of yesterday’s reflection on travel plans.
“Michael Hewitt, a 65-year-old lifelong Leeds United supporter known to everyone as “Little Mick,” set off from England on the trip of a lifetime. He was heading to Boston to watch England play Ghana at the World Cup, with a short layover in Barcelona along the way.
He never made it to Boston. And then he went silent.
Soon after landing in Barcelona, Mick lost his phone. On it were all his travel tickets and every phone number he knew. Suddenly he had no way to reach home and no idea how to contact anyone. But he still had his passport, his money, and, crucially, tickets to nothing in particular and a city full of bars showing the football. So he made a decision. He stayed, and he enjoyed himself.
Back home, it was a very different picture. When Mick vanished without a trace and his phone went dead, his family feared the worst. They launched a desperate appeal that snowballed into a 10-day international search, pulling in Interpol, Spanish authorities, and the British Embassy. His brother later admitted he thought he would never hear Mick’s voice again.
Mick, meanwhile, was sitting in Barcelona pubs watching the England matches, completely unaware that half the world was looking for him.
He was finally found in almost comically perfect fashion. An off-duty British police officer, on holiday in Barcelona, spotted Mick’s Leeds United shirt in a bar and struck up a friendly chat. Only later, back at his hotel, did the officer see the viral missing-person appeals and realize who he’d been drinking near. At the same time, the embassy traced Mick’s hotel through his recent card payments.
His family got what his brother called “an embarrassingly simple but happy ending.” After all the fear and the frantic searching, Little Mick had never been in danger at all. He’d just lost his phone and gone to the pub.”
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Yikes – you’d think, though, that he might have anticipated people would be concerned… ?
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i went to 96 atlanta olympics and had a memorable time just doing sports and enjoying every aspect of winging it for a week or so. a true vacation
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