CHAPTER 5

There’s a special kind of dust, minuscule bits of dead trees mixed with lye, pressed and repressed, folded and bound, and left on shelves to wait and rot, here and there the acrid tang of tannin drifting; it floats through every library in every university in every country, a shared comfortable sameness greeting visitors to labyrinthine stacks of wonder.  Each year, a new group of students discover not just the wealth of knowledge locked inside, but the intoxicating pleasure of the smells found here, and only here.  A good library wasn’t solely a place of stored knowledge.  It was a place of being.  Students huddled together at tables, engrossed in their search for understanding, most taking notes, but a few only reading.  Librarians trolled the aisles,...

Please subscribe to keep reading.