Favorite Libraries in Books

It’s National Library Week, and I couldn’t let the celebration end without a shout out to some of my favorite fictional libraries!  These are some of my favorites, and I’m sure I’m forgetting many more.  I’d love to hear about more libraries, share them in the comments below!

    

IN THE VANISHERS’ PALACE by Aliette de Bodard
This is a re-imagining of Beauty and the Beast, which of course means that at some point there is a fabulous library!  Of course, being a library in an inter-dimensional palace that is home to a dragon, it’s perhaps not the safest place to venture on your own.

THE WAY OF KINGS by Brandon Sanderson
One of the main characters in THE WAY OF KINGS is Shallan, a young woman who wants to be an apprentice to one of the most renowned scholars in the land, Jasnah Kholin.  Jasnah’s research in this book primarily takes place in a library known as the Palanaeum, a giant building with plenty of nooks and tables to stack your books and research. It’s so large that “One could disappear for hours in the Palaneaum and never see another soul.”  Sounds like my kind of place!

LAKE SILENCE by Anne Bishop
Okay, there isn’t a strict library per se, but the sole book shop in town certainly honors the spirit of the institution!  Because the town of Springer is so isolated, and books are hard to come by, the shop owner allows residents to take books home and return them for store credit – if you want to keep it forever, you have to buy it outright. There are several passages that are lovely ode to books, including one character contemplating a line of credit at the bookstore, only to admit to herself she would eventually have to sell her car to pay off the tab she would inevitably create.

  

HARRY POTTER by J.K. Rowling
The library in this world is for research but I, like Hermione, would have wanted to spend all my free time in the library. Giant research stacks explaining the history of magic, and a forbidden section only accessible with special permission?  I definitely dreamed of this when I was younger

THE INVISIBLE LIBRARY by Genevieve Cogman
Confession: I actually haven’t read any of this series, though I’ve bought the first book and hope to dive in soon!  The concept is absolutely intriguing:  the protagonist is a librarian for a library that collects books from different realities.  She travels about snatching things up, and inevitably gets into some sort of calamity when someone else is after the same book.  As an avid collector of books, the idea of a hoard like that is absolutely delightful.