The Library Book

by Susan Orlean

The library has bought countless copies of Carlos Castaneda’s books because so many of them journey out and never come back.

The idea of being forgotten is terrifying. I fear not just that I, personally, will be forgotten, but that we are all doomed to being forgotten—that the sum of life is ultimately nothing; that we experience joy and disappointment and aches

In Senegal, the polite expression for saying someone died is to say his or her library