How long does it take to read Library?
Matthew Battles
Library by Matthew Battles takes about 4 hours 44 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 44 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2003. 258 pages, about 70,950 words.
10 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 7 hours 53 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 44 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 57 minutes |
The page count is the median across 15 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
On the survival and destruction of knowledge, from Alexandria to the Internet. Through the ages, libraries have not only accumulated and preserved but also shaped, inspired, and obliterated knowledge.Matthew Battles, a rare books librarian and a gifted narrator, takes us on a spirited foray from Boston to Baghdad, from classical scriptoria to medieval monasteries, from the Vatican to the british Library, from socialist reading rooms and rural home libraries to the Information Age. He explores how libraries are built and how they are destroyed, from the decay of the great Alexandrian library to scroll burnings in ancient China to the destruction of Aztec books by the Spanish--and in our own time, the burning of libraries in Europe and Bosnia. Encyclopedic in its breadth and novelistic in its telling, this volume will occupy a treasured place on the bookshelf next to Baker's Double Fold, Bashanes's A Gentle Madness, Manguel's A History of Reading, and Winchester's The Professor and the Madman.
Subjects: Libraries, Books and reading, Books, Libraries and society, History, Gesellschaft
