If a book lover is a bibliophile, what is a library lover? I don’t know the word (or if it exists) but I am one, and here I share images of libraries and other places which invite you to read and write, including book shops, cafés and easy chairs.

All you need is love

Another description by Steinbeck's widow of yet another of his writing spaces, which comprised mostly rooms but some other curious places. Here a 'room of one's own' is complemented by pervasive love. 'Now I am married to Elaine and in two days we are...

Pencil and paper

Steinbeck wrote with pencil on the ubiquitous American yellow pad. Computers and word-processing came too late for him, and so I was curious about his wife's assumption that while he would have liked and mastered them, he'd probably have stuck with...

When did you begin?

Recently I read an old penny-paperback of The Grapes of Wrath. I was about three-quarters of the way through when I left it on a plane - I hope someone picked it up and read it. So I bought another copy of the same edition as it had a foreword by...

Basilicata bibliomotocarro

Antonio La Cava, a retired school teacher, converted a quintessential Italian vehicle, the three-wheeler micro-van, into a travelling library.For 20 years he's been visiting remote villages and hamlets in his home province of Basilicata to bring books -...

Throughout the library, there is an energy and a joy that, in too many other rare books and manuscripts libraries, almost always remains suppressed.

Matthew Battles – Library: An Unquiet History

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In quest of lost libraries

Armenia, Kapuscinski, libraries

For me the world of books and libraries has a shadow world of those lost or destroyed. Surely someone could write a novel about them? Meanwhile it...

Librarian as satrap

librarian, library, Osip Mandelstam

Having known nothing but kindness among librarians, this striking description of a martinet guarding his books almost at the point of a gun is...

A sensible sort of room

books, Grahame, libraries, reading

The boy slips out of a deadly dull afternoon tea in which two ladies are talking about clothing. He finds himself in the book-lined library next...

A café in Porto

reading, spaces, writing

I have never been to this café but would love to spend a morning there writing postcards and reading newspapers. I came across this beautiful black...