SOME MEN STEAL BOOKS WHILE OTHERS WONDER WHY THEY BOTHER
Five stories about professors, students, librarians, booksellers, and early scientific explorers—all living literately, on journeys of the mind. The first story, “One of Our Stars,” is about a professor so engrossed in difficult studies that even a blatant sexual invitation (accepted) merely distracts him. He concentrates with the mental force of a chess grandmaster, a zen roshi, or a musical virtuoso. The next story about a female college student is set in a Colombian jungle. The third story portrays a once formidable professor coming to terms with retirement, old age, and approaching death. The fourth (title) story, novella length, takes place in an Ecuadorian library that is experiencing rampant theft. A place where some men steal books while others wonder why they bother. A literary, intellectual mystery that explores the library as a profound idea while the world rushes into a digital, post-literate future. The fifth story explores the evolving status and influence of a beautiful young female scholar who each year attends a Latin American Librarians Conference.
Michael Ashe, a Los Angeles antiquarian bookseller, must confront the fact that his once-thriving business is collapsing. Even librarians have turned their backs on books, while pouring money into electronic data. But Ashe refuses to admit defeat. He continues to search for rare tomes in Mexico City and Paris, while struggling with his loneliness and trying to find a woman to love. Along the way he learns the startling story of the best-read man in France, Gabriel Naudé. A man who founded a great library to preserve knowledge against the ravishes of time. This revelation leads Ashe from mere attempts to save his own livelihood into a public battle to save the life of books themselves.
A tale about the exotic and romantic world of international rare bookselling, and a cry of alarm about the demise of the printed book, the decline of reading, and the conflict between print and digital culture. Are we rushing into a post-literate world and a fade-out of human memory? Will even more books be “disappeared” into a Dark Archive? Only you, as a reader, can keep it from happening.