`Libraries abhor a vacuum'

In this article in today's Toronto Star Alberto Manguel addresses one of my most pressing problems: book storage. I fear I may end up like the unfortunate individual below.

Shortly after Christmas 2003, a 43-year-old New York man, Patrice Moore, had to be rescued by firefighters from his apartment after spending two days trapped under an avalanche of journals, magazines and books that he had stubbornly accumulated for over a decade. Neighbours heard him moaning and mumbling through the door, which had been blocked by all the paper. Not until the lock was broken with a crowbar and rescuers began digging into the entombing piles of publications was Moore found, in a tiny corner of his apartment, literally buried in books. It took over an hour to extricate him; 50 bags of printed material had to be hauled out before this constant reader could be reached.


Excerpted from The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel