It's been about 5 years since I read this multi-layered first novel by this gifted author - but I remember it as a powerful, thought-provoking read.
A compulsively orderly academic librarian, a creative, young poet, lost letters of TS Eliot, questions of marriage, faith, war, madness...

Loaning this autographed copy to seferim (wouldn't want that TBR stack to get low!). Hope you enjoy having it for awhile.

Thank you so much for sending this beautiful book my way. I am eager to dig in. I will report back with a review and I will take good care of the book and return it to you soon!

Nice surprise in my mailbox today!
Happy to share this book with you for awhile.
(nice round-trip from California to Maryland)
Hope all is going well!

Traveling to bilbi in France!
Enjoy

Thank you JDT ! What's nice about bookcrossing is that I keep on receiving books but sometimes I can't remember books are trades, RABCKs, ... It's better that way because it's always a nice surprise :DD

Forgetful bilbi ;-)

It took me two years to take this book out of my Mt TBR and I'm afraid I didn't finish it :-
I read half the book, the part in which there is a lot of Eliot, archivist, and so on and when the book turns to a more religious and mental illness matters I can't read it through.

Well, I'm sorry to keep it for so long.

I must say that it isn't that the book is not interesting or that the writer can't write, it's just I'm not in the mood of reading such things at the moment.

Thanks for sharing. I let the book travel on... at last !

RELEASE NOTES:

sent to Finland...

I got four relay books today. This was sent to me by bilbi, the others by JDT. A lovely coincidence is that JDT has originally registered this one. Thank you both, bilbi and JDT. Being an archivist myself I've wanted to read this book for some time.

The Archivist was a thought-provoking book, for me both generally and professionally. It's very intimate and Cooley's style is great. The Archivist's themes are huge: Holocaust, guilt, truth and betrayal and the relation of Christianity and Judaism. I think that on the last mentioned Cooley could have been more profound. There was plenty in this novel, perhaps something unnecessary, too. I think it was Roberta and her obsession with conversion. Roberta's character is necessary for narrative. She leads Matthias to examine his own past. Yet I feel that Roberta got too much attention. The detail that Judith's death occurred at almost the same time as T.S. Eliot's seems a bit unnecessary, too, or perhaps I just don't understand the meaning.

To me the best part of the book was the middle section, Judith's diary she kept in hospital. Well, she was a poet.

Then to T.S. Eliot's letters to Emily Hale and Matt's final solution. As an archivist I often ponder the limits of researchers' ('readers' in this novel) rights. At least Finnish archivists think that everything written must be available for research. Research is holy and so its needs override individuals' right to privacy and in many cases also writers' wishes of destructing their letters or manuscripts. I can't think Matthias did wrong.

2011 "KEEP THEM MOVING" # 14

The Archivist continues its journey to MB2010.

Thank you, dotdot!

The book has been soon four years in my shelf, so finally I decided to read it. I got to the page 112, but I think I give up now. I'm not familiar with Eliot's poetry, so it is difficult to see what is its meaning in here. Since English is not my mother tongue, it is also difficult to understand the poems in this story.

I'm going to give this to another bookcrosser here in Helsinki.

To the next one... :)

I got this today. I've chosen the book by its first page. Looks promising but will see. Thanks Minkula and kesis85 who brought it to me.

Enjoy!!