Library Faculty Recommendations
by Harold Henkel, Assistant Librarian

LibraryThing: The Ultimate Website for Bibliophiles

Do you have a personal library that is a source of happy memories from books read and enjoyed? If the answer is yes, doesn't it deserve its own online catalog just like any large public or academic library?

At LibraryThing, you can create an online catalog of your personal library, join or form new discussion groups around virtually any literary or book-related interest, and find other readers who share your passion for all things Tolkien. For Web 2.0 enthusiasts, tagging is an important feature of the site. As Tim Spalding, LibraryThing's founder says, "LibraryThing tags are really about memory, how you think about your books. If you do that and everyone does that, there is a web of meaning that develops."¹

The origins of LibraryThing go back to when Spalding was nine years old and used an Apple II computer to compile lists of book he owned. In 2005, he decided to update his Apple application for the Web and allow anyone to post a list of their books, compare other posted lists, and thus find other readers with similar interests. In a mere two years, LibraryThing has become a global phenomenon, whose 279,695 members have cataloged 19,106,680 books, added 24,617,825 tags, and contributed 254,873 reviews. But for the fact the LibraryThing collection is virtual, it would already be the third largest private library in the United States, behind only Harvard and Yale.²

To try out LibraryThing, simply go to the homepage, enter a username and password and start cataloging your books! Bibliographic data is imported from Amazon and 82 libraries around the world. Your first 200 books are free. For collections over 200 books, there is the option of paying $10 per year or $25 for a lifetime membership.

One of the most powerful features of LibraryThing is its capacity to compare entire book collections and connect like minded readers. At the same time, members who wish to maintain a private catalog inaccessible to others have that option. In contrast to other social networking sites, LibraryThing is designed primarily to connect members to books, not other members. As Spalding explains, "we're not a dating site."

¹ Aaron Rutkoff, "Social Networking for Bookworms," Wall Street Journal Online, June 27, 2006. Available at http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115109622468789252-i8U6LIHU7ChfgbxG1oZ_iunOIWE_20060727.html

² Siri Schubert "Building a Better Book Club."  Fortune, May 14, 2007, 70.  Available from ABI/Inform database, ProQuest.

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Collection Spotlight-- Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
Reviewed by Harold Henkel, Assistant Librarian

During his triumphant visit to New York last month, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had the opportunity to present some of the humanitarian ideas for which he is famous to the faculty and students of Columbia University: "Whenever the high stature of science and wisdom is preserved and the dignity of scholars and researchers are respected, humans have taken great strides toward their material and spiritual promotion." Later in the week, at the United Nations, Dr. Ahmadiejad expressed his conviction that "family is the most sacred and valuable human institution" and denounced violations of human rights ("the brutal Zionists...").

Ahmadinejad's visit brought to mind one of the most remarkable books in recent years on freedom and life in a totalitarian state. Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran is one of the most unique and hybrid books I have ever read: part memoir, part literary criticism, part testament. The book's title is a reference Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and to the secret reading group the author, a professor of English literature in Iran , formed after resigning her university post in 1995. For Nafisi, Lolita provides the defining metaphor of life under tyranny: " Humbert had tried to turn her into his fantasy, into his dead love, and he had destroyed her. The desperate truth of Lolita's story is not the rape of a twelve-year-old by a dirty old man but the confiscation of one individual's life by another."

Throughout the book, Nafisi weaves personal memories, the history of Iran during her life, and reflections on the authors and books her group read together. The book is divided into four parts, each named for the principal literary preoccupation of that section: Lolita, Gatsby, James, and Austen. The most powerful parts of the book, however, are the author's dissection of everyday features of life in the Islamic Republic-the brutalities, the humiliations, the inane revolutionary slogans. In one passage on Iranians' reaction to the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, Nafisi articulates the essence of revolutions and their consequences: "Like all great mythmakers, he [Khomeini] had tried to fashion reality out of his dream, and in the end, like Humbert, he had managed to destroy both reality and his dream. Added to the crimes, to the murders and tortures, we would now face this last indignity-the murder of our dreams. Yet he had done this with our full compliance, our complete assent and complicity."

To return to Columbia University, professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature Hamid Dabashi read Reading Lolita in Tehran and published a review of the book in the Cairo newspaper Al-Ahram. Dabashi is Iranian by birth, but for unexplained reasons, has spent his entire adult life at prestigious American Universities rather than in his homeland, the political and cultural victim of American imperialism. Reading Nafisi's book, Dr. Dabashi used his expertise in comparative literature to penetrate the book's true meaning. Reading Lolita in Tehran is not, it turns out, a book about the destruction of culture and life by Islamic revolutionaries and the consoling and liberating power of literature. In fact, we are informed, the book is "the locus classicus of the ideological foregrounding of the US imperial domination at home and abroad." About the author herself, Dabashi writes, "rarely has an Oriental servant of a white-identified, imperial design managed to pack so many services to imperial hubris abroad and racist elitism at home--all in one act."

I would urge any readers who allow themselves the pleasure of reading Azar Nafisi's extraordinary book to turn then to Hamid Dabashi's review. It is an admirable example of the intellectual and moral discernment at some of our most prominent universities.

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