The Library

The library has always been my favourite public building.
This library consists of a big main room with pillars of green and white marble supporting a ceiling at least 15 metres above your head. About halfway up to the ceiling, there is a balcony which encircles the whole room. There, you see rows of tables, each with a comfortable chair, a lamp and a single shelf. Some people looking like researchers are busy doing researchy things up there. There are book-shelves all the way from the floor and to the balcony, with small round windows in vertical rows in the spaces between the shelves. The upper shelves can be reached by means of one of the seven ladders which hang from the top of the bookcase and can be pushed around the room on a pulley. The main floor is occupied by easy chairs for reading in, and in the very centre of the building a small fountain is happily splashing, giving the air in the room a humidity of almost 20%.
It is my sincere hope that this web page or one of the pages it links to will get you away from your computer to read a book instead.

Approaching the shelves, you see that the books have been divided into different categories. Some authors can be reached in other libraries if you use L-space to get there.

The main floor

Science fiction and fantasy literature occupy a goodish deal of the shelves. You see books by Jack Vance, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Philip K. Dick and Julian May, among others. The books by Robert Jordan have been removed; I eventually lost patience with his prattling and inability to write good dialogue or believable characters, but there are a couple of new authors...

Brust, Steven
Steven Brust writes fast, enjoyable fantasy books. Some of his works (most notably The Sun, The Moon and the Stars) are on my all time favourites list.

Lovecraft, H. P.
Lovecraft wrote horror stories and novels. He is well known to all players of the role playing game Call of Cthulhu, but well worth reading in his own right.

Pratchett, Terry
Popular British writer of humorous fantasy. Has millions of fans. I am one of them.
In 1994, I wrote a paper on the problems of translating Pratchett. You find it here, next to his books.

Tolkien, J.R.R
A page with several links to resources about the author, J. R. R. Tolkien.

Some of the lower shelves are filled with children's books. Next to these shelves are some bean-bags and kiddie-sized chairs, as well as a few comfy chairs for adults who enjoy good literature written for children (as I do).

Children's literature index
Children's literature is sadly neglected by many readers. Read more children's books! Start now!

Moomin Character Guide
This site is dedicated to the Moomintrolls, created by Tove Jansson.

The drama and poetry shelves are located in the eastern corner of the library. There is drama and poetry by Swedish and English authors. Many of the latter are heavily used and contain a lot of undeciphrable scribblings. They seem to have been read in a university course.

Heaney, Seamus
The Irish winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature of 1995 is well worth reading. Some of his poems can be found on this site. Read them here, then buy the books!

Shakespeare, William (collected works)
I put it here for show more than anything else... you don't want to read Shakespeare on your computer screen. Buy an annotated copy of his works instead.

Books of linguistic interest form, of course, the biggest non-fiction collection of the library. There is a lot on Latin and on the English language, but also some works of general linguistic interest.

Tech Classics Archive
Latin and Greek texts.

Medieval Irish texts
When was the last time you read a medieval Irish text? Do it now.

Humor and comics are collected together. The comic books are strongly tilted to humorous comics rather than Marvel-type comics or adventure comics.

Dilbert
Comic created by Scott Adams, about the engineer Dilbert and his cynical dog, Dogbert.

Disney comics
Wow, there are a lot of Disney comics here. You'll find the answers to almost any questions you might have about the denizens of Duckburg here. Busily sorting through the comics is Per Starbäck, the maintainer of the Disney comics site.

Fox Trot
Follow the daily struggle for power in an ordinary family. Well... a family, anyway.

For Better or For Worse
In this Canadian comic strip, the characters grow and develop and we get to follow them through the years. Warm, witty, serious and funny--just like real life.

Monty Python texts
Quite a few scripts from Monty Python's Flying Circus, The Holy Grail, Meaning of Life and other MP masterpieces. That's literature, innit?

The balcony

Some of the tables up here are occupied, and the people seem very busy so please keep quiet. On a shelf next to one of the empty tables are a row of books about 17th century English grammar, along with some comedies, diaries and collections of letters from the time. A number of booklets lie in a stack on the table. This is my D-level paper on some aspects of English historical syntax. You are welcome to read it, and tell me what you think about it!

Out from the library into the busy streets of Linnéaville.