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The story of my relationship with A Universal History of the Destruction of Books is basically the exact opposite of my relationship with Foundation. I picked it up towards the end of last semester, out of a vague idea that it would be a useful source for my archiving apocalypse paper.

BECCA: Hm, well, this looks like it has some stuff about the Library of Alexandria in it, I will just start flipping through --
FERNANDO BAEZ: So before we start off with any specific examples, I just want to say that I think that people who destroy books have an APOCALYPTIC MINDSET! Everything in the universe goes back to DESTRUCTION and REBIRTH, including ARCHIVES! Let's discuss some archetypal apocalypse myths, shall we?
BECCA: . . . Fernando Baez, you are my NEW LIBRARIAN BOYFRIEND.

And that is one of the ways in which I ended up writing the most awesomely melodramatic paper known to the MIAP program. (Summary: ZETTAI UNMEI MOKUSHIROKU death rebirth death rebirth death rebirth ARCHIVES! *jazz hands*) I mean, as one might guess from the description above, Baez enjoys a dramatic turn of phrase, and is not exactly a low-key guy -- he gets really judgmental about people burning their books after graduating from a class they hated for example, which, I mean, I get it, but on the other hand, simmer down, dude, not everything is an Alexandria-level tragedy!

Some things of course are Alexandria-level tragedies, and quite a lot of this book is heartbreaking if you are a person who cares about books -- well, as heartbreaking as anything can get in two pages, since a three hundred page book attempting to be a universal history really does not have that much time to devote to any one incident. Some other things are kind of funny; I think my favorite was the story of the poor guy who had never had rats in his house because he never ate at home and so the rats didn't think it was worth it, and then he left for a few months and the rats were like "PARTY TIME!" and ate ALL HIS BOOKS and he came back and was like "NOOOOO!" I mean, this is also extremely tragic. But also a little hilarious.

Anecdotes aside -- though the book is mostly anecdotes -- Baez makes a bunch of really good points about what kind of dangers face the written word. There are a few very valuable takeaways, and I recommend it if you are interested at all in book history.

But the most important takeaway is that librarians have a patron saint, her name is WibaradaWiborada, and she is usually depicted holding a book AND AN AXE.