All right. Raise your hands. How many of you have never visited the Library of Congress? (Seeing the Nicholas Cage "National Treasure" movie doesn't count.) We took a tour this weekend, and though I'd briefly visited when the great hall was finally restored, and also to get a reader's card this past year, I had not spent any serious time looking at the building or seeing what it had to offer till then. Wow.
Perhaps it was just that we'd spent two weeks photographing every building, statue, and scenic view in Italy this summer, but I wished throughout this tour that I'd had the brains to bring along my camera. The interior is simply gorgeous, and full of quotations (a weakness of mine) and symbolism, statues and mosaics and interesting details. And this is before you even get to the books. And the reading rooms. And the exhibits. (Did you know they have Bob Hope's complete joke file? Arranged by topic.) It is indeed a 'palace of books'--a temple of books-- and it speaks seductively to the booklover. Books of all shapes and sizes and subjects and provenance, arrayed in every direction. A place to stand in awe, overwhelmed by the power of words, worthy of devout pilgrimage.
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