Checking this out was Swee Leng's idea, and it was a good one. The exhibition's a bit of a hodge-podge of, in the words of the website, "many of the rare, beautiful and historically significant books held in the Library's collections" - it's a bit of a no-brainer, I guess, for a library to curate an exhibition based around the theme of books - but I didn't mind that its constituent parts were only loosely related to one another...I always get a kick out of looking at old books - I love the idea of those monks in the Dark Ages, laboriously but lovingly transcribing page upon page, and thereby Keeping The Flick'ring Torch Of Knowledge Alight, plus they're just beautiful to look at and it's amazing to think about the endurance of books and words (two different things, but both probably equally amazing) - and there were some pretty famous ones here: a Gutenberg Bible, works by folks like Virgil, Euclid, Chaucer, Shakespeare...plus there was some really old sheet music, maps, encyclopediae, general religious books, and so on...all rather cool.
Moving forward, there were first editions, etc, of stuff by people like Pope, Dickens, Woolf, Joyce, and also of books like Mao's Little Red Book. And, further in, things became thoroughly contemporary with cases dedicated to Carey's True History, 50s pulp fiction, graphic novels, and other such sub-areas. The final chamber (it's on level four, and extends all the way around on a balcony encircling the domed reading room) focused on the 'book itself', as idea and physical artifact, covering things like book binding, design, illustration, and so on, with quite a strong contemporary focus.
We must have spent something like an hour and a half in there, but it didn't feel nearly as long. A different way in which to be wrapped up in books, but a pleasant one - taken as a whole, being immersed in the exhibition was quite a sensuous experience (even if not all of the books were what you might call beautiful, they exert a powerful pull just by virtue of what they are and what they stand for) and also a rather thought-provoking one...I can't entirely express why, but seeing all those books, and reflecting on what they represent about humanity and its history, somehow made me feel that, history and the current state of the world notwithstanding, the human race is basically getting it right - or at least that it has the potential to, one of these days...I don't know; it just left me feeling happy and a little bit inspired.
