Today’s question comes via BookRiot, at which Jeff O’Neal recently ran down his favorite bookstores and libraries on film. Click on over for his wonderful choices. Then come back here and discuss:
What’s your favorite bookstore and/or library from movies and TV?
For libraries, I’ll second Jeff’s choice of the scene set at the main branch of the New York Public Library in Ghostbusters… but only because there’s never been a scene in Doctor Who that’s shown us the TARDIS library, which I’m pretty sure is the most amazing library ever.
Bookstores is harder. (Well, libraries was tough, too.) Anytime piles and piles and rooms and rooms of books are onscreen, I get a little thrill, even if the movie is crappy. But I think I’ll go with Black Books, the shop from the British sitcom of the same name, in which proprietor Dylan Moran was like the Basil Fawlty of bookshops: the customers just got in the way of enjoying the books.
Your turn…
(If you have a suggestion for a QOTD, feel free to email me. Responses to this QOTD sent by email will be ignored; please post your responses here.)
the library in the Breakfast Club, but probably not because its a library. But when I was a teenager, I would have loved loved loved to spend a day in the library mostly unsupervised like that.
The Sunnydale High library, with its weapons cage, followed closely by the bookstore operated by Dorothy Malone in To Have and Have Not, which has an oddly bookstore-heavy plot.
Gah! I meant The Big Sleep. What I get for posting before coffee.
Well, there’s the Special Ops Division of the British Library in Read or Die…
In Moonrise Kingdom, when Suzy decides to run off into the woods, she brings a whole bagful of books she’s stolen from the library. Wes Anderson made up titles for the books and wrote passages for Suzy to read out loud to her friends. He even commissioned short animated films based on excerpts from the books (see http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/11/29/moonrise-kingdom-animated-books-wes-anderson/). So I’d like to visit that library. It has books that are good enough to tempt people into a life of crime.
I also want to visit the dream library in the Sandman comics. It has all the books people thought up but never wrote down.
And I have a certain affection for the frightening library in The Night Bookmobile (http://audreyniffenegger.com/visual-books).
You can see why I became a librarian.
Maybe the Beast’s library in Beauty and the Beast.
Bookstore: The one Audrey Hepburn worked in for Funny Face.
Library: A tie between the NYPL in Escape From NY when Snake finds Brain Hellman (played by a wonderfully worn Harry Dean Stanton) and Desk Set…the whole movie.
And, in a book, [I have to throw this in], my favorite library is the Library of Babel as described by Borges. But, this could create a new favorite ‘library’: http://enneagon.org/phrases/ :-) For francophones. Lol.
Although it would take a special brand of masochist to actually ENJOY the Library of Babel.
I might enjoy it soley for fractal space made flesh.
Cards on the table time – I *am* a librarian, of nearly 20 years training and practice – which is frankly terrifying), so I’ve had time to think about this question;)
i’m agreeing with the Jedi Library from Attack Of The Clones (which, coincidentally, is based on the Library of Trinity College, Dublin – one of my ‘pilgrimage’ libraries) although the statement that it contains all of the knowledge in the Universe… ahaha, no!
On a Doctor Who kick – I’d have to say ‘The Library’ (before the Vashta Nerada!) and the fabled TARDIS library would be wonderful to see too.
If we were talking comic books – Lucien’s Library from the Sandman comics… but I think if you spoke to any nerdy librarian, they’d all say that;)
I think I’m going to have to plump for the library in Beauty and the Beast one of my all time favourite films and one library I could quite happily spend weeks wandering around in. Oh and that the Beast resolves into quite a hottie is neither here nor there (ahem!)
I think the main branch of the New York Public Library is magnificent and I love seeing it whenever it appears onscreen — in Ghostbusters, in Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, etc.
I loved seeing the Library of Alexandria recreated in both Cosmos and Agora.
A couple of comments have mentioned Beauty and the Beast — but that actually makes me think of the old TV show with Ron Perlman’s Vincent, who was quite a bookworm himself. Did he have a formal library in his underground hideaway? I don’t quite recall, but I remember loving scenes where he’s reading, either silently to himself or aloud to Catherine or the children, out of a dusty old leatherbound book, by candlelight. I once owned an LP of Ron Perlman as Vincent reciting classical poetry, and to me that conjured up the feeling of being in a great library and being immersed in great literature more than anything else.
My favorite? Hasn’t got a name. Just a great, big “The”.
Hands down: Beauty and the Beast. I dated someone who still wanted a library like Belle in the future.
And of course, The Pagemaster.
i gotta go with the bookstore from The NeverEnding Story. those books aren’t safe.
Memory Alpha from Star Trek. And decades after “The Lights of Zetar”, it became a (sort of) reality.http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Portal:Main
also the library in All Our Yesterdays (staffed by mr. atoz!). imagine reading a book and then, just by walking through a doorway, finding yourself in the world of that book.
Surprised no one has mentioned Hogwarts Library.
Bookstore all of them.
Meg Ryan’s children’s bookstore in “You’ve Got Mail” was paradise for children and made me want to live in that (no doubt heavily idealised) neighbourhood of NYC. I really related to her in the scene where she was hanging around the kidlit section in the new corporate behomoth and automatically drifted into recommending books to a customer – I’ve done that a few times myself!
or the inspired monkey librarian in Discworld!
Don’t use the M-word.