The Secret Library: A Book Lover’s Journey Through Curiosities of Literature – Oliver Tearle

Published By: Michael O’Mara
Pages: 256
Released On: 28/03/2024

How much do you know about the Victorian novelist who outsold Dickens? Or the woman who became the first published poet in America? Do you know what connects Homer’s Iliad to Aesop’s Fables?

The Secret Library explores these intriguing morsels of lesser-known history, along with the familiar literary heavyweights we know and love. Bringing together an eclectic literary mix of novels, plays, travel books, science books and joke books, author Oliver Tearle explores how the history of the Western World has intersected with all kinds of books over the last 3,000 years.

Delve into this treasure trove of curious literary examples to learn how our history and books are inextricably linked.

*****

Thanks to Rachel Quin Marketing for my gifted copy of this book in return for an honest review.

A book about books? Yeah, alright then! To be honest, they had me at “Dickens”, and so I always knew I’d jump at the chance to read this and was so happy to receive a copy.

If you love books, books about books, books about authors, about libraries, about words – this has it all and more.

I own and/or have read a selection of the books mentioned but there were lots I didn’t and so I’m excited to look into those. I now have a long list of books to seek out and read thank sto this.

I am an early to bed person and yet I couldn’t put this down until late into the night. It’s difficult in my experience to get really gripping non-fiction, or as gripping as fiction, but this definitely manages it.

It is endlessly fascinating. It doesn’t matter how much you think you know about the history of books, I am certain this will enlighten you even further.

It’s not very long, it’s quick and easy to read. You can read it as I did which is in one sitting, or you can put it down and pick it up as you wish.

There’s everything from the highbrow to the slightly more lowbrow books. It doesn’t assume you’ve read the classics, but it equally doesn’t talk down to you. What I particularly liked was that, not only is it about books, obviously, but it’s also about the goings-on at the time of publication, even back to your Homers and Aristotles, so it was like a fun history lessons wrapped up in many books.

Bizarrely, I felt there was an element similar to The Secret Garden about it. Of this secret place that harbours beauty and knowledge that we have to be invited in to access. It’s well written, well researched, and a professional book, but it also has this feeing of just chatting with your friends about books over a cup of tea. It has this familiarity about it that was nice.

Would it have been nice to have mentioned some more modern books? Perhaps The most modern of books mentioned were from about the 1990s. And whilst interesting, I would have liked – seeing as this is a newly 2024 edition – to add some comparisons to newer works.

This is a shorter review than I normally do, because I’m struggling with what to write. There’s no characters or plot to discuss. Just a conversation on the history of literature. But it is so well written and interesting that I think it will appeal to readers who aren’t completely book obsessed, as well as us self-confessed bibliophiles.