This is pretty fascinating, honestly. It’s an interesting blend of memoir, Jewish history and interesting stories about some of the wacky characters he encountered in the course of his work. My favorite part was seeing how these peasants who had *nothing* still prioritized books and reading and literacy - in other words, these are my people (and I come by it honestly!). As a librarian, I would have liked to know more about the sorting and cataloging of the books they acquired, but maybe that’s just me. :) Highly recommended, if you’re interested in these sorts of things.

What a great vision to save a fading literature, where most of it's readers and writers have died.

"They'd been famous long ago, they'd lived front and center on the stage of history, they wrote books, they led, they learned, they taught, they organized, and now, in their old age, all they lacked was a yarshn - someone to whom they could bequeath not only their libraries but the sum total of their lives . . . But in the end, what history had stolen from them, no - not I, not anyone - could restore."

what a funny, poignant, fascinating book!

Book club book. A wonderful story about saving history. One of my all-time favorites.

The parts about people just dumping books, etc saddened me. I had a hard time with all the yiddish words interspersed and the number of people mentioned. Interesting history. There was humor in the parts about the people feeding them when they came to pick up books and how it took so much longer than they expected. Overall, I did enjoy the book.

This book appealed to me as a bibliophile and as a Jew, but it was also just a lot of fun to read. The author's enthusiasm for his mission of rescuing Yiddish literature made every chapter feel like an adventure. A few chapters in, I recommended the book to my mom -- also a bibliophile and a Jew -- and she loved it too. Highly recommend this one.

cw: mentions anti-Semitism, physical and cultural genocide, destruction of books