Read Barbara A Huff’s poem “The Library” and discuss the rhyme scheme.
What is the effect of the internal rhymes? What do they use the library for? Pleasure? Research? A safe place?
Gatsby’s library is described in chapter three of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, just before the narrator meets Gatsby for the first time. What does the description of the room and its contents tell us about their owner? Who has private libraries? How are they different from public libraries? Why?
Discuss with students the book titles mentioned at the beginning of Act I scene (ii) of A School for Scandal. Lydia Languish might seem to have a very different approach to books than Prospero (The Tempest, Act I scene (ii), lines 109-110 and 161-8). What do they have in common? What can be inferred from book titles and why do authors refer to them in their own works?