The Friday 56

Rules:

* Grab a book, any book.

* Go to page 56.  Or 56% on your ereader. 

* Find a snippet, short and sweet.

* Post it and add the url to your post at Freda's Voice

My book this week is The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer.

It is the true life story of a man who smuggled thousands of manuscripts out of Timbuktu to save them from being destroyed.

My Friday 56:

On January 13, 2000, in a ceremony attended by many luminaries, including the ministers of culture of Mali and Morocco, and the first lady of Mali - Henry Louis Gates had conflicting engagements and couldn't make the trip, and the Mellon Foundation sent a representative months later - the Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library officially opened its doors to the world.

Page 56 was the end of the chapter and this was the only full sentence on the page.  It may not sound all that exciting but it was to Abel Kader Haidara, who had put in a lot of work to make it happen.  I have not really gotten to the bad-ass part of the book yet.  It is still setting the stage for why the manuscripts had to be saved and how Haidara came to have the manuscripts and be the one to save them.  I think it will be very interesting.