I’m down to the last 100 pages of Joshua Hammer’s The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu. For years, a young man, Abdel Kader Haidara, traveled across the Sahara and along the Niger River, searching for valuable manuscripts that told the cultural history of northern Africa. He was successful, and his work helped to make Timbuktu a cultural center again. Then, Al Qaeda showed up. This is a story of devastation and courage. And, I haven’t even arrived at the part of the book in which Haidara and other librarians smuggled manuscripts out to save them. But, for centuries, the people of Timbuktu and Mali have preserved and hidden manuscripts to save them from the wars of history.

So, where is your current book set? Today, let’s talk about where you are reading. (And, I’ll admit I had to look up Mali on a map to find it.)