Make a stop at library this holiday season

Vacances heureuses mes amis. C'est un beau temps pour visiter la bibliotheque!

The Fancy Nancy Splendiferous Brunch and Soiree will be held on Saturday, December 3 at 9:15 a.m. for gals and lads ages four to eight. Reservations (are required and) can be made over the telephone or by stopping by the library as spaces are limited. Gals and lads are invited to come bedecked in their most festive holiday attire for a marvelous holly jolly time.

This will be the third year for this wildly popular event. Last year's attendees arrived sporting frills, tiaras, and feather boas. The event features exceptional Fancy Nancy stories, extraordinary crafts, and exquisite refreshments. From years past, everyone has a glamorous time. The bedazzled program looks magnifique!

The library is excited to once again welcome the Redskin Singers for their annual holiday appearance on Thursday, December at 7 p.m. in the library. This year, we welcome one of our staffers as part of the singing entourage. Light refreshments will be served.

Library and Lunch will be held on Tuesday, December 13 at noon for Debbie Macomber's Call Me Mrs. Miracle. Emily Merkle works in a toy department at Finley's a family owned department store in the Big Apple and her boss is none other than the owner's son. The family needs a miracle to keep the business afloat. Holly Larson on the other hand needs a miracle for her eight-year-old nephew Gabe, whose father won't be home for Christmas. Maybe Mrs. Miracle (Emily Merkle) will play a role in bringing the two together.

A current New York Times bestseller will be the first Library and Lunch pick for the New Year. Plenty of time to stop by and pick it up. The book discussion of The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes will be held on Tuesday, January 9 at noon. The English author had been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize three times in the past and became the winner this year for this particular book. It is narrated by Tony Webster who recalls how he and a circle of friends met Adrian Finn at school and vowed to be friends for life. He reflects on the paths he and his friends have taken.

The library invites young adults to Teen Gaming/Teen Reader's Advisory meetings on Thursday nights which will run every two weeks at 4 p.m. Upcoming dates include December 1, December 15, and December 29.

Book and Movie will take a brief hiatus during the month of December. The group will be back in full force the third Thursday in January for Didier van Cauwelaert's Hors de moi/Out of My Head translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti. There is a 2011 thriller film based on this 2003 French novel directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and starring Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, January Jones, Aidan Queen, Bruno Ganz, and Frank Langella. Dr. Martin Harris awakens after a car accident in Berlin to discover that his wife suddenly doesn't recognize him and another man has assumed his identity. With the help of a young woman he sets out to prove who he is.

As always, for the latest library programming take a peek at the library website or grab a newsletter from the circulation desk. Stay tuned and connected through our social media pages. If you have any questions or suggestions about books or programs don't hesitate to ask. Hope to see you at the library this holiday season!

Drop by the library this month!

Many geek-y activities are planned for the months of October and November.
Computer classes in English continue to meet every Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. and computer classes in Spanish meet every Wednesday morning at 9:30 a.m.  Reservations are needed so call or stop by the circulation desk to reserve your spot.

There will be a Teen Advisory Committee/Halloween Soiree on Thursday, October 27 at 4 p.m. and a Teen Advisory Committee meeting on Thursday, November 10 at 4 p.m.  In the works is a holiday performance in the weeks to come.

The library's official Geek Day will be on Saturday, October 29 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the front lawn of the library.  The theme will be carnival based.  We will also be at the United Way Halloween party in the Southgate Mall on Sunday, October 30.  We will win the best booth contest in our debut! It's our goal.
The Library and Lunch book discussion will be held on Tuesday, November 8 at 12 p.m. The book "French Lessons" by Ellen Sussman will be discussed.  This is Sussman's second book.  She's also the editor of two anthologies.

"French Lessons" follows a single day in Paris as it changes the lives of three Americans as they each set off to explore the city with a French tutor, learning about language, love and loss, as their lives intersect in surprising ways.  They're in the city for various reasons. Josie is a young high school teacher hoping to heal a broken heart, Riley is an ex-pat housewife struggling to feel connected to her husband and her new country, and Jeremy is the reserved husband of an actress, accompanying her on a film shoot yet finding himself distant from her world.  They find unexpected passion and unpredictable adventures!

Book and Movie will meet on Thursday, November 17 at 6 p.m. for "The Lincoln Lawyer" by Michael Connelly. In a Connelly thriller, charismatic Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Michael "Mick" Haller operates out of the back of his sedan. Having spent most of his career defending petty, garden-variety criminals, Mick unexpectedly lands the case of a lifetime; defending a rich Beverly Hills playboy, who is accused of attempted murder.  What initially appears to be a straightforward case with a big money pay-off swiftly develops into a deadly match between two masters of manipulation and a crisis of conscience for Haller.

This Monday is Columbus Day. The library will be open.  Columbus Day was originally October 12 but since 1971, the second Monday in October commemorates the landing of Christopher Columbus in the New World.  Columbus' explorations were financed by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain but Columbus was a native of Genoa and over the years Italian Americans have begun to honor his achievement.
Drop by this Columbus Day and pick up a history book!  Selections from the non-fiction collection include "1493: uncovering the new world Columbus created" by Charles C. Mann, "Atlantic: great sea battles, heroic discoveries, titanic storms, and a vast ocean of a million stories" by Simon Winchester,"Fraternalism and leadership: the second fifty years of the Knights of Columbus in Kansas" by Roy Bird, and "Rivers of gold: the rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to Magellan" by Hugh Thomas.

As always, for the latest library programming take a peek at the library website or grab a newsletter from the circulation desk. Stay tuned and connected through our social media pages. If you have any questions or suggestions about books or programs don't hesitate to ask. Hope to see you at the library!

Drop by the library this fall

Autumn is slowly yet surly approaching.  The library has lots of activities planned over the next few months.
Our newest book display in the adult and young adult area is "Crafting". A scarf for cold weather, grab a knitting book! A quilt to adorn a sofa, grab a quilting book!  See if there’s a book on the display just calling your name.

The young adults are busy hanging out at the library every two weeks (this past week being a Teen Advisory Committee meet day) and the next being Teen Gaming on Thursday, September 29 at 4 p.m. The current project is for a prospective spring performance featuring a musical play.  The plans are in the works.  There may also be something in the works for the holiday season.  The group is slowly growing with an exuberant mix of young adults.

Lidia Hook-Gray will be at the library for a book signing on Tuesday, September 20 at 6 p.m. Her book entitled "Liberal and Seward County" was published on August 22.

The Library and Lunch book discussion will be held on Tuesday, October 11 at 12 p.m. The book "The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" by Jamie Ford will be discussed.  The novel is a debut for Ford whose plot revolves around Henry Lee, a Chinese-American in Seattle who's lost his wife and he finds out that the belongings of Japanese immigrants interned during the WWII have been found in a hotel basement.  The story shuffles between the present 1986 and the 1940s chronicling the losses of old age and the bewilderment of youth.

Book and Movie Series will meet on Thursday, October 20 at 6 p.m. for "Doubt" by John Patrick Shanley. Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Shanley also directed the film version of the play starring Meryl Streep, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis. Shanley is the writer behind the classic 1987 romantic comedy titled "Moonstruck".

What’s new in the library? As of this upcoming Wednesday, the Kobo eReader will be available for check-out to library patrons.  E-readers are portable electronic devices designed for one to read digital books and periodicals. The Kobo uses an electronic ink screen so the screen tries to depict ordinary ink on paper.

There are over seventy different varieties of e-readers out on the market.  Stop by and see if a Kobo might be one for you.  E-readers are perfect for someone who travels.  There is less space taken up by books.
There are many classics downloaded on the library device for perusal including The "Velveteen Rabbit" by Margery Williams which I read for the first time on the Kobo.  Pages may be more colorful in paper format or in another version of device.  See for yourself.

As a still quite devoted physical book aficionado whether in everyday life or whilst traveling (paperbacks for discovering new authors like Ian McEwan prior to his "Atonement" fame on a long flight years ago) one might see the advantage of eventually reading Tolstoy's War and Peace in an e-reader format.

As always, for the latest library programming take a peek at the library website or grab a newsletter from the circulation desk. Stay tuned and connected through our social media pages. If you have any questions or suggestions about books or programs don't hesitate to ask. Hope to see you at the library this fall

Drop by the library for August events

The ice cream and t-shirt pickup wrapped up the summer reading program for the year. If your child or teen earned a t-shirt for completing the program and reaching their summer reading goal, they can be picked up at the library.

The library has partnered with the Mid America Air Museum on its latest exhibit, "The Wartime Escape: Margaret and H.A. Rey's Journey from France." It tells the story of the Reys journey, featuring framed prints by artist Allan Drummond and supplemental images from the DeGrummond Collection of Children's Literature at the University of Southern Mississippi. The whole exhibit was organized by the Institute for Holocaust Education in Omaha.

The library is running programs in conjunction with the Air Museum's exhibit.
One of the programs will feature Kansas State professor Joe Sutliff Sanders, a specialist in children's and adolescent literature, who teaches a broad variety of courses relevant to books for young readers, who will be at the library over lunch on Tuesday, August 9. He journaled in photographs the journey of the Reys, authors of the Curious George books as they fled Paris in the summer of 1940 on their bicycles over a five month adventure by bike, train, and boat that brought them over the Atlantic Ocean.

The Library and Lunch pick of the month is "The Metropolis Case" by Matthew Gallaway. The group will meet on Tuesday, August 16 at 12 p.m. The novel is a debut for the author and follows the interconnected lives of four characters living in different cities, all of whom have a passion for Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde: Lucien is an opera singer coming of age in mid-19th century Paris; Anna, an opera singer reaching the height of her career in 1960s New York; Maria, a promising young singer but a difficult student; and Martin, an aging lawyer whose love of music might save his life.

The author is a former musician who twines opera and punk by illuminating their shared passion and chaos. My opera experience dates back to spending a semester abroad and ending up at Moravskie divadlo one night with three fellow students, two from Iowa and one from Michigan, as we watched Madama Butterly in Czech. According to an educated source, Phillip, a library co-worker the play was stolen from the Chinese.

The Book and Movie will feature "How it Was With Dooms" by Xan Hopcraft on Thursday, August 18 at 6 p.m. Xan recounts the life of Dooms, a cheetah who lived on the Hopcrafts' game ranch in Kenya until Xan was 7.

The library invites young adults to a Teen Reader's Advisory as they collaborate on new and exciting ideas for programs at the library. They will meet on Thursday, August 25 at 4 p.m.

The library had the pleasure of having western romance writers Linda Broday and Phyliss Miranda in the library a few weeks back for a presentation and book signing. According to one of their newest blog entries, in Petticoats and Pistols (great name) Liberal is smokin' hot.  http://petticoatsandpistols.com/2011/08/02/code-of-the-american-cowboy-john-wayne-style

As always, for the latest library programming take a peek at the library website or grab a newsletter from the circulation desk. Stay tuned and connected through our social media pages. If you have any questions or suggestions about books or programs don't hesitate to ask. Hope to see you at the library this fall!