Dewey Victims. The Smoke. Cookery Schmookery. Quote Quiz. These seemingly unrelated names and phrases are actually some of the more clever categories for this year's Biblio Bingo, the adult reading program currently in progress at the Library. As many of our regulars know, the winter months of January, February and March are great months to get some reading done and so it goes that this is also a great time of year to have a reading program for the older folks. Now in its 9th year, Biblio Bingo is still a hit with readers and it continues to be a labor of love for staff too. What staff gets back from this program is tenfold what we put in and the big reason for that is the fun participants have reading books and then talking about them. But let's get back to the categories. Read more »

We are decidedly well into the year 2012. I like getting to this point in January. The days are noticeably longer, the holiday hubbub is over and we delude ourselves into thinking once this month passes, winter will be a breeze. This is also the time of year when I am plotting my reading journey for the next several months or so. This journey is the result of all of the “best of 2011” lists that we’ve been reading in review magazines, online blogs and websites. This is an annual rite of passage that we eagerly look forward to here at the Library. We compare the lists against what we have, we compare the lists against what we’ve read, we voice strong opinions about what books made what list and we make plans to read the books we somehow missed.

I am catching up on small jobs today  - tasks that need to be done but keep getting pushed aside for one or another things that come up. I'm making signs and sending out a press release about our holiday hours, I'm posting photos of our program yesterday to Facebook, I'm organizing our photos on my computer and I'm writing a long overdue blog post. While organizing the photos on my computer I came across two photos I took in June of some of the shelves in the youth section. As any user of this Library knows, the summer months are a little busy here. The beast that is the summer reading program has become a labor of love for us here. We are exhausted at the end of every day, but it is such a satisfying exhaustion. The interaction we have with area youth during these months is priceless. And the icing on the cake is that a lot of books get checked out and read. Read more »

While my reading taste falls heavily towards fiction I find myself drawn to adventure/survival stories of one kind and another. I have often pondered why this is because I am not really the adventurous type. My big adventure of the year is jumping in an icy cold lake on New Year's Day. It's all of 30 seconds. My idea of an extended adventure is taking a day hike. I once spent six days in the Appalachian Mountains backpacking during a college spring break. In those six days my girlfriend and I racked up 16 miles. I considered it an amazing feat, but most people laughed in our faces when they found out the distance we covered. So, I think I read adventure/survival stories because I'm amazed at the limits that people will push themselves to achieve a personal goal or survive a situation thrust upon them. Read more »