Books in Bloom Preview–Career Reflections

Here at the Berryville Library we’re looking forward to the 11th annual Books in Bloom Literary Festival on May 15th. You’ll get to mingle with famous authors and fellow book lovers. To prepare for Books in Bloom, we’ll be running teasers about the authors who will be giving talks.  We also have works by all of this year’s Books in Bloom authors on display at the library. Read them now–meet them on the 15th!

Last week, we looked at Books in Bloom authors who will be focusing on individual books they have written, but have you ever wanted to hear an author talk about their career as a whole, especially if they’ve written multiple books? What’s it like to be an author for a living? What do they really think about the characters they’ve created? You’ll have a chance to hear them do just that too!

2016 Library Challenge: A Book From Your Childhood

Next week kicks off the Children’s Book Council’s annual Children’s Book Week, which champions the benefits and pleasures of reading for kids. That got me to reflecting on some of my favorite books as a child. Perhaps not too surprisingly, I loved reading from an early age–relatives say that as a toddler I could be bribed out of giving people frosty silent treatments with the promise of being read to. However, as difficult as it was for me to pick what books to take to a deserted island, I came up with a list of my 3 favorite books as a child pretty quickly.

Guest Blogger: Tiffany Newton’s The Here and Now review

[We’re continuing our guest blogger posts, courtesy of our friends from the Green Forest Public Library. This one is from Green Forest’s director, Tiffany Newton. She also wrote about Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore a few weeks ago.]

“You can’t even look up tomorrow [on Google].  Who says the Internet is boundless?” (pg 129)

The Here and Now by Ann Brashares is a Young Adult book with some romance, science fiction, and dystopian themes.  It was published in 2014, but it’s only been checked out from the Carroll and Madison County libraries less than 12 times. However, it’s a quick read that you won’t regret.

Books in Bloom Preview–Book Talks

Here at the Berryville Library we’re looking forward to the 11th annual Books in Bloom Literary Festival on May 15th. You’ll get to mingle with famous authors and fellow book lovers. To prepare for Books in Bloom, we’ll be running teasers about the authors who will be giving talks.  We also have works by all of this year’s Books in Bloom authors on display at the library. Read them now–meet them on the 15th!

Ever wanted to get behind the scenes of a book . . . or perhaps more like inside the mind of its author as they were writing it?  How did they come up with that idea?  What motivated them to keep writing that story? From the posted schedule, it looks like you’ll have your chance at this year’s Books in Blooms!

2016 Library Challenge: A Play

“The play’s the thing”–or so Hamlet tells us.

One of the challenges for this year’s reading challenge is reading a play, and I figured this week being the 400-year anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death was the perfect time to discuss this challenge.

Ask The Blogger: Harvey (1950)

A few months ago when our blog first debuted, we hosted a “meet the blogger” reception at the library to boost patron awareness and also to provide readers with a forum for suggesting topics/books/movies for me to write about. One of the people I chatted with that day–Stephanie–asked me if I’d ever watched the classic comedy Harvey. When I told her that I knew the basic story line but had never seen it, she requested that I write about it.

Harvey is one of those movies that I’ve always heard about. I knew it starred Jimmy Stewart and that he has an imaginary friend, a giant rabbit. But that was about all I knew about the film. I’m glad Stephanie recommended it to me because it’s hilarious!

Guest Blogger–LeAnn Stark

[Last month, Green Forest’s library director, Tiffany Newton, was kind enough to write a review for Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. It was an incredibly popular post, and we’re excited to continue the Guest Blogger series with a new post from LeAnn Stark, the assistant librarian at Green Forest. ]

My New Favorite Women Sleuths

  Early detectives have mainly been male, with a few exceptions–Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple being the most famous.  Recently I discovered 3 authors, Laurie R. King, Jaqueline Winspear and Susan Elia MacNeal, with strong female private investigators. They were inspired by real-life stories from the women who pitched in during the 2 great world wars. While thousands of men were fighting, women found themselves filling in jobs that had previously been deemed unacceptable to them: building ships, aircraft, and tanks, delivering milk and coal and other supplies, driving ambulances, and much more. After the wars were over, many women didn’t want to return to the old restricted ways. Some had to keep working, due to a lack of men lost in the wars. These 3 authors do a wonderful job of exploring these issues.

2016 Library Challenge: A Book That Might Make You Cry

Last week, we looked at books that make you laugh, so this time, I figured we might as well look at the exact opposite–a book that might make you cry.

Now, depending on how given you are to crying while reading, this challenge could be really hard or really easy.

I don’t usually cry when reading (or watching movies or actually much in general), even if the scene is very sad, and when I do cry , it’s usually at some odd scene that’s probably not supposed to be the one that makes you cry. So, it’s probably just as well that, rather than crying, I am more likely to respond to sad books by just feeling incredibly hollow and depressed for days afterward. But every now and then, a book will make me sob uncontrollably.

And so to honor sad books, here’s a round-up of books that might make you cry. As always, be sure to check our online catalog for more details.

Discussion Thread: Outlander

This Saturday, season 2 of Outlander premieres on Starz. Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander book series is one of our most popular series at the library–I can verify that it circulates a lot–and the television series based on it is so popular that ending up on a wait list for it is virtually guaranteed. (You can follow this link to our catalog if you’re interested in requesting the books or show.)

2016 Library Challenge: A Funny Book

In what I hope is one of the more enjoyable requirements of the 2016 Library Challenge, participants are asked to read a funny book. We’re celebrating humorous reads all month long at the Berryville Public Library, with a display up front that highlights humorous essays, memoirs, and other things sure to make you laugh (or at least think about the power of a laugh).

We have a lot of great books written by humor writers, including all of David Sedaris’s books and many Dave Barry books, but we also have some others in our collection that you may not be aware of. As always, if you’re interested in any of these books, please check out our online catalog to learn more about availability and to place holds.