@ Your Library
It is the middle of August, college students are beginning to head off for their school year, fall sports are starting practice and that means it is a great time to grab a book and read. Read as a family, read as an individual, just set aside time to read daily. You have two weeks to start to establish a habit of reading before school is back in session. Even 15 minutes at the end of the day or the start of the day makes a difference. Read faithfully just a bit a day and you will be amazed at how much reading you accomplish in a year.
The next reading challenge is to read a work in the public domain. The focus below is on titles that more recently entered the public domain. The titles are also a mix of books for young and old. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie, Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence, Orlando by Virginia Woolf, Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather and A Passage to India by E.M. Forster are all works published more than 75 years ago for adults.
Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag, The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne (introducing Tigger), Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, Dr. Doolittle by Hugh Lofting and The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandling Warner are all older titles that are still in print and read regularly by children and adults.
How many of you remember reading the short story The Lady or the Tiger? By Frank R. Stockton in school? It was almost obligatory reading when I was in high school. I don’t know if anyone still reads it but this 1882 story is in the public domain and Heather M. Herrman has taken the story and written an entire novel for teens. It is the summer of 1886 and nineteen year old Belle King turns herself in for the murder of her abusive husband Reginald. She is in a Dodge City jail cell when her husband appears impossibly alive outside her cell. What follows is a dark, twisty horror of a fairy tale about a mountain girl from Kentucky becoming the wickedest woman in the Wild West. I love it when contemporary authors play with the past and breathe new life into old stories. I love fairy tale retellings and imagining new locations, settings and details for old stories.
The Friends of the Library will host a book sale on Friday, August 22 from noon – 4 as part of the Bass Tournament festivities before the weigh-in. All sales are by donation and benefit the Friends support of library programming. Come stock up on books for the cabin or shack, books to put into Little Free Libraries or just find a good book to read. There are books for a wide range of ages and interests available. Don’t miss out. The next sale will be Saturday, September 20th from 11am – 1pm.