LIBRARY TALK – JUNE 3, 2021

First week in June is filled with popular author release books.  Since we are still not seeing the foot traffic we used to, there is a decent chance the book (or DVD) might be on the shelf.  Of course, we welcome reserves placed on these books, either by calling us, going online and placing the holds yourself 24/7 or just stopping in and asking.  Here’s a sampling:Stuart Woods Jackpot, Elin Hildebrand Golden Girl, J.A. Jance, Unfinished Business,Jeff Shaara Eagle’s Claw (WWII based),Eric Van Lustbader, Kobalt Dossier, Janette Oke Sustaining Faith, and another collaboration with Bill Clinton and James Patterson in The President’s Daughter and that is just on the first order page for us!

The library just added a February 1830 letter to its local history collection. The hand writing is decent, except we can’t quite decipher the letter writer’s last name! Anyway, it is chatty, with comments that are still common today—why haven’t you written, everybody is reasonably healthy, so-and-so had a baby… Ripley had over a foot of snow, so sleighing was a very popular activity. What amazed us was in 1830, if you had a sleigh and a horse, you could charge up to $1.00 per hour to use!  The bitter cold kept the attendance at the meetings low, but maybe not so bad you couldn’t go sleighing. (In the letter, sleighing was spelled slaying, many run-on sentences, other interesting spellings, but in the end, a fun slice of everyday Ripley nearly 200 years ago)

We are still signing up kids for the summer reading program—it is so nice to see families coming into the library again, rather than just picking up bags set up in the vestibule or outside the door. We’ve added many juvenile and young adult books that are just really fun to read, and we hope the kids can re-discover the enjoyment of not only participating in programs but reading for pleasure—no tests, no essays, just enjoyment of delving into a different world for a little while.