Tag Archive for: Libraries

Bidding Farewell to a Dear Friend by Debra H. Goldstein

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Bidding Farewell to a Dear
Friend by Debra H. Goldstein

This year, I said good-bye to my personal library. Our
aging physical infirmities and our old house no longer matched. Our new house,
which we can’t believe we built during the pandemic, is perfect for us.
Although there is a guest bedroom and bath upstairs, everything we need is on
the main level.

 

I have a garden room office that lets me have natural light
and look at trees when the writing isn’t going well. My husband, on the other
side of the house, has a man cave that features a television covering an entire
wall. We meet in the middle to eat but have an unspoken rule that those two
rooms are our private sanctuaries – off limits to each other.

 

When we were building this house, I knew from the floor
plans that it lacked the space for me to move my entire library. My library,
which was arranged alphabetically by author, contained sections for biography,
mystery, general literature, children’s, young adult, theater, Judaica and
other religious studies, how-to-books, law books, writing reference books, crime
reference books, cookbooks, and my TBR bookshelf (which usually spread to my
dresser). There were thousands of books. I identified my library as being a
part of me.

 

Giving away my library was akin to giving away one of my
children. I have good memories of when my daughter was 6 and had to count
something for school that would be at least 100. I gave her a pad and pencil
and told her to count books. When I suddenly realized she’d been quiet for too
long, I found her nearing 2000. We decided she could stop counting. My memories
include loaning books to people that introduced them to new authors or answered
questions they posed to me. There were also special

ones that commemorated
events – like the Dr. Seuss one everyone gets for graduation or books that contained
the first published poems of my children.

 

Without flinching, I parted with my dining room furniture
which we’d purchased as a wedding present to ourselves, bedrooms sets, dishes,
pots and pans, and various other pieces of furniture, but the books remained.
It was easy to offer my children any books they wanted to take and to let a
dear friend raid the mystery section. The trouble came with what to do with the
remainder. I vowed to take the children’s books that I might read to my
grandchildren or that they might want to read in the future. I also put aside a
handful of the writing and crime resource books, as well as a few books of
poetry my father and I read together when I was a child. Then, I started making
phone calls. A librarian friend told me about a library in an economically
challenged part of Alabama that had an excess of space, but a limited
collection and a lack of funds. When I called, I knew it was a match made in
heaven.

 

I had movers pack the books I wasn’t keeping in boxes that
could be lifted. Neatly stacked, they filled my dining room and spilled into my
living room. The librarian sent her husband, who owned a flatbed truck, and her
daughter to pick up the books. In the end, most were added to their collection
or were put on a bookmobile. Very few were marked for the Friends of the
Library sale. The empty bookcases found a home, too.

 

It’s been six months and I still feel the loss, but I’m
glad that in a sense, I’m now sharing a part of who I am with others.

When Writers and Readers Get Together

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by Sparkle Abbey

We just got back from Malice Domestic, the annual conference for the traditional mystery. Though we’re not sure just how many people were in attendance suffice to say we numbered in the hundreds. Readers, librarians, book bloggers, and authors all in one place. And between the great panels, fun events, and premier Agatha Awards banquet, what do you suppose writers talk about? Books, that’s what. We can’t help ourselves. It’s so much a part of who we are. So over lunch, or over drinks, or during breaks in the sessions, we talk about the books we’re reading, the books we wish we had time to read, and the books that have stayed with us through the years.

The week before leaving for Malice we got to together with a much smaller group of authors, our local PAL (Published Author Liaison) friends, which is a group of traditionally published Iowa authors. We had a wonderful tour of the Perry Carnegie Library, which was built in 1904 with a grant from Andrew Carnegie. The building has been restored to its 1910 appearance and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It serves as both a museum and working library and the current collection includes many of the library’s original 1,000 titles, as well as special collections of Midwest literature, women’s fiction, children’s books, and books on literacy and libraries.

“For centuries, cultures have been measured by their libraries.”
– A. Arthur Davis

As we finished the tour and began catching up, what do you suppose talk turned to? If you guessed books, you’d be exactly right. Books and, in particular, the books we checked out from our public libraries when we were growing up. Interestingly enough, though we all grew up in different places, we had similar stories  of checking out as many books as we were allowed. Mary Kay Shanley, who is not only a talented author, but also teaches writing classes at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, shared that her librarian always checked the weight of her stack of books to make sure she could carry them the six blocks to her home.

What about you? Have you always been a reader and what part did your local public library play in your early reading experiences?

Our author picture is a shot of us with the real Sparkle and the real Abbey. Don’t you love the stare down? Our real names are Mary Lee Woods and Anita Carter. We write the Pampered Pets mystery series together. We’re also friends and neighbors so you’ll often find us writing at ML’s dining room table or at our local Starbucks.

We chose to use Sparkle Abbey as our pen name on this series because we liked the idea of combining the names of our two rescue pets – Sparkle (ML’s cat) and Abbey (Anita’s dog). We live in the Midwest, but if we could write anywhere, you would find us on the beach with our laptops and depending on the time of day either an iced tea or a margarita.

Our latest installment in the series is RAIDERS OF THE LOST BARK. Like the rest of the books, it’s set in southern California and this book involves “glamping” a term coined to describe glamorous camping. Let’s just say, there are no pop-up tents or sleeping bags to unfurl, the s’mores are gourmet, and the campers’ diamonds sparkle as bright as the stars.

We love hearing from readers so please connect with us via our website: SparkleAbbey.com or via Facebook at www.facebook.com/SparkleAbbey

The Dealer in Your Neighborhood

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by Bethany Maines

I was talking to a librarian the other day and she laughed
when I said I thought librarians were like drug dealers.  But they really are! They even target
the little kids! Get them hooked on the picture books, next thing you know the kids are
applying for library cards and mainlining Harry Potter, Divergent and TheTesting.  Give it a few years and
YA just won’t give the same buzz and the kids have to move on to bigger and
bigger fiction.  And that’s when
the librarians start pushing the hardcore stuff – Faulkner, Atwood, Joyce. If
you’re not careful your kid could end up reading the entire Lord of the Rings
even though there’s a perfectly good director’s extended cut blue ray back
home.
And just like pushers, librarians are extremely
open-minded.  They don’t care where
you’ve come from.  Rich, poor, or
in between – all library cards are the same to them.  (Unless it’s an out of state card, in which case you will
have to pay the buck and get a local card.)  They don’t even judge when all you want to read is Romance
novels; they just point you toward the romance section and recommend new
authors who also write in the kilt and dragon milieu.  It’s a slippery slope, my friends. You go into the library
for the videos and the free internet access and the next thing you know you’re
reading and using words like “milieu.” 

So, if that kind of blatant pushing of mind-expanding
education is acceptable to you, then you should probably hug the next librarian
you see.  Just remember that the
VIG on those late library books is due next week…
  
Bethany Maines
is the author of the Carrie Mae Mystery series and Tales
from the City of Destiny. You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Library Love

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As my co-author and I are gearing up to promote the May publication of Murder Takes the Cake, we’re discussing our favorite way to reach mystery readers and sell books – events at public libraries.

When you give a presentation in a library, your audience is filled with people who love books, love talking about books, and want nothing more than to hear what you have to say. Some even have dreams of writing their own books. Your family may have grown weary of hearing about your writing, but go to a library and you have a room full of fresh ears.

On more than one occasion, I’ve found that a one hour event has turned into two as audience members ask questions about the books and the road to publication. That’s the best part – the questions. You never know what someone is going to ask. During my first library presentation I got a question from an elderly woman. She declared that she’d buy my book if I could assure her that no animals or people got killed in it. I told her no animals were killed but that it was a murder mystery …. The audience laughed, even the questioner.

This year “Evelyn David” will be offering “talks” on crafting mysteries, developing characters, and writing a series. We have presentations suitable for all ages and a few just for teens. We try to provide handouts – bookmarks, lists of “how-to-write” books, and a list of links to on-line writers’ groups. The door prize drawing is always a hit.

If an author is scheduled to speak at a library in your home town, go and check it out. You’ll have fun, find something interesting to read, and lend some much needed support to your local library system.

And if you’re a librarian in Oklahoma or New York (or a surrounding state) and would like a guest speaker, send us an email at evelyn@evelyndavid.com If you’ll check at our website in our “Libraries Hall of Fame,” you can see which libraries we’ve visited in the last two years. We’re setting our speaking schedule for the summer and fall of 2009 now and we’d love to add you to that list!

Evelyn David
http://www.evelyndavid.com/