Life from the Stacks is a weekly column by Joanne Wilson, Branch Coordinator at the Garberville Library. Wilson shares the wonderful world that awaits beyond the doors to your local library, within the binds of books, and as limitless as your imagination.
[Background images by Secretum Mundi, sourced from Wikimedia Commons]
“In principle and reality, libraries are life-enhancing palaces of wonder.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Do you belong to a book group? There are many different kinds of book groups, reading any number of books. Many of these groups began during or directly after the Covid epidemic. We were confined to our homes and many of us became starved for human interaction. Here at the library…well, now that I think of it, we didn’t actually have a library building at that time. Our building (read: trailer) had been torn down at that point. We were operating out of a tiny office space across the street in the DHHS building. People could call in their orders for books or DVDs or audiobooks. When the items were delivered to the library, patrons would come to collect them, staying in their car in front of the building. We would then trot the books out to their car. The books being returned would have to sit in quarantine for awhile before being cleaned and catalogued again. We had very limited hours. When we would call people to let them know their book had been delivered or when people would call to have a book put on hold, the conversation would be lengthy. I finally realized that due to the quarantine, we might be the only person that patron had actually spoken with that day. So i let people talk as long as they wanted. After Covid passed (kind of) I knew more about the people, their kids, grandkids and friends in this community than you would ever care to know. At times, I felt like the library version of Dear Abby.
But back to book groups…many read the classics. Some read only newly published books. Others concentrate on certain authors. I had a book group that I loved during my time in Ohio. The rules for this group boiled down to one…there are no rules. If you were this month’s book group host, you could cook for the group, or not. You could serve wine or cocktails, or not. (We always did.) The one unspoken rule was that we NEVER discussed the book. Odd, right? Yet it worked. We all read the book but it was never mentioned. The group had anywhere from 10 – 18 members and some truly spectacular dinners, but the book…no.
There are some book groups in Southern Humboldt that have only male members or only femal;e members. Some meet in a revolving set of homes. There is a group in Eureka that meets in a bar. They have 75 members! Our library book group meets in the library. Go figure. Our group is mixed, both male and female. Because we have a few teachers, both retired and current and a smattering of librarians, plus a lawyer and an author, our book discussions can get quite involved. It’s a great group. We serve a mean potluck. We’ll meet this week, Thursday, November 21st at 5:30 in the library. The book we read was The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez. It is a terrific story about an author who decides ,after publishing many books, that there are some stories that she will never finish. So after inheriting some property in the Dominican Republic, she decides to bury what she has written in these stories in her cemetery. It is full of interesting characters, some historical, some not. I recommend it. Ms. Alvarez is an author to follow.
On Saturday, November 23rd we’ll have the last of our Creative Space classes for this month. We are working on a 2 part project using watercolor pencils. It’s a collaborative project making one large painting out of many individual paintings. There will be no class on Nov. 30th, but the Creative Space will be up and running again the first Saturday of December.
Next week is Thanksgiving. Hopefully you have much to be thankful for. Hopefully, someone is cooking a lovely meal for you or perhaps you enjoy cooking. We have lots of cookbooks here at the library. A new cookbook that recently came to us is Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts by Crystal Wilkinson. This is not just a cookbook , though many recipes are included. This is a story of 5 generations of black Appalachian country cooks with their stories, and family photos stirred into a mixture of distinctly Southern recipes. It becomes a culinary portrait of a family and it’s ancestors with their food ways written in beautiful, lyrical prose. Their corn pudding recipe alone is worth the price of the book, but , lucky for you, you can get it in the library and it’s free. This is a gem of a book and comes highly recommended.
Until next week when the starting pistol launches the holiday seasonal madness…
The Garberville Library: not just books and it’s all free.
Joanne Wilson
Branch Coordinator
Garberville Library
This post was originally published on here
