Berryville Book Buzz

Paulette Jiles’s Chenneville

When John Chenneville comes to in a hospital bed in Virginia a few months after the end of the Civil War, his memories are shadowy and half-formed. Everything from his service in the Union Army to his happy childhood in an old French family outside of St. Louis comes back to him in pieces. Upon returning home to Missouri, he learns that his beloved younger sister and her family were murdered, which triggers a quest for vengeance that takes him from St. Louis to modern-day Oklahoma and then Texas in this excellent, haunting historical novel/literary Western.

I’ve been an avid Paulette Jiles reader ever since a stranger came up to me at Books in Bloom and highly recommended Enemy Women to me. I’ve been hooked on Jiles’s work ever since and keep an eye out for her newer releases. (A special thank you to Julie for ordering this book and adding it to the collection!) A Missouri Ozarks native who spent years in Canada and now lives in Texas and was an accomplished poet and memoirist before becoming a novelist, Jiles has a keen ear for language and an equally astute eye for observation. She excels at writing complex but likable and engaging characters, evocative historical settings, and elegantly lyrical but readable prose.

Book Buzz: Fiction Extravaganza

Every month, we’re profiling new-ish releases that are getting critical and commercial buzz. For January, we’re looking at historical fiction set in 18th century colonial India and 1950s North Carolina, Viking fantasy, lots of horror, suspense about a party gone very wrong, and audiobooks galore. Since last month was all nonfiction, this month it is all fiction!

Make Time to Play: January

This year, we’re celebrating play at the library! Everyone knows how beneficial play is for kids, but did you know that it is equally important for adults? It can be a wonderful stress reliever, boosts creativity, alleviates boredom, and may even lower your blood pressure. To that end, every month in 2024, we’re highlighting a different form of play. Each month we’ll have a bingo-style fun card. If you complete all the activities for a blackout on your card, you’ll receive a special prize. And if you complete all 12 fun cards, you’ll be eligible to win a grand prize and be crowned our annual play champion!

For January, we’re kicking things off with puzzles. For most of the months, you’ll be on your own, but for this first one, we’ll help you out with a cart full of fun puzzles at the library to help you complete your fun card. But don’t feel limited to what’s on the card!

Maker Corner: December

Over the past few years, we’ve been developing and expanding our reach into the world of making, by offering both programs and resources.

What exactly is making? Well, we actually helped craft a formal definition for it for library staff across the nation. But the short answer is pretty simple: it is the process of being willing to get your hands dirty and learn while you create whatever you want to make to accomplish a task or just have fun. Do you cook? Do you craft? Do you invent? Do you build? Do you fix things? You are a maker!

In fact, some are even talking about making as at the core of a new type of literacy: invention literacy (i.e., the ability to look around you and figure out how human-made things work). Like any type of literacy, you can never be too old or too young to start your making journey and nurturing the growth mindset on which all making depends. You also can never have enough tools in the forms of books to get your creative juices flowing.

So, this year we plan to highlight all of the various making resources we have–which range from needlework to Legos to more. December is all about homesteading and self-sufficiency!

Book Buzz: Nonfiction Extravaganza

Every month, we’re profiling new-ish releases that are getting critical and commercial buzz. For December, we’re looking at travel-themed memoirs, new cookbooks, history (both American and ancient), heartwarming pet stories, and adventure gone wrong. We have lots of holiday-themed books and movies too, but if you’re looking for a change of pace from that, well, this post is for you!

$150K Down, $150K to Go Before December 31st!

In early November, our Berryville Library Building Project launched a fundraising challenge: raise $300,000 before the end of the year. If we reach this goal, we have an anonymous donor who will donate $100,000 to the building fund. The combined $400,000 from this challenge would get us to $3.2 million already raised since April 2021 and allow us to set a date to break ground in 2024. The plan is to then raise the remaining $300,000 needed during the building process.

In November, we raised an amazing $150,000, 50% of our goal, through a mailing, radio spots on our local KTHS and KUAF stations, and a telethon on KTHS.

We cannot thank the people who donated and helped us with the telethon and mailing and other fundraising efforts enough. However, we still need to raise that other 50% to reach our goal!

Walk a Mile in My Shoes: December

This year, our theme is “Walk A Mile In My Shoes.” The idea that you can’t understand someone (and shouldn’t judge them) until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes is a pretty common sentiment. And research has shown that reading fiction is one way to really get such a walk going. So, that’s what we are going to do this year: use fiction (and some nonfiction when we just can’t resist) to take walks in someone’s shoes. We hope you join our journey. For December, our theme is poverty.

Maker Corner: November

Over the past few years, we’ve been developing and expanding our reach into the world of making, by offering both programs and resources.

So, this year we plan to highlight all of the various making resources we have–which range from needlework to Legos to more. November is all about needlework, from sewing to quilting to more!

Max Miller’s Tasting History

Max Miller rocketed to fame in the early days of the pandemic because his relatively new YouTube channel Tasting History about food and history was well-made and interesting. And since he had been furloughed from his job, he didn’t have anything else to do but make videos about things like how to make your own Roman-style garum at a time when a lot of other people had plenty of free time to watch videos on how to make garum. It took off so much that he ended up quitting his job and getting a cookbook published from Simon and Schuster. Not bad for someone who started making YouTube videos as a hobby at the urging of his friends, whom he jokingly suspects of doing so just because they wanted him to offload his food history trivia on strangers rather than them.

I’ve been a Tasting History fan for a couple of years now and eagerly awaited the release of the book. I was not disappointed. Thanks so much to Julie for purchasing a copy for the library and my brother for buying me a personal copy for my birthday! 🙂

Book Buzz: Fictional Libraries, Homages to Classics, Historical Mysteries, Second-Chance Romances, and Extreme Knitting

Every month, we’re profiling new-ish releases that are getting critical and commercial buzz. For November, we’re looking at historical fiction about libraries (both the gothic kind and the WWII espionage kind), a modern literary homage to a 19th century classic, a brooding mystery set in 1950s small-town Minnesota, an Atlanta-based contemporary romance, and a nonfiction audiobook that ponders the mysteries of knitting.

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