Mardi Gras Time!

We are celebrating Mardi Gras this month with a variety of programs and activities including a Dixieland Jazz concert and two cooking classes.

Check out our book display featuring books and movies that take place in about New Orleans.

We have also built a "readers map" style mosaic that will link you to great websites about New Orleans' heritage.

Halloween Fun!

This is the perfect time of year to re-discover one of America's great literary masters: Edgar Allan Poe.

Click on the link to the Reader's Map and discover routes to different aspects of Poe's work and life.

Edgar Allan Poe Reader's Map

Ice Station Zebra

Well, it feels like Ice Station Zebra outside, but there is still alot happening at the library. Except of course for my book club "Books and Brew". I wonder if it's the name? The turnout for our last book "Blind Man's Bluff" was somewhat less than I had hoped. At least with the Clive Cusller book one person showed up, granted it was by accident. I am debating as to trying one more time. Chime in here if you have a book sugguestion.

If you're in the mood for a romantic comedy, come check out the display of DVDs in the media section that Nicki put together.

If you like audio books we just got a bunch of new titles on CD as well as a new order of Playaways (those little digital audio books that fit in your pocket). You can see the titles on the "New Items Link" on our homepage.

Don't forget about Long Island Reads, sponsored by the Nassau and Suffolk County Public Library Systems. This year's book is "Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir", a baseball book-just in time for Spring:

‘…Despite family traumas and all those years the Dodgers lost to the Yankees, it is a happy, even a jaunty memoir. “Once I realized what the title should be, it was so clear that’s what the whole book was about,” she said, “not only because of the Dodgers and my own temperament, but there was a larger theme about this country, this kind of resilience, the sense that if you push hard enough, something good will happen, even when life tells you it’s not always true.” *

You can learn more about Long Island Reads at www.longislandreads.org

As for Ice Station Zebra, you can get the book or the Movie (one of Howard Hughes' favorites) through the Library!

January Events!

New Year, New Building, New Events!

I am not one to blow my own horn, at least not overtly, but I am going to put myself first here. We have a new book club called Books 'n Brew. This is not to be confused with the Books and Brew Coffee house in Eastport. That is just an unfortunate coincidence in name. If we continue on with the program we will change the name, and I am taking suggestions now. The "He Man Book Club" has already been rejected.

The reason for the creation of this new club comes from my conversations with other people who run book clubs. It came to my attention that men, for the most part seemed to stay away. "Perhaps", I thought, "a Jane Austen marathon is not the best way to get the men-folk to the meetings". I devised a plan to have a book club that, though not geared toward men exclusively, (that would be boring, and quite possibly illegal) but would at least have some appeal to the male readers: Adventure, Espionage, Westerns, Non-fiction, and so on.

Last month we read Atlantis Found by Clive Cussler, a Dirk Pitt adventure considered by many to be the best of the series. This Month we will be discussing Blind Man's Bluff by Sherry Sontag. This is true, but reads like fiction story, of submarine warfare and espionage. There is a Reader's Map for this title in the right hand collum of this page. Our book discussion will be Monday, January 26th at 7:00 PM at Simon's Beach Bakery on Main Street. I promise won't talk about our feelings, but we will talk about stuff blowing up.
The Monday Night Book Club hosted by Malinda will be discussing The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander on January 12.

Edgar Allan Poe
We are also celebrating the 200 birthday of the great American author (and inventor of the Detective Story genre) Edgar Allan Poe, with a tea and a read around at the Sunset Cafe on Sunset Ave in Westhampton Beach on January 31 at 2:00.

Fall is Here! We are here!

Hopefully you were able to get your reading needs met through other outlets for the past few weeks. I promise you we will be back in full swing in a matter of days. We are all looking foward to seeing you all again in our new location.

We have three book clubs meeting This October: The Monday Night Book Club with Melinda will meet Oct 27th at The Open Book on Main Street. She will be discussing The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason.

In October 1886, Edgar Drake receives a strange request from the British War Office: he must leave his wife and his quiet life in London to travel to the jungles of Burma, where a rare Erard grand piano is in need of repair. The piano belongs to an army surgeon-major whose unorthodox peacemaking methods—poetry, medicine, and now music—have brought a tentative quiet to the southern Shan States but have elicited questions from his superiors.

Professor Frank Mosca returns on Thurday Oct. 23 to discuss Demian by Herman Hesse

In Demian, one of the great writers of the twentieth century tells the dramatic story of young, docile Emil Sinclair's descent--led by precocious shoolmate Max Demian--into a secret and dangerous world of petty crime and revolt against convention and eventual awakening to selfhood.

Books and Brew is the newest book club and will led by Jay (me!). The idea of this book club is to find material, both fiction and nonfiction that will appeal particularly to men. Book clubs have not traditionaly been a beg draw for men, let's change that. Of course we welcome everyone.

For our first read I have chosen what many people consider to be Clive Cussler's best "Dirk Pitt" novel Atlantis Found.

We will be meeting at the Sunset cafe (yes,the brew refers to coffee) on Sunset Avenue in Westhampton beach near the 7-11.

Of course we have many new titles in print, CD and Playaway formats.

Summer Reads!

Summer is in full swing and our tiny town is buzzing with activity. In spite of all the usual Summertime activity, the library is still one of the hottest destinations in town.

Check out our new displays on local history and Long Island fiction, featuring such noted authors as James Patterson, Nelson Demille, and of course F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Nola has put together a month long celebration of Jane Austen. Come and see her display that features not only Jane Austen's novels and film adaptations of her work, but ficton about Jane Austen and the people who love her writing. For more ideas and information about her, click on the "Jane Austen Reading Map" link in the right hand column. There you will find links to explore her life and times.

Our book clubs will be meeting on: Monday July 28th for "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts. The August 25th meeting will discuss "the Jane Austen Book Club", by Karen Joy Fowler.

The Thursday Book Club with Professor Mosca will meet August 25th for William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying.

New Playaways!

What started out as an experiment is starting to take off! I wondered if people would be interested in a new format for audio books, and I had my doubts. Personally, I fear change and resist it at every opportunity. Just asked my friend who had to pry my last 8-track (Van Halen's Diver Down) out of my hands.

Playaways, the beeper sized (but much lighter) digital audio books are catching on in popularity here at the Westhampton Free Library. We just put a new order out on the shelves and have more on the way. One patron told me she listens while running because the unit is so light. Another told me she listens in bed before she goes to sleep, "it's like someone telling me a story at bedtime" she said.

The growing selection features both popular fiction and non-fiction, and as always we are happy to take suggestions.

There is still time to get in on this year's Long Island Reads book discussion for Aloft by Chang-rae Lee. We will be having our "one island, one book" meeting on Monday April 28th. There are several copies of the book still available behind the circulation desk, so please check one out and join us on the 28th, all are welcome.