While at the recent Public Library Association Conference in Philadelphia, Jennifer Woodward, Assistant Director, won a social media raffle for a Book Bike for the library. We just had to tweet the phrase #LibrariansOnARoll, and post a photo of the book bike. We did that! And much to our amazement, we just got word that the Falmouth Public Library was the winner of the raffle!

We also attended a workshop at the Public Library Association Conference about how other public libraries are using their book bikes. We were particularly excited by what the Berkeley Public Library was doing with their book bike. They call it the Library on Wheels and not only check out materials, but also have a mobile hotspot where people can connect to their wireless connection.

Our new bicycle is a specially designed cargo bike, sort of a backwards tricycle, and is being custom built for the library. The staff is very excited about possibilities for getting out of the library this summer. We hope to have it by early July. Until July, we’ll be brainstorming ideas for using the bike. Look for us a Surf Drive Beach and Falmouth Commodores games and we hope many other places this summer! We’ll keep you posted, and would love to hear where you might want to see the library bicycle.

It has been a long winter, in fact it seems that spring has already been a long winter! However, we have something for everyone to look forward to … the Friends of the Falmouth Public Library Annual Summer Book Sale! That’s right, the dates and times have been posted, and here they are …

Thursday, June 28th, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM

Friday, June 29th, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM

Saturday, June 30th, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM

Sunday, July 1st, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM

Monday, July 2nd, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM (Half Price Day)

Tuesday, July 3rd, 10:00 AM to Noon (FIVE books for $1.00)

So mark your calendars, tell your friends and relatives, and start dreaming of a summer day of book buying!

Today we did part two of our top ten favorite books.  Bob Waxler, recently retired English professor from U. Mass, Dartmouth, joined Mindy and me for the monthly book show on WCAI’s  The Point. Our topic was the second half of our top ten favorite books. As it happened, it was also pledge week at WCAI, which may account for our not having any callers today. However, if you missed the show, you can always listen to it online, in fact even if you DID listen to the show this morning, you will have missed the very end which we had to record after we were off the air. You can always listen online! To read about our first top five books head over to this blog entry.

Jill Erickson, Head of Reference & Adult Services

Bob’s Picks

Middlemarch by George Eliot

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Frankenstein, or, The modern prometheus by Mary Shelley

Night by Elie Wiesel

Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin

Jill’s Picks

Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White, pictures by Garth Williams

Martha Quest by Doris Lessing

A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf  (or read ALL of her diaries!)

Finding Time Again by Marcel Proust. Not currently available in CLAMS, but feel free to read any Proust. Or you could try reading about people reading Proust as seen in the New York Times.

The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf, drawings by Robert Lawson

And if you want to know other people’s top ten books, try My Ideal Bookshelf with art by Jane Mount and edited by Thessaly La Force. Fascinating lists in part because all sorts of people suggested titles, typeface designers, architects, musicians, filmmakers, athletes, chefs, as well as writers.

Listener Pick

We got an e-mail from a listener after we were off the air. He writes: “I respectfully wish to add a few plays to the must read books mentioned in today’s Point, perhaps Shakespeare’s Othello — and certainly one or two from George Bernard Shaw, perhaps drawn from Pygmalion, Major Barbara, and Mrs. Warren’s Profession. All remain extremely relevant with issues that still speak to us, and the Shaw plays are all exceptional and entertaining reads.

Friday, March 23, 2018 is the last day to obtain nomination papers to run for election in the Falmouth Annual Town Election.  Civic engagement runs deep in Falmouth.  It is our opportunity to truly be self-governing. The more community members that become involved only enhances our lifestyle when people making decisions are a reflection of our residents.

TOWN WIDE OFFICES
Town Moderator (elect one)                                    for three years
Selectman (elect one)                                                for three years
Trustee of the Public Library (elect three)            for three years
Planning Board (elect two)                                       for three years
School Committee (elect three)                               for three years
Falmouth Housing Authority (elect one)               for five years

Town wide offices are required to collect 50 signatures from registered voters of the Town of Falmouth.

***Last day to return nomination papers to Town Hall is Tuesday, March 27, 2018.

TOWN MEETING MEMBERS
Elect nine in each Precinct                                         for three years
Elect two in Precinct Seven                                        for two years
Elect one in Precinct Seven                                        for one year
Elect one in Precinct Nine                                          for two years

Town Meeting Members are required to collect 10 signatures from registered voters in the Precinct they are registered to vote.

Please contact the Town Clerk for additional information:
Town Clerk
59 Town Hall Square
Main Floor in Town Hall
Falmouth, MA 02540
Phone: 508-495-7360

Organizations in many countries use posters as a way to communicate ideas and messages with their audience. They are posted on walls, fences, and poles all over a city. Unions sometimes hang posters in work places to warn of dangers, educate about benefits or inspire action. Posters often rely on creative art to communicate the idea. Posters are also an art form that is easily accessible to people.

International Women’s Day first emerged from the activities of labor movements at the turn of the twentieth century in North America and across Europe. In 1975, during International Women’s Year, the United Nations began celebrating International Women’s Day on March 8.

Each year, around the world, International Women’s Day (IWD) is now celebrated on March 8th. Hundreds of events occur not just on this day but throughout the month of March to mark the economic, political and social achievements of women.

1909: The first National Woman’s Day was observed in the United States on February 28. The Socialist Party of America designated this day in honor of the 1908 garment workers’ strike in New York, where women protested against working conditions.

1910: The Socialist International, meeting in Copenhagen, established a Women’s Day, international in character, to honor the movement for women’s rights and to build support for achieving universal suffrage for women. The proposal was greeted with unanimous approval by the conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, which included the first three women elected to the Finnish Parliament.

1911: As a result of the Copenhagen initiative, International Women’s Day was marked for the first time (March 19) in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, where more than one million women and men attended rallies. In addition to the right to vote and to hold public office, they demanded women’s rights to work, to vocational training and to an end to discrimination on the job.

1913-1914: International Women’s Day also became a mechanism for protesting World War I. As part of the peace movement, Russian women observed their first International Women’s Day on the last Sunday in February. Elsewhere in Europe, on or around March 8th of the following year, women held rallies either to protest the war or to express solidarity with other activists.

1917: Against the backdrop of the war, women in Russia again chose to protest and strike for ‘Bread and Peace’ on the last Sunday in February which fell on March 8 on the Gregorian calendar. Four days later, the Czar abdicated and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote.

1945: The Charter of the United Nations was the first international agreement to affirm the principle of equality between women and men.

Posters celebrating International Women’s Day are currently on display in the Falmouth Public Library through March 27th. This collection of posters are from a greater collection of more than 7,100 of Stephen Lewis. He is a long-time activist in the labor movement, and the former Treasurer of his union. Stephen has exhibited at a number of public libraries in Massachusetts, Boston City Hall, and two of the state Heritage parks. He has presented at the annual conference of the National Council on Public History, and on some cable television programs. The posters were contributed by friends, collected at conferences, through visits to some of the organizations, and from connections made through the internet.

This project is supported in part by grants from the Mashpee and Falmouth Cultural Councils, local agencies which are supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, and by Laborer’s Local 1249.

Today we had the pleasure of having Bob Waxler, recently retired English professor from U. Mass, Dartmouth, join Mindy and me for the monthly book show on WCAI’s  The Point. The topic was our top ten favorite books, which was indeed a challenge for both Bob and I. Our lists kept shifting until the last moment when we were finally forced into making choices knowing we were going to be live on the air the next morning. As Robert Pinsky says in The Top Ten:  we were really talking about the “Ten works of fiction that have been great for me.” Below you will find the list of our top five books, because we ran out of time. However,  Bob has agreed to return to Woods Hole for the March show, and do the second half of our lists! Of course, if you listened this morning, you know that our lists are very fluid, and it is possible they will have morphed by March 28th. I’ve also posted all of the listener picks, which will give you enough great reading to take you right through the spring. Miss the show? You can always listen online!

Jill Erickson, Head of Reference & Adult Services

Bob’s Picks

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Jill’s Picks

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Lolly Willowes; or the Loving Huntsman by Sylvia Townsend Warner

The Making of Americans: being a history of a family’s progress by Gertrude Stein (If you’re interested in reading about the link between Gertrude Stein and Goodnight Moon, head over to In the Great Green Room.)

Time Will Darken It by William Maxwell (Not only is this a great novel, it also has a great section on house guests, which everyone who lives on Cape Cod should read before the summer hits.)

High Rising by Angela Thirkell (You can read Verlyn Klinkenborg’s New York Times article about this series here.)

Books About Great Books

The Top Ten: writers pick their favorite books edited by J. Peder Zane

Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books edited by Leah Price

Listener Picks

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Sula by Toni Morrison (and as Bob said, anything written by Toni Morrison)

A Man Called Ove by Frederick Backman

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Herzog by Saul Bellow

To increase the headache for tax filers using paper forms and instructions, this year the IRS has sent out two important notices about changes since materials were printed.  Please take note of the following:

Notice 1437 (February, 2018)
In a nutshell, the notice states that the most up-to-date forms are on the government website, irs.gov and that print forms already dispersed may or may not still be current.

Correction to the 2017 Instructions for Form 1040
This correction is for one line in “the Worksheet To See if You Should Fill in For 6251–Line 45”. 

In addition, our supply of Massachusetts resident booklets is almost gone.  We are limited to requesting only one additional box, which we have done.   The arrival time is unknown.  When the supply runs out, we will not be able to get any more paper copies.  Paper forms and the booklet can be printed out from the state government website, mass.gov/dor or you can file online using MassTax Connect, a secure website, new this year, also located at mass.gov/dor.

If you need to print paper forms or instructions, there is a designated computer in the reference room for patrons to use.  Black and white prints are 20¢ a page and color prints are 40¢ a page.  Print outs are single-sided only.  Payment is in cash only – no checks, debit or credit cards accepted.  You do not need a library card to print.

You may have noticed that for the past several years the federal and state governments have been making it increasing difficult for tax payers to file their taxes using paper forms and instructions.  Their goal is to get everyone to file online.  Filing online is cheaper, faster and more accurate, with faster refunds as a bonus.  First, beginning years ago, they stopped providing forms and instructions to Post Offices.  They were distributed only through tax offices and public libraries.  Then, they reduced the types of materials available to libraries from the thirty or so forms and instructions we used to get, to simply the basics: 1040, 1040A and 1040 EZ forms and instructions.  Now, both the federal and state governments are severally limiting the number of copies we receive.   Be on the lookout for any possible future amendments to tax forms.  If we learn of any, we’ll post another blog.

We are looking for volunteers with an interest in history and a willingness to learn about whaling ships. The library has the digital files of 48 handwritten ship logbooks that are part of the Falmouth Historical Society’s collection. The logs date back from 1806 to 1879. “We are ready to embark on an exciting project to transcribe these documents so they can be made available on the library website,” says library Director, Linda Collins. She has been working on one to see what the experience will be like for volunteers. “It is a challenge at first, but you do get to know the handwriting and become familiar with the language of sailing and whaling. The more you work with the document, the easier it gets.” The logs are as short as 8 pages and as long as 392, with most being between 100 and 200 pages. Volunteers will be given a thumb drive with their ship’s log and a document describing the process. Occasional meetings of the volunteers will be scheduled to share tips and encouragement. If you are interested in being a part of this exciting project, please contact Linda Collins at lcollins@clamsnet.org

We’re pleased to welcome award-winning journalist, investigative reporter, director of the Journalism program at Stonehill College, and debut author Maureen Boyle to the Falmouth Public Library on Saturday, January 27 at 3 p.m. to speak about her new book, Shallow Graves: The Hunt for the New Bedford Highway Serial Killer.

Book sales and signings with Maureen Boyle will follow the event.

Event Information:

Date: Saturday, January 27, 2018

Time: 3:00-4:00 pm

Place: Falmouth Public Library, 300 Main Street, Hermann Meeting Room

No registration needed. Register on our website to receive a reminder email.

Maureen Boyle is an award winning journalist and has been a crime reporter in New England for more than 25 years, including at the Standard-Times of New Bedford during the serial murder case about which she wrote. She holds an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Bridgeport and a master’s degree in criminal justice from Anna Maria College. She is now director of the Journalism Program at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts. This is her first book.

Reviews & Interviews

WBUR interviews Maureen about her new book. [listen to the story]

“Riveting. Heartbreaking. Authentic. This impeccably researched chronicle of a terrifying chapter in history will keep you turning pages as fast as you can. Important, powerful, and compelling, this is true crime at the highest level.” – Hank Phillippi Ryan

“Chronicles the killings and their aftermath with a novelist’s power and perceptiveness. A compelling work of narrative nonfiction. . . . A great read.” – Irene Virag, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter and journalism professor at Stony Brook University

“First-rate reporting. . . . It takes a master storyteller to weave facts into a work of art that makes readers both think and feel. Boyle has succeeded. Highly recommended.” – Tom Hallman Jr., Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of Sam: The Boy Behind the Mask

“Boyle expertly captures a terrifying time in a compelling and entertaining narrative. . . . Nearly impossible to put down.” – Tim White, co-author of The Last Good Heist

“The definitive examination of a case that continues to grip a troubled region. . . . Irresistible.” – Chris Gonsalves, author of Haunted Love

Shallow Graves: The Hunt for the New Bedford Highway Serial Killer

Request a copy

Eleven women went missing over the spring and summer of 1988 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, an old fishing port known as the Whaling City, where Moby Dick, Frederick Douglass, textile mills, and heroin-dealing represent just a few of the many threads in the community’s diverse fabric. In her book, investigative reporter Maureen Boyle tells the story of a case that has haunted New England for thirty years. Maureen first broke the story in 1988 and stayed with it for decades. She spins a riveting narrative about the crimes, the victims, the hunt for the killers, and the search for justice, all played out against the backdrop of an increasingly impoverished community beset by drugs and crime. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews, along with police reports, first-person accounts, and field reporting both during the killings and more recently, Shallow Graves brings the reader behind the scenes of the investigation, onto the streets of the city, and into the homes of the families still hoping for answers.

“Friday Reads” is a weekly blog written by reference librarian Faith Lee about great books, magazines, and the occasional reference work.    Topics may be new titles added to the library, selections from the Staff Picks shelf or about something she recently read.  Admittedly, there is a definite slant toward nonfiction, because, well, she’s a reference librarian and likes to learn new things.  Guest bloggers take a turn sometimes too.  No matter the source, good reads are featured here.

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Does this arctic cold turn your thoughts to Nordic lands like it does for me?  Do you wonder what it must be like to live there with long, frigid, dark winters?  One way to learn about a culture is to read its literature, “to ponder the profound social, political, economic and cultural issues they present,” states Mitzi M. Brunsdale in the introduction to Encyclopedia of Nordic Crime Fiction.

Well, if you have an interest in Nordic culture, reading its crime fiction is one sure-fire way to learn aspects of it that you won’t find in guide books or the recent New York Times bestseller, The Little Book of Hygge:  Danish secrets to happy living.   In the Encyclopedia of Nordic Crime Fiction, which is divided into five sections, one for each country: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, Brunsdale opens with an in-depth essay on cultural context for crime fiction in that locale, followed by a list of awards given since 1967. Those are followed by a parallel chronology of that country’s literature and world events. She then provides a biography of each contemporary author, a bibliography of their works, major awards and their web addresses.

So if you like Norwegian author Jo Nesbø you can read that in addition to being “king of Nordic crime writing,” he is also a soccer player, journalist, rock music singer, financial analyst, rock climber and children’s author. You can see a list of what he has written to date (13 novels from 1985 – 2013 published in 24 million copies, translated into forty-seven languages) and who his fellow Norwegian crime writers are (Anne Holt, Vidar Sundstøl and Kjell Ola Dahl, to name only three) and their works.  For the best in Norwegian crime fiction, check out the list “Dagbladet’s Twenty-Five Best Norwegian Crime Novels of All Time (2009) which includes the original title and translation information.  What is the #1 Norwegian crime novel you ask?  Elskede Poona, by Karin Fossum (tr. as The Indian Bride, 2007; also titled Calling Out for You.)

Whether you are an avid reader of Nordic crime and want to get more cultural context to deepen your understanding or you are just starting out and don’t know what to read first, the Encyclopedia of Nordic Crime is sure to provide fascinating guidance all along the way.  You can find this book in the reference room with call #809.3872 BRU, or ask a reference librarian.