This week marks the first 2026 Falmouth Reads Together event—and an opportunity to engage more deeply with Braiding Sweetgrass. Read, reflect, take a nature walk, attend an event, or try a small act of care for the living world, then track your participation using our Falmouth Reads Together BINGO card. Complete any five squares for a chance to win a signed copy of the book, a membership to Highfield Hall, and other gardening goodies. Click the BINGO card to get started!
The ALA Youth Media Awards were announced on Monday, January 26th and prompted library staff to ask if there are any awards that celebrate book cover design. While the Randolph Caldecott Award honors the best children’s picture book of the year, there is no ALA award exclusively for book covers. However, there are other organizations that honor book cover designs.
AIGA – The Professional Association for Design
50 Books | 50 Covers
Starting in 1923 as the Fifty Books of the Year competition, this time-honored competition identifies the 50 best-designed books and book covers of the year. Together, we celebrate powerful and compelling book design and the community‘s most inspired creations.
The winners are announced every Fall celebrating the past year’s designs.
Other Awards
The Independent Book Publishers Association Design Awards Category
The IBPA Book Awards (formerly the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards) are regarded as one of the highest national honors for independent publishers since 1985.
2024 Winners
The Art Directors Club – Book Design Category
International Award: Stiftung Buchkunst (German foundation for book design)
Many thanks to library staff members, Sara Bevilacqua and Rebekah Walbert for their curiosity and research.
Happy New Year!
2026 began more than a week ago, but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep reflecting on 2025. Right?! Especially when those reflections come in the form of LISTS! We ran some reports, checked statistics and came up with a brief roundup of some of the year’s most borrowed books.
Categories:
Most borrowed fiction and children’s books by branches
Most borrowed nonfiction at the Main branch
2025 Young Adult Reads
Other notable book lists:
Novelist – short lists of various categories
NYT 10 Best Books of 2025
NPR – a visual list
LitHub – the ultimate list
What titles are you most excited for in 2026?!
Join Andrew Middleton of The Map Center in Pawtucket, RI for a fun and informative talk on how maps tell all sorts of stories. Learn how historical and contemporary maps are designed to convey information, and how they have been designed to present particular narratives. Andrew will also tell the story of how he became the owner of the oldest map store in New England.
The Map Center is the oldest map store on the east coast and one of the very few owned by an actual cartographer. Andrew Middleton is a geographic information systems specialist, consultant, and published cartographer who has been steering the 72 year old Pawtucket staple back into the limelight with beautiful maps from around the world that challenge us to see the places we love in new ways.
This program is free and open to the public!
Tuesday, January 13th at 6:30 PM in the Hermann Room
Register here.
We have a great selection of Zoom author talks this month! Here are the dates and links; register for a talk, and you will get the link emailed to you, and you will also get the recording later if you miss it. These talks are shared with us by either the Woods Hole’s library’s participation in the Library Speakers’ Consortium or by the Ashland Library!
Author talks:
Monday, November 1st at 2 pm, The Invention of Charlotte Brontë with Author Graham Watson, click here to register and receive the link.
Wednesda , November 5th at 2 pm, Nothing More of This Land: Community, Power, and the Search for Indigenous Identity with author Joseph Lee. In it, he explores Indigenous identity in proximity to land that serves as an iconic vacationing spot for the wealthy–the “island paradise” Martha’s Vineyard., click here to register and receive the link.
Thursda , November 13th at 7 pm, “The Search for Truth and Persistence of Love Across Time” with Novelist Amanda Peters, author of The Berry Pickers, click here to register and receive the link.
Monda , November 17th at 7 pm, Holiday Romance Book Recommendations, click here to register and receive the link.
Wednesday, November 19th at 7 pm, Meet Me at Luke’s with the Gilmore Girls Book Club Blogger, Kristine Eckart, click here to register and receive the link.
The Falmouth Public Library is excited to welcome for the very first time, Dr. Marion Orr, political scientist and the inaugural Fredrick Lippitt Professor of Public Policy at Brown University for a reading, author talk and book signing for his newest Book, House of Diggs, on Tuesday, November 4th at 6:30pm in the library’s Hermann room.
House of Diggs is the first biography of Congressman Charles C. Diggs Jr., one of the most consequential Black federal legislators in US history whose unfortunate downfall punctuated his distinguished career and pushed him and his historic accomplishments out of sight. Come hear award-winning author Dr. Orr speak about how his biography, House of Diggs: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Consequential Black Congressman, Charles C. Diggs Jr., restores Congressman Diggs to his much-deserved place in the history of American politics.
Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event by Eight Cousins Books. All are welcome! To register to attend this free public event, CLICK HERE or visit/call the Adult Services desk at 508-457-2555 x7.
Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl album is dropping this Friday and we are celebrating with three virtual Taylor Swift programs in October! From appreciating the artist that is Taylor Swift through her fashion eras and insightful literary lyrics, these programs are sure to delight Taylor Swift fans.
Scroll down for more information on our Taylor Swift programs and to register!
Harvard professor Stephanie Burt will deliver a fascinating presentation based on her brand new book, Taylor’s Version: The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift.
Burt, who is a poet and literary scholar, will offer an insightful and heartfelt critical appreciation of Taylor Swift, her body of work, and the community that her art has fostered. Drawing from her 2024 Harvard course, Taylor Swift and Her World, as well as from her years as a Swiftie, Burt will examine Swift’s particular form of genius – not the destructive genius of tortured poets, but the collaborative and joyful genius of an artist who has mastered her craft.
Burt is the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University. Her work appears in the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, and the London Review of Books, among others. Her other books of poetry and literary criticism — fourteen in all — include We Are Mermaids, Advice from the Lights, and Don’t Read Poetry: A Book About How to Read Poems.
Author Sarah Chapelle will deliver a fascinating presentation based on her recent bestselling book, Taylor Swift Style: Fashion Through the Eras.
For Taylor Swift, fashion and music go hand-in-hand — each playing a powerful role in shaping the narrative of this generation’s most prolific storyteller. From cowboy boots to teetering heels, fairytale dresses to bleach-tinged tresses, and the many memorable moments in between, learn the fashion story behind every single Taylor Swift album, tracing Swift’s musical evolution along with her ever-changing personal style.
Chapelle, creator of the successful Instagram and blog Taylor Swift Style, has spent more than a decade documenting Swift’s fashion choices and the intention behind each ensemble.
Authors Rachel Feder and Tiffany Tatreau will deliver a fascinating presentation based on their recent book, Taylor Swift by the Book: The Literature Behind the Lyrics, from Fairy Tales to Tortured Poets.
Taylor Swift’s lyrics are filled with literary connections. Learn about the novels, poems, and plays that influence her songwriting. Let a literature professor and a musical theater artist guide you through the Taylor Swift canon—from Shakespeare to the Brontë sisters to Daphne du Maurier!
Feder, the author of five books, is an associate professor of English and literary arts at the University of Denver. Tatreau is an actor, singer, and teaching artist who has starred in various musicals across the country and is best known for her portrayal of Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg in the musical and original cast album Ride the Cyclone.
Please note that these programs are online via Zoom only and may take place after library hours. These virtual programs will be recorded and all registrants will receive the recordings via email within 48 hours of the programs. These programs are sponsored by and are in collaboration with Tewksbury Public Library.
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