Category: Miscellany

Chess for All Ages

Posted on by Sue

We are delighted to welcome chess expert Glenn Davison, on Tuesday evening, March 30th at 7 pm, for a Zoom lesson, organized by the Falmouth Public Library!

Partly due to a very popular (and Golden Globe-winning!) show on Netflix called “The Queen’s Gambit,” about a woman who breaks gender barriers in the male-dominated world of chess, chess has undergone a bit of a renaissance: many shops have sold out of chess sets! As Glenn says, there are many good messages in the show including reading, studying, preparation, learning, and practice.

Glenn is a lifelong chess player who has taught dozens of chess classes in Massachusetts resulting in hundreds of chess players and multiple chess clubs. He specializes in animated online chess classes that everyone can enjoy, often with grandparents learning at the same time as their grandchildren.

This online class teaches the fundamentals of chess. In one hour you will learn the basics of playing chess including setting up, using the pawns and other pieces, special moves, tips and even how to win a game of chess in four moves.

Since teaching is done online with examples, interaction, animations and quizzes, a chess set is unnecessary.

This event is free and appropriate for adults, teens and children ages 8 and up, and is sponsored by the Trustees of the Falmouth Public Library.  Registration is required before the event. Please register online by clicking here, or contact the reference department at 508-457-2555 x 7.

Books Into Movies or TV Series on The Point with Mindy Todd

Posted on by Library User

This morning on The Point with Mindy Todd we talked about books that have been turned into movies and television series. Joining us was the delightful Petra Mayer, editor for NPR books. Thanks to all of you who called in or emailed with your book suggestions! What a plethora of new books to read or to watch. The full list of titles mentioned is below.

Petra’s Picks

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, YA novel by Jenny Han, adapted by Netflix.

The Magicians, original books by Lev Grossman, adapted for SyFy

Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series, of course – the TV show was based on volume one, The Duke and I, and if you don’t want to wait for season 2, you can read The Viscount Who Loved Me, which is all about Anthony Bridgerton (and his fear of bees).

For a fun twist on Sherlock Holmes, there’s Sherry Thomas’s Lady Sherlock series – the first one is A Study in Scarlet Women (Sherry Thomas, by the way, is an INCREDIBLE romance author – try the Heart of Blade books, they’re amazing), and the other series I mentioned was Laurie R. King’s Holmes & Russell – the first one of those is The Beekeeper’s Apprentice.

I also talked about Preacher, the mid-90s Vertigo comic series that was adapted for AMC but honestly, I wouldn’t recommend either the books or the show unless people understand they’re gonna be in for a LOT of violence, gore, weird sex, blasphemy and general disgustingness.

And then in terms of series that are in development that I’m excited about, there’s N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse books (try the Six of Crows duology, it’s a hoot!), Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death, Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea books (hopefully they won’t screw it up this time around – the last adaptation was Not So Good) and Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time.

Finally, the series I’d love to see come to TV (I’ve heard rumors of a development deal but nothing concrete) is Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series, about a half-fae-half-human private investigator and sometime knight errant in San Francisco. The first one is Rosemary and Rue. (Also, and I didn’t get around to mentioning this one because I ran out of time, Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next books, about an alternate Britain where the world of literature is real and people can cross back and forth into books. It’s SO fun. The first one is The Eyre Affair.)

Jill’s Picks

VideoHound’s Golden Movie Retriever edited by Michael J. Tyrkus
Masterpiece Theatre: A Celebration of 25 Years of Outstanding Television by Terrence O’Flaherty

The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott is book one in The Raj Quartet. The Granada Television version was spectacular.

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes edited by Leslie S. Klinger

From Holmes to Sherlock by Mattias Boström

The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis. New Yorker article by Sarah Miller: The Fatal Flaw of “The Queen’s Gambit”

Islandia by Austin Tappan Wright. New Yorker article by Charles Finch: The Forgotten Novel That Inspired Homesickness For An Imaginary Land

A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch is the 1st Charles Lenox Mystery. A series which should be made into a television series.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney. No time for his novel Time and Again, a novel I love, which has  never been filmed, although it was made into a failed musical! There was a sequel as well, From Time to Time, but I never read it, because I thought the original novel did not need a sequel. (If you read the sequel and loved it, let me know!)

Listener Picks

Harry Potter series written by J. K. Rowling

Outlander series written by Diana Gabaldon

Walkabout by James Vance Marshall

News of the World by Paulette Jiles

Murdoch Mysteries , a television series, but based on the mysteries by Maureen Jennings

1984 by George Orwell

Animal Farm by George Orwell

The World According to Garp by John Irving

A Man called Ove by Fredrik Backman

An Update on “Postcards from Falmouth,” a Local History Project

Posted on by K.C. DeWall

It was just about one year ago that Library staff kicked off the creation of an oral history grant and began recording local historians discussing landmarks and locations inspired by the Library’s collection of historical postcards of Falmouth. Although recording remains suspended in an effort to keep our community safe during the pandemic, work on the project carries on in various ways.  

First, we wish to introduce Mary Loftus, our grant assistant, who has hit the ground running and brings much experience to the project as well as a  neighborly manner and a keen interest in local history. Welcome on board, Mary!

Aside from planning more programs with speakers on local history topics, we are also completing post-production work on the oral histories we have recorded.  These recordings not only include Revered Jonathan Drury,  Reverend Will Mebane, and Rabbi Elias Lieberman; but they also include locals Donald Fish, Bill Swift, and Kevin Doyle. 

On an unhappy note, however, we were very sad to learn that one of our historians, Dick Kendall, recently passed on. Mr. Kendall grew up in Falmouth and served the town in many ways.  His account of playing baseball on the Falmouth Heights ball field is not only priceless but illustrates perfectly the exact goal of the project—preserving Falmouth’s history as told by its residents.

While we have many more local historians on deck to record as soon as we can get back into the studio at FCTV, we invite all of the community to contribute in our effort to capture and preserve memories of our beautiful town!  Here are ways you can help take part in the project:

  • Visit the Postcards from Falmouth digital exhibit and share your memories in the comment sections.
  • Interview your favorite Falmouth local historian about Falmouth “back in the day,” or share your own recollections with the Library.  Send submissions to postcards@falmouthpubliclibrary.org . Submissions may be included in the Library collection or shared through our social media.

Be sure to contact Mary if you have any questions at postcards@falmouthpubliclibrary.org or call (508) 457-2555 ext. 2951.

The Garden Tourist

Posted on by Sue

Update: this event is currently full. 

We are delighted to welcome garden designer and author Jana Milbocker, on Tuesday afternoon, March 9th at 2 pm, for a Zoom presentation by the Falmouth Public Library!

Do you enjoy beautiful gardens? In this armchair tour of some of the best public gardens and hidden gems of the Northeast, you will learn about each garden’s history, horticultural highlights and special events that will inspire you to plan your own visit!

Jana combines horticulture, design, and travel tips to educate, inspire and delight both new and seasoned gardeners. She loves to visit gardens and historic sites in the U.S. and abroad, and share her trips through her books, photos and blog. She published The Garden Tourist: 120 Destination Gardens and Nurseries in the Northeast in 2018, and The Garden Tourist’s New England in 2020, both available at the library.

She has lectured at flower shows in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New York and New Jersey, as well as a multitude of horticultural societies, garden clubs, and libraries in the Northeast. She is the owner of Enchanted Gardens, a landscape design firm in the Boston area. She is the past president of the Holliston Garden Club, and she is active in the Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Horticultural Society, and GardenComm International.

This event is free and appropriate for adults and teens, and is sponsored by the Friends of the Falmouth Public Library.  Registration is required before the event. Please register online by clicking by going to falmouthpubliclibrary.org/events. or contact the reference department at 508-457-2555 x 7. Update: this event is currently full. 

Browse Our Collections

Posted on by Library User

We hear that you all miss being able to browse our shelves! To help everyone to scan through the last year’s acquisitions, click on our links below.  These links will be updated and refreshed as we learn more about what you would like to browse and through the seasons, and the links are dynamic and will show new titles as they are added to our collections.

Each link will take you to the CLAMS catalog and list the selections that are new to our shelves within the last year (2020). We’ve done the search for you, so each link will bring you to a selection of titles similar to browsing our new sections in our buildings.

Browse Adult Collections

Click on a link below to open the catalog and browse these collections.

Books

Movies, TV and Music

Browse Children’s Collections

Click on a link below to open the catalog and browse these collections.

Books

Browse Teen Collections

Click on a link below to open the catalog and browse these collections.

Black History Month

Posted on by Library User

Black History Month is always a great month to discover all sorts of authors you might have missed. Some of you may have already discovered on our web page our No Place for Hate reading list.

In spring of 2020, No Place for Hate-Falmouth and Eight Cousins Books generously donated a collection of 23 print books focused on diversity to the Main Library. The collection includes books for all ages. Books in this collection have a special identifying label on the spine and book plate. 

In the summer of 2020, the Falmouth Public Library Support Fund, generously donated additional children’s books to help expand our collection. The Support Fund’s donation included books at all three locations of the Falmouth Public Library.

Most recently, the Woods Hole Diversity Advisory/Black History Month Committees shared with us their suggestions of terrific books, television shows, and films that you might enjoy as we all celebrate Black History Month. The national theme this year for Black History Month is The Black Family: Representation, Identity, and Diversity.

Here are their book recommendations:

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (We also have a book club kit available, which comes with ten books.)
Born a Crime: stories from a South African childhood by Noah Trevor
The Warmth of Other Sons by Isabel Wilkerson
The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom
Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry; illustrated by Vashti Harrison
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
All Boys Aren’t Blue: a memoir-manifesto by George M. Johnson

We will miss seeing the annual Harambee in Woods Hole this year, but the Woods Hole Diversity Advisory Committee have created a virtual Harambee! They invite you to participate in their virtual Harambee either by trying one of the delicious recipes listed and sharing a photo of your meal, or submitting your own recipe and photo.  In addition there will be a series of virtual talks, all of which you can find here.

Mass Audubon: “Coming to a Suburb Near You”

Posted on by Sue

We are delighted to welcome Ian Ives from Mass Audubon, on Wednesday afternoon, February 10th at 2 pm, for a Zoom presentation by the Falmouth Public Library.

He will explore the increase in abundance of deer, coyote, fisher, turkey, bobcat and osprey and the conflicts, management measures and ethical considerations that arise as a result. 

Ian Ives is the Director at Mass Audubon’s Long Pasture, Ashumet, Barnstable Great Marsh and Skunknett River Wildlife Sanctuaries on Cape Cod. His job responsibilities include overall management of the sanctuaries and staff, community outreach, advocacy, environmental stewardship and education. He holds a Master’s degree in conservation biology from Antioch University – New Hampshire.

Ian has a strong background in wetland restoration and endangered species management and is leading environmental advocacy and conservation projects across the Cape to help protect rare wildlife and threatened natural resources they depend on. Formerly, Ian was a Field Biologist for Hyla Ecological Services in Concord MA, and was a zookeeper at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston. 

This event is free and appropriate for adults and teens, and is sponsored by the Friends of the Falmouth Public Library.  Registration is required, by 1 p.m. on the day of the event. Please register online at falmouthpubliclibrary.org, or contact the reference department at 508-457-2555 x 7.

Jumpin’ Juba-a Zoom musical event!

Posted on by Sue

Listen online to a special offering from Steve Hurl and Bruce Ward of Jumpin’ Juba, on Tuesday evening, February 2nd, starting at 6:30 pm!

Jumpin’ Juba mixes regional blues from Chicago, Memphis and New Orleans together with roots-y rock & roll, jazz, calypso, and Latin flavors. It features Steve Hurl (guitars, vocal), whose playing draws from the great acoustic blues finger-pickers, and from the blues-y string benders of the 1950’s. Bruce Ward’s burly piano work recalls such greats as Prof. Longhair, Otis Spann, and Albert Ammons. The band’s two CD releases (Bumpity Bump and Slap Happy) have received regional and overseas airplay, and have garnered many favorable reviews in MA and beyond. Read more about the band on their page, here!

This is a free event, sponsored by the Falmouth Cultural Council! Registration is required to get the Zoom link. You can register online, by 5 p.m. on the day of the event by clicking here, or by calling the reference department at 508-457-2555 x 7.

Falmouth Public Library Reading Challenge 2021

Posted on by Sue

Happy New Year!  If you are looking to get outside your literary comfort zone this year, join our reading challenge group on Facebook – “Falmouth Public Library Reading Challenge 2021”. 

We are encouraging people to read one book a month, each from a different category.  We hope the group will function as a loose book club – a place where people can recommend books to others and find their next read.  The category for January is “Autobiography, Biography, or Memoir”.  

(Visit the group by clicking here,  to see all 12 categories!) If you’re looking for a jumping off point, check our Facebook Group for recommendations from the staff.  If you’ve got one you’d like to share, visit our group and feel encouraged to post it!  This is a public group, and you certainly don’t have to read a book from each category to participate.  The goal is simply to create a space for readers to find books they might not otherwise have picked up, and to share highlights with each other.  

Crafty Books on The Point with Mindy Todd

Posted on by Library User

December 30, 2020

This morning on the monthly book show on The Point with Mindy Todd we had the pleasure of Kellie Porter, librarian at the Woods Hole Library, joining us to talk about books focusing on crafts. After a very difficult year, we thought some crafty books would inspire us to be more crafty in 2021 as a way to focus on something other than 2020! As written in Craftfulness: mend yourself by making things by Rosemary Davidson and Arzo Tahsin: “As  long as we are making and creatively fulfilled we are equipped to deal with all the rest that life throws at us.” In the photo attached to this blog, you will see Mindy’s Fa La La Felt bird, and my sixth grade puppet, both of which are now Christmas ornaments on my tree every year. My puppet, by the way, was Belle, who I was cast as in a sixth grade play reading (with puppets) of A Christmas Carol by Dickens. You’ll also see a WCAI mug which was made by Tessa Morgan of Flying Pig Pottery.

Below you will find a list of all the books we mentioned, and a few for which we did not have time. If we missed your favorite craft book, feel free to leave us a comment below.

Here is a link to the program on WCAI ‘s website so you can listen anytime.  https://www.capeandislands.org/post/books-crafts

Mindy’s Picks

Fa La La Felt by Amanda Carestio. Amanda’s follow-up to this was Heart-Felt Holidays

Not A Box by Antoinette Portis

Kellie’s Picks

Craeft: An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts by Alexander Langlands
The Foxfire Book edited with an introduction by Eliot Wigginton
51 Things to Make with Cardboard Tubes by Fiona Hayes
Paper Goods Projects by Jodi Levine
Playing with Books: The Art of Upcycling, Deconstructing, and Reimagining the Book by Jason Thompson
BIBLIOCraft: A Modern Crafter’s Guide to Using Library Resources to Jumpstart Creative Projects by Jessica Pigza
The Repurposed Library: 33 Craft Projects That Give Old Books New Life by Lisa Occhipinti
Foxtails, Ferns, & Fish Scales: A Handbook of Art and Nature Projects by Ada Graham

Magazines:

Quiltfolk
By Hand
Pompom Quarterly
Laine
Koel
Making Stories

No time for but they’re really great:

The Paper Hat Book by Alyn Carlson
Every Day’s a Holiday: Year-Round Crafting with Kids by Heidi Kenney
The Geometry of Hand-Sewing by Natalie Chanin
Knitalong: Celebrating the Tradition of Knitting Together by Larissa Brown and Martin John Brown
Socks Appeal: 16 Fun & Funky Friends Sewn from Socks by Brenna Maloney

Jill’s Picks

(You’ll notice that Kellie and I had lots of overlap!)

Cattastic Crafts by Mariko Ishikawa
Crafts By the Sea by Larissa Costello
Art and the Seafarer: a historical survey of the Arts and Crafts of Sailors and Shipwrights. General editor Hans Jürgen Hansen.
Cræft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts by Alexander Langlands
Book Art by Clare Youngs
BiblioCraft by Jessica Pigza
D.I.Y. Dollhouse by Alexia Henrio
Out of the Box by Jemma Westing
15 Minutes of Flame: a Nantucket Candle Maker Mystery by Christin Brecher
Craftfulness: mend yourself by making things by Rosemary Davidson and Arzu Tahsin