Don’t forget the stop by the library while you are out finding bargains at the Highway 70 garage sale this Saturday, May 4, 2024 for our Baked Potato Bar Lunch from 11:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m.
The meal is sponsored in part by Lawrence Bros Grocery Store, Galaxy Digital, Cap Rock Telephone Cooperative and South Plains Electric Cooperative. We will also be selling tickets for the Friends of the Library fundraiser for $5.00 each or six for $25. The grand prize is a $500 gift certificate to Salt Fork Outfitters good for any merchandise in the store such as boots, clothing, handbags, jewelry and much more (courtesy of Salt Fork Outfitters). Second place prize is a $100 Visa Gift Card (courtesy of the Friends of the Library) and third place is a $50 gift certificate to Lawrence Bros Grocery Store (courtesy of C.C. Noland. Thank you to all of our local merchants and sponsors who had a hand in making this all possible.
The Texas Library Association’s annual conference was held in San Antonio this year at the Henry B. Gonzales Convention Center in downtown San Antonio. I was born in Texas and spent most of my life here. I’ve been to just about every corner of the state. We took the kids to Six Flags Fiesta Texas in San Antonio when they were little, but I had never been to the Riverwalk in downtown San Antonio until this trip. I can’t believe it took me so long to get there!
The scenery was gorgeous and the food was absolutely the best Mexican food I’ve ever had. I brought back some “swag” and a couple of books from the exhibition hall. One of the best things about the annual conference is getting to meet new librarians and the friendships that are built.
I met Becky McClain from the Santa Fe public library in Galveston County two years ago in Fort Worth. Last year in Austin we connected again. This year she called me before the conference to make sure I would be there. She had a few books and some other items she wanted me to take back for the library. One of the books is “The Music of Bees” by Eileen Garvin. “The Music of Bees” is beautifully moving, warm, and uplifting. It is about the power of friendship, compassion in the face of loss, and finding the courage to start over (at any age) when things don’t turn out the way you expect. In a spin the wheel game at one of the booths in the exhibition hall I won a board book for the little ones called “What Do You See: Around the World” by Kathy Broderick.
I also brought back the novel,“Ripe”bySarahRose Etter courtesy of Thorndike Press Large Print. It was named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Huffington Post, Kirkus, and more. It was also a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. “Ripe” portrays one millennial woman’s journey through our late-stage capitalist hellscape and offers a brilliantly incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.
Recently added to the fiction shelves is “A Calamity of Souls” by David Baldacci. Set in the tumultuous year of 1968 in southern Virginia, a racially-charged murder case sets a duo of white and Black lawyers against a deeply unfair system as they work to defend their wrongfully-accused Black defendants in this courtroom drama. Over a decade in the writing, “A Calamity of Souls” breathes richly imagined and detailed life into a bygone era, taking the reader through a world that will seem both foreign and familiar. In “Run Away” by Harlan Coben a perfect family is shattered when their daughter goes missing in this New York Times bestselling novel. You've lost your daughter. She's addicted to drugs and to an abusive boyfriend. And she's made it clear that she doesn't want to be found. Then, by chance, you see her playing guitar in Central Park. But she's not the girl you remember. This woman is living on the edge, frightened, and clearly in trouble. You don't stop to think. You approach her, beg her to come home. She runs. And you do the only thing a parent can do: you follow her into a dark and dangerous world you never knew existed. Before you know it, both your family and your life are on the line. And in order to protect your daughter from the evils of that world, you must face them head on.
Check it all out at the library.
