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A lot is going on at the library, so we want to make sure to share some updates with you:
Mobile hotspots: We received notice recently that the organization loaning us the AT&T and Verizon hotspots will be discontinuing their service. Their next cycle starts in April and the hotspots will stop working sometime between now and then.
An alternative: use one of our 31 T-Mobile hotspots. You can check and see if they have service where you will be using it by visiting our website.
What is a mobile hotspot? It's a portable device that provides a Wi-Fi internet connection. It's perfect if you live in an area that can't get broadband internet or if you don't have a data plan on your cell phone. Hotspots are also great to have if you want to go on a trip and take the internet with you.
Hotspots will work with laptops, tablets, phones, TVs and most other devices that can connect to a Wi-Fi internet connection.
Mobile hotspots can be borrowed from the library for only $20 for two weeks, $30 for four weeks or $75 for three months.
Next book sale: The next Friends of the Library book sale will be held Monday April 15 (9 a.m.-7 p.m.), Tuesday April 16 (9 a.m.-5 p.m.), Wednesday April 17 (9 a.m.-5 p.m.) and Thursday April 18 (9 a.m.-7 p.m.)
Fill a bag for $7 (bags provided at the door.) Choose from books for all ages, DVDs, music CDs, magazines and puzzles.
Only cash or check is accepted.
The book sale is located in the book sale room (lower level of the library), which is handicap accessible. Access is available from the main entrance of the library via steps or lower-level parking (no steps.) Click here for directions to the library.
Let the library help you with your next trip. The library provides passport services and travel books, helping make your next trip possible.
Apply for a first-time passport or renew your current passport at the library. We can also take the photo, making it a one stop shop.
We also have travel books for different states, regions and common destinations. Many people are getting passports for trips to Canada, cruises in the Caribbean, or simply flying to somewhere either domestic or abroad. Make sure to borrow a travel book from the library to make your next trip memorable and fun.
Book of the week!
If you are going to read one book, give this one a try...
American Spirits by Russell Banks
(New adult fiction: small town & rural, literary, political) ~ 240 pages
In a nutshell: Three stories unearth the bitterness and violence seething in a working-class American town.
These long narratives by the late Banks are all set in the northern New York village of Sam Dent that were featured in The Sweet Hereafter (1991). But where that story dealt with a tragedy that affected the whole town, these explore the welter of pain that can afflict a single house.
In "Nowhere Man," a feud between neighbors escalates when one of them finds himself threatened on social media. Banks' choice of victim is pointedly cruel.
"Homeschooling" has a Hallmark-wholesome family adjusting to next-door neighbors. When the kids suggest that all is not well in their household, the adults trade bitter words that lead to an awful outcome. Banks plants doubt about the virtue and veracity on both sides, fostering an ambiguity that challenges any facile finger-pointing.
In "Kidnapped," the grandparents of a young man who lost his father to war and his mother to drugs open their door one evening to find two drug thugs looking for human leverage in a deal gone bad. This is a dark tale in which death is dealt out remorselessly, family ties are fatal and a change of heart or a well-meant deed can turn virtue into complicity.
All these stories include ruminations on the passage of time, changes and damage in the landscape, and the values and aspirations sustained from generation to generation.
Bottom line: The tone in these passages is almost elegiac: hymns to a past when fewer wounds were self-inflicted.
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Vince Giordano has been the librarian and director of the Juniata County Library since 2015.