Black Friday book sale was a success, and so are local authors

Published 9:11 am Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Thanks to everyone who came to the library’s Black Friday Book Sale. It was the most successful Black Friday Book Sale ever (third time’s a charm) and it netted more than $1,300, all of which will go toward next year’s Children’s Summer Reading Program.

As an Italian Elvis Presley would have said, “Grazie! Molte grazie!” to circulation managers Lynn Wills and Caleb Diederich, who collect the books, lug and organize them throughout the year, mastermind the book sale and restock books during it. Phenomenal work.

Done with some phenomenal help. This year, library cataloger Laura Carpenter and library pal Nancy Burd assisted with set up. On Friday, Annabelle Dorsey, Holly and Elva Harris and Nancy Burd worked the book sale; on Saturday, Mable Royse and Elva Harris worked the book sale, too.As fine a bunch of library elves as one could ever hope to meet. Thank you so much. You are all on Santa’s “mighty fine” list.

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If you’re looking for mainstream, mid-list or esoteric books (cheap) for a finicky reader’s holiday gift, try the used book shelves in the library lobby. Books are $1 for paperbacks or $3 for hardbacks. At this writing, a quick browse of those shelves reveal: “The Private Mary Chesnut: The Unpublished Civil War Diaries,” “One-Dish Vegan,” Carolyn Sherwin Bailey’s Newberry Award winning Metamorphosis of a nut, “Miss Hickory,” and a near complete set of the novels of Zane Grey. Diverse books are set out daily.

For those of you who came to the book signing by Winchester author Carolyn Bond on Sunday Nov. 13, you’ll be glad to know that she’s had more success. Last week, her novel, “Bluegrass Blush,” made it to No. 3 on Amazon’s Best Seller list for historical Christian romance and was in the top 1,000 of all genre novels.

The library has two copies of Carolyn’s book available for checkout.

Yesterday, the library received a new novel by Winchester writer Jennifer Music. It’s titled “The Daughters of Men,” and Jennifer categorizes it as a classic romance. In order to get a sense of what she meant by “classic romance,” I asked her who she used as style models. She said, “Trollope, Dickens, and Austen.” Those are ambitious models; but after reading the beginning of her book, I’ve decided that Jennifer is not playing the sedulous ape to Trollope, she’s become Trollope.

“Daughters of Men” is beautifully written in the tone, rhythm and language of a late-Victorian novel. If you like Victorian novels — this is a shout-out to you, Mary-Jo Bonds — take a look at this book. The characters are three-dimensional, multi-faceted, visually engaging, thinking people. The research that must have been done to create the settings is impressive.

The library should have two copies of “Daughters of Men” ready to check out this week.

Jennifer will have a book autographing at the library on Friday, Dec. 16, from 1 to 3 p.m. That’s the day of the library’s holiday open house. Come in, have a cookie and some coffee or some warm cider and meet Jennifer.

And don’t forget Kentucky Poet Laureate George Ella Lyon will be at the library this Thursday evening at 6:30 p.m. George Ella will present “Mapping Your Memory House,” a workshop in which she will guide attendees through writing exercises to recall and write about old residences.She will also read from her poetry collection that grew out of those exercises, “Many-Storied House.”

There was a time when people went to libraries to do research for stories, keep diaries, plan events, brainstorm on paper and talk to the librarians and other patrons about their work. That time is now at the Clark County Public Library.

Here, you can not only read books, you can write them.