Friends of the Jones Library System News

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You'll love warming up at the Jones with this free Christmas classic. Unless your head isn't screwed on just right, or perhaps your shoes are too tight, or maybe if your heart is two sizes too small... (Click on image to enlarge.)

Come to the Jones to learn more about Democracy in Amherst.   (Click on image to enlarge.)

Come to the Jones. Make a holiday ornament. Learn something new. Hang out with some cool adults. Totally free. From your Friends. Happy holidays.

Book readings! Famous authors! Signed books!  What more could you wish for?   (Click on image to enlarge.)

TUESDAY EVENING (Click on image to enlarge.)

12/9 6 p.m. Wildwood Elementary School Town Listening Session to collect comments from the public on the need for four major capital investments facing the Town and to provide guidance to the Town Council in setting priorities. Members of the School Committee and Jones Library Trustees have assisted in development of the information for these sessions and will be present at each session. 12/16 5:30 p.m. Woodbury Room, Jones Library   Annual meeting of the Friends of the Jones Library. Come learn what we do and how we do it!

Hey Jones Library, everyone knows what a bookmobile is  but whaddya say to a FOODmobile?  The NY Public Library has one going on .    

"She was a true weirdo outsider artist who reinvented the rules of poetry and managed to contain infinitely huge ideas on miniature scraps of paper." Read more about the Belle of Amherst here .

Have cold-weather clothing you no longer need?  Have the children in your life outgrown last year's coats/boots/mittens?    Please, oh please, bring your gently used clothing to  the Jones Library Children's Room any time between now and 11/30.      (Click on image to enlarge.)  With gratitude, your Friends.

Book sale! Book sale! Read all about it! Friday, 6:30-7:30, for members (you can join on the spot!) and Saturday, 9:00-3:00, at the Jones Library.

Bring your own pith helmet.   (Click on image to enlarge.)

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A book AND bake sale!  Friday and Saturday, Nov. 15-16, Friends.  Members get a jump on the crowds at our  Friday Night Friends Only Hour (like cocktail hour but even more fun).  Then Saturday 9-3 for the entire community .  Come for the books,  stay for the brownies. (Click on image to enlarge)

You think the weather's bad here? Could be worse, Friends.  Could be worse. TOMORROW NIGHT!     (Click on image to enlarge.)

The Town Council will hold four Listening Sessions to collect comments from the public on the need for four major capital investments facing the Town and to provide guidance to the Town Council in setting priorities.  Members of the School Committee and Jones Library Trustees have assisted in development of the information for these sessions and will be present at each session. The Listening Sessions will be held on the following dates and times: T uesday, December 3 rd at 3:30 p.m. at Bangs Center Large Activity Room Tuesday, December 3 rd at 7:00 p.m. at Crocker Farm Elementary School, Cafeteria Monday, December 9 th at 3:00 p.m. at Fort River Elementary School, Cafeteria Monday, December 9 th at 6:00 p.m. at Wildwood Elementary School, Cafeteria The Town has a clear need to make significant investments in four major capital projects –elementary school(s) (Fort River Elementary School and Wildwood Elementary School), Department of Public Works facility, Fi...

Need to scare yourself tonight? Curl up in a dark room with your back to the window and read on , dear Friends.

The big day's tomorrow but if you're still flummoxed about what to go as,  here's a literary Costume-Idea-Generator for you. Go forth, you Ironic Plums That Were In The Icebox, you.

It's almost Halloween! Still looking for inspiration? Search no more! Here are a whole Halloween candy bagful of literary ideas for you and your small people on Thursday.

English is, by any reckoning, a very large language. No one is entirely certain how many words it contains (since it is very difficult to get everyone to agree on how to count them), but general estimates are somewhere in the neighborhood of a million (it’s a very large neighborhood). Think you can name where the following words come from?

To celebrate the 125th anniversary of the McKim Building, the Boston Public Library is offering four couples the opportunity to get married for free inside the Abbey Room at the Central Library in Copley Square. Hey Jones Library, we have an idea...

Representative Elijah Cummings died one week ago today. He was a man who loved his librarians. “The people who helped me the most were the librarians,” Cummings told Steve Kroft in a 60 Minutes  interview broadcast in January of this year, adding that the public library was the only integrated institution in his neighborhood. Watch a 2-minute video clip of that interview here .

The good folks over at BBC Radio have created a 15-question quiz for all you lovers of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy . Take it to find out if all the answers really are 42.

Go to the Jones Library's website for more scary details.  IF YOU DARE.

Free poetry reading with Q&A afterwards.  What more could you want? (Click on image to enlarge.)

Some data-loving book nerds out there did a study of how many books are titled some version of "The ______'s Wife."  As data-lovers ourselves, we kind of geeked out on this one.   Curious? Here's what they found out .

Why, you ask? Because we only scored a 5/10 on the Match the Victorian Slang to Its Meaning quiz . Surely you can do better, Chuckaboos.

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Maybe you'll strum a little "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," too!

C'mon, it's funny.   Take the quiz here .

From Pooh to Mr. Darcy to Hannibal Lecter, learn what they'd probably order from their local barista .

You know how some libraries have those book detectors that go off if your book hasn't been scanned out properly? Or if you accidentally tried to leave with an un-checked out book? And still, books walk out of libraries, never to be returned again. Well, we have the solution for libraries experiencing book problems of this type: Protect Your Library the Medieval Way, With Horrifying Book Curses You know what those crafty medievalists did? At the beginning or the end of books, scribes and book owners would write dramatic curses threatening thieves with pain and suffering if they were to steal or damage these treasures. Bam! Problem solved!

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... from National Geographic , just for you.

Maybe you fancy yourself an erudite scholar of a certain macabre American writer? Maybe you think you'll be able to tell the difference immediately between such a lofty man of letters and My Chemical Romance or Jimmy Eat World? Let's take a look-see, Friends, with this quiz: Who Wrote It: Edgar Allan Poe or an Emo Band ?

“If they’re killing people for poetry, that means they honor and esteem it, they fear it, that means poetry is power.” This recent NYT op-ed, The Global War on Books, Redux , gives you food for thought.

Science in action!  With real, live scientists!  Doing science experiments! No need to bring your hazmat suit. This time. Bwaahahahaaaaa.   (Click on image to enlarge.)

"A chief factor seems to be the household one is born into, and the culture of reading that parents create within it." But that's not all ...

..."the library’s onsite 26-room B&B " that first caught our attention.   Perhaps it was merely the title of the Smithsonian Magazine article:   I Spent the Night in a Library in Wales, and You Can Too.  Regardless. We're smitten. Want to learn how you, too, can spend the night in a library?   Read away, Friends .

For almost as long we’ve been writing, governments and religious groups have attempted to censor what we read. Click here to see a cool map of a bunch of banned books from this year.

Take this NYPL quiz and find out!

Because we're in the midst of Banned Books Week , we thought you all might be interested in this two minute video by the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom: Then? Go check out George , A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo , Captain Underpants , Junie B. Jones , The Hate U Give , Drama , The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian , Tintin , Brave New World , The Catcher in the Rye , The Satanic Verses ...

Trying to get a little more organization in your life?  Feeling overwhelmed by your To-Do list? Curious about Bullet Journaling ?  If you want to learn more, here's your chance!

This Fast Company article discusses  one woman's attempt to read a book a day.  And what she learned.

"When priceless texts began disappearing from a seventh-century hilltop abbey, the police were mystified. They were even more befuddled when they finally caught the culprit... He was our Arsène Lupin .”  Who WAS this mystery man??  Read on, dear Friend .