December 14, 2019

Holiday movie matinee NEXT Saturday!


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...

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December 5, 2019

Alexis de Tocqueville has nothing on this...



Come to the Jones to learn more about Democracy in Amherst.

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December 3, 2019

Want to learn more about metalsmithing?


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


December 2, 2019

Massachusetts Book Award authors at the Jones


Book readings! Famous authors! Signed books! 
What more could you wish for?

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November 21, 2019

Two Mondays of note in December!


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!

November 20, 2019

Meet the Bookmobile’s Cousin


Hey Jones Library, everyone knows what a bookmobile is 
but whaddya say to a FOODmobile? 
The NY Public Library has one going on.
 
https://nyti.ms/2rVNvx1
 

November 19, 2019

Modern Women Writers Reflect on Emily Dickinson's Influence


"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."

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/tell-it-slant-modern-women-writers-emily-dickinson-appletv-1250744

Read more about the Belle of Amherst here.

November 14, 2019

Donate your old coats!


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.


November 13, 2019

THIS Friday and Saturday!


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.


Two fabulous Sunday events at the Jones!




November 12, 2019

Stalking the wild mushroom...


Bring your own pith helmet.
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November 6, 2019

What's better than a book sale?


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.
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Tales from Mt. Washington


You think the weather's bad here? Could be worse, Friends. 
Could be worse.

TOMORROW NIGHT!
  
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November 4, 2019

Capital Investments: Community Listening Sessions

https://www.amherstma.gov/civicalerts.aspx?AID=2473
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:
  • Tuesday, December 3rd at 3:30 p.m. at Bangs Center Large Activity Room
  • Tuesday, December 3rd at 7:00 p.m. at Crocker Farm Elementary School, Cafeteria
  • Monday, December 9th at 3:00 p.m. at Fort River Elementary School, Cafeteria
  • Monday, December 9th 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, Fire/Emergency Medical Services headquarters, and the Jones Library. These investments could happen through new construction, extensive renovation, or addressing only major repairs.

These needs must also be balanced with the ongoing capital needs of the day-to-day operations of the Town, such as paving roads and replacing or adding sidewalks, maintaining existing buildings, and replacing vehicles as needed.

The goal of the Listening Sessions is to provide the Town Council with insights and opinions from the community that will help inform its planning for and funding significant investments in each of the four capital projects.

The Listening Sessions will be facilitated and structured to provide basic information to the public and offer the opportunity for members of the public to participate in small group discussions that will ensure wide, active participation of all involved. The Town website will also have a dedicated place to view the relevant materials and provide comments (coming soon).

The Town Council and staff will be listening, taking notes, and giving careful consideration to all comments. Please join your fellow residents to helping to shape how these four investment decisions are made.

October 31, 2019

10 blood curding facts about Dracula


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

http://mentalfloss.com/article/69823/10-blood-curdling-facts-about-dracula


October 30, 2019

Still not sure??


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.


https://149349728.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Costume-generator.jpg

Go forth, you Ironic Plums That Were In The Icebox, you.

October 29, 2019

23 Book-Inspired Halloween Costumes for Kids and Parents


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.

https://www.readbrightly.com/19-book-inspired-halloween-costumes-kids-parents/

October 26, 2019

Do you know what languages these words come from?


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?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-games/where-in-the-world

October 25, 2019

For all the romantic, book-loving couples out there.


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...

October 24, 2019

"The People Who Helped Me the Most Were the Librarians.”


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.

https://www.slj.com/?detailStory=elijah-cummings-enoch-pratt-library&fbclid=IwAR2BAYbVVsNzU7-CyGj78f1HcxAGUgl0lUs2qJHIAyKKhxhIfaQCBVyRfm0

Watch a 2-minute video clip of that interview here.

October 21, 2019

jubilat/Jones poetry reading next Sunday!

Free poetry reading with Q&A afterwards. 
What more could you want?

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October 19, 2019

The _______'s Wife


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.  

https://www.booknetcanada.ca/blog/2019/10/1/the-wife

Curious? Here's what they found out.

October 17, 2019

And now we have the morbs


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.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/576526/quiz-victorian-slang

October 16, 2019

October 14, 2019

Bring out your ukes! Bring out your ukes!


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

October 11, 2019

October 10, 2019

Threatening death, or worse.


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!

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/protect-your-library-the-medieval-way-with-horrifying-book-curses

October 4, 2019

Who Wrote It: Edgar Allan Poe or an Emo Band?


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?

http://mentalfloss.com/article/570619/who-wrote-it-edgar-allan-poe-or-emo-band

October 3, 2019

The Global War on Books, Redux


“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.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/opinion/books-censorship.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

UMass Science club this Tuesday


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.)

September 28, 2019

Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers


"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...

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/09/love-reading-books-leisure-pleasure/598315/

September 27, 2019

Perhaps it was the words...


..."the library’s onsite 26-room B&B" that first caught our attention.  
Perhaps it was merely the title of the Smithsonian Magazine article:  
 Regardless. We're smitten.

Want to learn how you, too, can spend the night in a library?  

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/i-spent-night-library-wales-and-you-can-too-180973040/?fbclid=IwAR26mrt5_qxiu6YOfVwscOrLXbr79gbopB5a0QCk8ZPlWRPQRflNrkix4XI#IeCARJ8YLlz0o0Lj.01

September 26, 2019

A Map of Forbidden Books in 2019


https://geediting.com/forbidden-books-2019-map/

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.

September 24, 2019

Banned Books Week


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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXQtgx9HNxE

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...

NEXT Tuesday!


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!


30 books in 30 days. Possible?


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

https://www.fastcompany.com/40580273/what-happened-when-i-tried-to-read-30-books-in-30-days

September 22, 2019

The Book Thief of Monastery Mountain


"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??