Friends Bulletin Board

International Year of the Forest

2011 is the International Year of the Forest
Many projects and programmes have been developed to raise awareness of the importance of conservation and management of forests. (www.un.org.en/events/iyof2011) Deforestation accounts for 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which contributes to global climate change. Trees have an important role in biodversity, cultural diversity and environmental benefits. Trees are an integral part of our lives and those of future generations.
Our library is also an integral part of our lives and is a tree of knowledge! The Library is a great center of learning, for young and old, with so many resources (see August Library Newsletter - link) Check out the Bulletin Board in September for our tree craft of re-purposed books. Remember that BOOKS are a great carbon sink!

The book you don't read won't help. Jim Rohn
Some people read so little they have rickets of the mind. Jim Rohn
The images of men's wits and knowledge remain in books. Francis Bacon
True friendship can afford true knowledge.  Thoreau
True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing. Socrates
We are drowning in information and starved for knowledge. Anon

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? TE Eliot

Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, mankind the vessel. Augustus William Hare

A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can. Jane Austen

Friends Bulletin Board

The summer display, created by Julie Taylor, was so much fun. Great colour, interesting reads, and so much information! Wait til you see what she has in store for the autumn months: hint she is using repurposed paper/books to create an interesting autumn scene!

Thanks to another good Friend of the Library, Eugenia for helping!

Bulletin Board: March

We have expanded our event heading on our Friends Bulletin Board, for Literary Events that occur in Rochester, In Minnesota, Around the United States and Around the World! Let us know if you have any items that you know of; otherwise check out this site for interesting details on books, authors or publishers.     Don't forget that we also post our Book Sales for the Friends, the Bookstore and the Unusual and Special Books. April is a VERY busy month, full of literary events and adventures. Join us for National Library Week activities, National Volunteer Appreciation Week and much more.

Coming Up on March 26 is Children's Picture Book Day - a fabulous time to read to your child!

Friends' Bulletin Board

The Current Bulletin Board, with information on the Friends, the Library, Booksales and Events.

Irish Literature, St Patrick's Day, James Joyce, Edna O'Brien,William York TIndall

Continuing our Irish theme, for further understanding of James Joyce, you can read several studies by the American (Vermonter) James Joyce scholor and literary critic Willliam York Tindall : particularly A Reader's Guide to James Joyce (1959) and A Reader's Guide to Finnegan's Wake. Tindall traveled to Europe after graduating from Columbia University. In Paris, on June 16, he bought a copy of the notorious book Ulysses, and "went straight to Luxembourg Gardens and read the final chapters, and discovered that it wasn't a dirty book but a fascinating one." He became obsessed with Joyce. When he started teaching a course in modern literature at New York University, he was one of the first to assign Ulysses to his students, although the book was still banned in the U.S. at the time. The students read a bootlegged copy that was chained to a desk in the library. He went on to become president of the James Joyce Society.
One of the best biographies on Joyce is by Edna O’Brien James Joyce (1999).
I think perhaps it takes an Irish to understand an Irish: fresh eye, passionate, stern, but a tribute, with many insights about the individual and his writing. This is the Penguin Lives series, one I hadn’t read in awhile = but loved Carol Shield’s Jane Austen, Peter Gay’s Mozart, Larry McMurtry on Crazy Horse, Karen Armstrong on Buddha and David Quammen on Charles Darwin. The writers are absolutely first rate, nearly obsessed with their chosen subject. I found this series with a $1 paperback (Shield’s on Austen) in the bookstore several years ago. I wondered what else I could learn about Austen, and was astonished with the nuances, the finatics, and the writing style. So, now I have another series to read!! A rather long list.
Fyi, Joyce – matured into a man who was obsessed with home, the usual fate of self imposed exile. I have to tell Robin that some one marked the library’s copy – underlining words they didn’t know. And indeed the first two paragraphs have 15 words most Americans don't know; (but most of them are common in English academics – we decided two were made up! Need the longer version of the OED). I have to erase all the marks in this library book…it is so distracting from reading.