We celebrated New Hope Arts, Inc's Savor New Hope event in style with a small outdoor book sale at the library, and with an extra special table at the kids' crafts center at Union Square. We brought along our ever-popular Make-a-Book kits, as well as supplies for stylish paper hats. Take a look:

Borough Council President Sharyn Keiser helps her granddaughters make their books


Katie makes a little book all on her own


Riley shows off her new hat

The Spring Mammoth Book Sale will start Friday May 16th at 10 a.m. and will continue through Saturday May 24th. The book sale is a major source of fund-raising for the library and is made possible by the generous donation of books by the community.

This spring a large inventory of books is available for sale: hardback books (fiction, including mysteries, and non-fiction, including cookbooks, art books, coffee table books, gardening books, history books, biographies, and books on arts & crafts and decorating) as well as children’s books and a large selection of paperbacks and trade paperbacks. Most mass market paperbacks are priced at 50¢, and most trade paperbacks and mystery and fiction books are $1.00; coffee table and other valuable books are priced substantially lower than retail. On the final day of the sale, May 24th , most books will be half-priced.

This year Cora Berke is chairing the book sale committee. The proceeds of the Mammoth Book Sale are used for new purchases and support day to day operations, helping the library to better serve the community. Many thanks to donors, buyers, and volunteers!

Details about our Summer Reading and Creativity Programs are now available on our Summer Reading Club page. Space in all clubs is limited, so please plan now to register. You must register in person at the library. Registration begins Saturday, June 7, at 10:00 AM.

Starring: Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Claire Danes, Charlie Cox, more cast

Directed By: Matthew Vaughn

Run Time: 127 min.
Rating: PG-13

STARDUST: THIS ONE-OF-A-KIND FANTASY IS AMAZING

Synopsis

The film follows the story of Tristan (Cox), a young man living in the city of Wall, England. This city contains the wall that separates the world we know from the magical realm of Stormhold. The wall has been there for centuries and nobody has passed it until Tristan tries while seeking to win the heart of Victoria. Tristan promises Victoria that he will get a fallen star for her in time for her birthday. In the magical realm, The King of Stormhold (Peter O’Toole) is dying and must give up his reign to one of his 4 sons. To decide who will be the next king, he sends them on a quest to retrieve a pendant on the same star that Tristan is trying to retrieve. Tristan, the first one to get to the star, discovers the star is a beautiful girl by the name of Yvaine (Danes). While bringing Yvaine back to Wall, they meet the evil witch Lamia (Pfeiffer), who has been trying to capture Yvaine and cut out her heart and eat it so she and her sisters will be young again. Along the way Tristan and Yvaine also meet Captain Shakespeare (De Niro), a pirate that acts ruthless and mean to his men but kind to Tristan and Yvaine. This movie combines romance, action, and comedy. I would recommend it for anyone that enjoys an interesting and exciting fantasy.


Movie review by Jeff Skoroda

Check our catalog to see if this movie is available.
If you are interested in submitting a movie or book review for the website, please contact the librarian.

Here's a great, big THANK YOU to all our friends in Solebury who wrote letters in support of the library for our recent budget presentation before the Solebury Township Board of Supervisors.

THANKS also to the Supervisors for their attention and response to our presentation.

Your support is deeply appreciated. It allows us to work hard and give you the services and programs the community wants and deserves.

You may receive a mailing from us soon. Please accept our thanks for your attention to our Fund Drive. If you've already given this year, THANKS to you, too!

We're happy to add a link to the Community School of New Hope-Solebury on the right side of this website. The Community School offers programs, events, classes and trips for people of all ages and interests. Check out their website to learn more.

"The Community School of New Hope-Solebury is dedicated to enriching the community through educational, social, recreational, and cultural services and activities."

Our GIANT Fall book sale will begin at 10:00 AM Friday, October 26. Come pick up beautiful, like-new gift books and great reading for yourself as well!

If you were one of the first to register a phone number on Pennsylvania's Do Not Call list, then you will need to re-register by this Saturday, 9/15, to continue your protection from unsolicited phone calls. Go to the Attorney General's website for more information. After all, who wants to take a call from a telemarketer right in the middle of a really good book?

There will be a special Children's Book Sale at the library starting Thursday, September 20 at 10:00 AM and ending Saturday, September 22 at 5:00 PM. We have a wonderful collection of books for all ages, many in pristine condition, at very low prices. Stock up for winter reading and holiday gifts!

Our weekly Story Hour for preschool children (accompanied by adults) is back from Summer Vacation! There's no need to register in advance. Please join us Wednesday morning from 10:45 to 11:30 for stories, rhymes, and fun.

It's quite a week for Burke family books at the library. James Lee Burke weighs in with a book of short stories, Jesus Out to Sea, and with the latest in his Dave Robicheaux series, The Tin Roof Blowdown, while daughter Alafair starts a new series in Dead Connection. I'm just finishing The Tin Roof Blowdown, and I was all set to write in with a very good review of this just-post-Katrina New Orleans mystery. Only there's this wonderful quote that I have to share, and once I do you'll think I'm biased.

"Then I used the most valuable and unlauded investigative resource in the United States, the lowly reference librarian. Their salaries are wretched and they receive credit for nothing. Their desks are usually tucked away in the stacks or in a remote corner where they have to shush noisy high school students or put up with street people blowing wine in their faces or snoring in the stuffed chairs. But their ability to find obscure information is remarkable and they persevere like Spartans."

All right, I am biased. But that quote appears on page 354, and I liked the book a long time before that. For more (theoretically unbiased) information, check out this recent National Public Radio story on James Lee Burke.

Hurray for the Auto Show!

In honor of the show, the library will host a special one-day book sale on Saturday, August 11 from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. There will be a large collection of all sorts of books at great prices.

Please come: recycle some paper in the best way possible. Find a new (used) book to love, and support your local library. We receive less than half our funding from government sources, so we rely on book sales and other local fundraising to keep the doors open and the shelves stocked.

Thanks for joining us!

Unfortunately, the New Hope Gazette was unable to print this week's library column. It appears here on the website instead:

Oh, who do you think you’re fooling? We all know what happens Saturday, and I am well aware that every single copy of every Harry Potter story in every format we carry (audio, DVD, and print) is checked out at the moment, as everyone tries to catch up in time for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I’m not sure why I’m bothering to announce any new titles at all, but there are a great many, so let’s pretend someone is going to read them.

Off the Record: The Press,The Government, and the War over Anonymous Sources is Time, Inc. editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine’s attempt to justify turning over reporter Matt Cooper’s notes on confidential sources used in reporting on the Valerie Plame scandal. Pearlstine is a smart, witty man. He might convince you.

In Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA Pulitzer Prize winner Tim Weiner presents the first fully-researched, definitive history of the agency that employed Plame. After serious study, Weiner concludes that the CIA has repeatedly intervened in affairs it has utterly failed to understand first. This book deserves to be read.

If that didn’t rile you up enough, there’s always Outrage : How Illegal Immigration, the United Nations, Congressional Ripoffs, Student Loan Overcharges, Tobacco Companies, Trade Protection, and Drug Companies Are Ripping Us Off . . . And What To Do About It by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann. What could I add? The title makes itself quite clear.

If you’re looking for a true story that won’t entirely infuriate, try American Legacy: The Story of John and Caroline Kennedy, in which C. David Heymann offers a tell-all Kennedy tale that manages to be compelling despite the fact that most of these anecdotes have been told elsewhere.

Finally in non-fiction, there’s Happy Endings: The Tales of a Meaty-Breasted Zilch, a book of essays by Jim Norton. The jacket claims this book is hilarious, if occasionally “morally repugnant,” but I honestly don’t recall ordering it and suspect it may have been sent to us by mistake. Either that or I am in serious need of a very long vacation.

There’s so much new fiction I have to resort to some choppy capsule reviews. I’ll write real sentences with nice segues next week (if I finish Harry Potter in time).

Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea is a brave first novel, originally published in Arabic, which reveals in forbidden detail the true lives of Saudi women. Some religious leaders called for this book to be banned, while scholars and critics hailed it as the first genuinely modern Arabic novel.

New England White is the latest from Stephen L. Carter (The Emperor of Ocean Park). There’s been a murder in a New England university town, where an African-American university president and his wife, the deputy dean of the divinity school, live “in the heart of whiteness.” She was the victim’s long-ago lover. Her husband is an old friend of the President of the United States. Carter examines a complicated web of racial history, political connections, and personal desires as he explores the differences between loyalty to ideas and loyalty to people.

Sammy’s House is Kristin Gore's second Washington comedy about hypochondriac Sammy Joyce, now newly appointed White House health care advisor. Sammy has her hands full with a President who has a history with the bottle, a boyfriend who’s leaving for a better job, and a shady pharmaceutical deal.

My Dreams Out in the Street, by National Book Award finalist Kim Addonizio, is a story of redemption focusing on a down-and-out young woman, haunted by her mother’s murder and her husband’s disappearance, who is caught in the aftermath of a violent crime. She finds some solace with a criminal investigator, but he’s married. And so is she, she finds, when her husband Jimmy turns up again.

Keeping the World Away by Margaret Forster follows a remarkable painting which changes hands throughout the years, changing the lives of the women it touches. See here how art affects life.

Touching Stars is the latest Shenandoah novel from Emilie Richards. Gayle divorced her brilliant journalist husband, and has brought up their three sons pretty much alone. Now husband Eric is back again, having nearly been killed in Afghanistan. He needs a place to recover, and Gayle wonders whether they can recover their love as well.

Facets, a family saga from Barbara Delinsky, was originally published in 1990, but many of Delinsky’s newer fans never saw it. Here it is, reprinted and new to the library.

A Wanted Man by Linda Lael Miller pits a fancy schoolmarm and an impudent marshal against some nasty train robbers. Possibly they fall in love along the way.

In Nora Roberts’s High Noon Savannah’s top hostage negotiator, Phoebe MacNamara, must also negotiate with her seven-year-old daughter and her agoraphobic mother. And then there’s sports bar owner Duncan Swift…

Daddy’s Girls are the four daughters of a wealthy English lord who’s just suffered a fatal fall. Each has a motive. Tasmina Perry’s first novel is a glitzy beach read.

Ham Bones, the latest Southern Belle mystery from Carolyn Haines, features a touring production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a cyanide-laced lipstick, and plenty of Southern comforts.

Rhys Bowen introduces a new detective, Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, in Her Royal Spyness. She may be 34th in line for the throne in 1930’s England, but she’s also flat broke, having run away from home to avoid marrying Prince Siegfried of Romania. Fortunately, the Queen needs someone to spy on her playboy son.

The Ever-Running Man by Marcia Muller brings an old-favorite sleuth, Sharon McCone, back into the field to track down the man who’s’ been leaving explosive devices at the offices of her husband’s security firm.

Casanegra by Blair Underwood with Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes introduces gorgeous actor and former gigolo Tennyson Hardwick, and sets him off to solve his first mystery, as he becomes the chief suspect in a rapper’s murder.

The Death List by Paul Johnston is a dark thriller in which novelist Matt Wells, who thought he was suffering with writer’s block, discovers true suffering when he begins to receive emails from a serial killer who’s determined to tie Matt to the crimes.

The Quickie, by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge, begins with the premise that Lauren deserves a little on the side herself when she finds her husband has cheated in her. Her quickie goes awry when she witnesses a hideous crime. Does she stay silent, or does she need to tell?

In Killer Weekend Ridley Pearson brings together a high-level communications conference, a would-be President, an assassin, and a sheriff with more troubles than he can handle for thrills and adventure.

The Judas Strain by James Rollins sets SIGMA Force against a horrible plague which appears from the depths of the Indian Ocean to threaten all of mankind. Meanwhile, there’s an assassin. Oh, and Marco Polo fits in there somewhere as well. Settle in with a nice glass of Scotch, and suspend disbelief happily for a few hours.

Between columns, I’m librarian@nhslibrary.org, and outside operating hours the library is at www.nhslibrary.org. Let me know what you want to read next.

The library is very happy to take part once again in the annual Savor New Hope weekend created by New Hope Arts Inc. On Saturday, July 14 we will feature three special events.

Storyteller Jane King returns at 1:00 PM with wonderful tales for kids of all ages.

We'll have a special one-day book sale, with oodles of great bargains on good reading.

During the afternoon acoustic musician Daria will play.

Please come join us, and please bring your kids to hear stories at 1:00.

Registration for Summer Reading Club is complete, and the programs start this week.

Thanks for your support!