MORRISVILLE LIBRARY NEWS November 9, 2001
by Mary Brown

Have you ever been to a silent auction? No calling out bids. No waving bid cards. No auctioneer bellowing out, "Who'll give me ten dollars to start the bidding?" A silent auction is just lots of fun and suspense as you write down your bid for an item on its bid list and hope that no one bids higher than you. Your chance to participate in a silent auction is coming soon at the library, but first, we have to stock up on some great items to put up for auction.


The library is now accepting donations for the second annual Holiday Silent Auction to benefit the library. We are looking for nice new items, quality handmade items or "mint" antique or collectible items that could be used as holiday gifts by the successful bidders. We have already received some great auction items, for example, a lovely wall quilt, a Gevalia coffee maker, a pretty hall mirror, a handmade afghan, signed paintings, pizza gift certificates, and passes to the Ice Plex. The silent auction will begin on Monday, November 26th and end on Thursday, December 13th. Please bring in your donations soon so that Barb can get them organized for the big event.


Other great events are also on the agenda for this month. The Pre-School Story Hour with Grandma B. will continue on Tuesday mornings, November 20 and November 27. The second Book Talk will be this Friday, November 16th when Professor Roxanna Pisiak of SUNY Morrisville will lead a discussion of Bee Season by Myla Goldberg. Join us for a stimulating evening of talk about this interesting novel. On Sunday, November 25th, the Friends of the Library will hold their annual Holiday Decoration Day from 2 to 4 p.m. Everyone is invited to come and help.


Coming soon to the program room is a display of videos about and books by prominent writers such as Denise Levertov, Jamaica Kincaid, Wendell Barry, and Linda Hogan. You will be able sign out the "sets" so that you can read the work and see a video about its writer. What a unique way to enjoy literature.


Thank-yous go out this week to several generous book donors. The Wednesday Club donated Home Cooking Around the World: A Recipe Collection in memory of Virginia Stevens. Lynde Lafever donated two audiobooks, The Bear and the Dragon by Tom Clancy and The Alibi by Sandra Brown. Audrey Clark gave the library Belva Plain's novel, Looking Back. Barb Richmond adopted Sandra Brown's Envy, a romantic suspense novel about a book editor who's intrigued enough to chase a mysterious author, identified only by his initials, to his decrepit plantation on an island off the Georgia Coast. Anonymous donors have added to our collection The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif, a book that combines politics and romance in something of an eternal spiral connecting two families and two cultures in parallel love stories set nearly 100 years apart, and First Loves by Carmela Ciuvaw in which poets introduce the poems that inspired them. Blackbird : A Childhood Lost and Found by Jennifer Lauck is her remarkable memoir of the six painful years during which both of her parents died. A Nurse's Story and Others by Peter Baida is a collection of stories that range from Baida's O. Henry Award-winning title story about the final days of a Catholic nurse, to "The Reckoning," in which a corrupt university president's family is torn apart by his downfall. The Camomile Lawn by Mary Wesley is the story of one extended family's adventures in London during the Blitz. No Visible Means of Support by Dabney Stuart is a collection of five interesting mystery stories. Sex, Literature and Censorship by Jonathan Dollimore expertly explores this age-old dilemma. Rounding out the list of donations are Elizabeth Lowell's Beautiful Dreamer, Charlene Thompson's Since You've Been Gone and Barbara Cartland's Three Complete Novels of Royalty and Romance.


Our collection of MusicNet CD's rotates every six weeks, and a new group have just arrived. Check them out. New videos just in, thanks to generous donors, are "Pure Country", "And the Band Played On', "Trading Places", "Of Human Bondage", and "Prime Time Fitness". Also, we have just begun a subscription to Akwe:kon , a journal of articles about Native American topics.


If there is anyone out there who is good with plants, we desperately need a volunteer to repot the library's plants.


Think "giving" this week when you think of the library. Bring in a nice item to give us for the upcoming silent auction. Purchase a library tote bag , library note cards or a "Morrisville's Yesteryears" calendar to give someone for Christmas. Your library will give back to you a hundredfold.


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November 26, 2001