Friends' Book Sale

Here it is the end of summer and September is right around the corner and that means Friends' Book Sale at Riverside Park. This year the sale is just two days - Friday and Saturday so plan to come early and stay late. The best deals are made late but the best books are found early so you decide.

The Library Friends use all of their money for the library and our work. They buy our lease books program and our talking books; they fund most of our programs by paying for speakers, banners, invitations, refreshments, and even the gifts for our Tree Lighting Festival; they underwrite our Reading is Fundamental effort that places a book in the hands of every 5th grader in Independence that we can reach; and they have purchased more equipment than I care to list.

The Friends is a volunteer group who sign up to serve and they do it on behalf of all library users and library supporters. There are not very many of the 'worker bees' in our Friends' hive which in no way reflects on the amount of work they accomplish because they get the job done, and there are a group of other Friends they can call on for special efforts like helping at the book sale or baking something special for a program.

If you have books to donate for the sale please do. If you want to come and look for books to buy please do. Both things are for a good cause.

Back to Stockholm

Stieg Larsson. What a writer.

Start with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Next read The Girl Who Played With Fire.

Now wait. Next will come Castles in the Sky. Then it will be over.

He died. What a dirty trick.

He waited until he had the first two mysteries written before he even contacted a publisher. He finished the third novel in the trilogy but there will not be any more.

These were all written in Swedish and translated by Reg Keeland who did an excellent job, not that I have compared the texts, just that the story that comes through is complete and indistinguishable as a translation and no footnotes are required to make sense of the story. So much of what I have read over the last year has been in translation and there are some unsung heroes out there doing great work.

The first book in the trilogy has been made into a successful film in Sweden that we can only hope makes it to the US with subtitles. I would love to see these stories on the screen.

These are big stories with complex plots, lots of action and twists and turns. They are the kind of story that drives one to keep at turning those pages for whatever comes next. The characters are interesting, expecially the female protagonist, Lisbeth Salander. She is one tough cookie.

Give these books a shot, you won't be sorry.