Mark your calendars!
FRIENDS JANUARY BOOK SALE
January 23-26, 2014
It's not only school children going back to the books. Fall sets the Friends to browsing and reading, and also collecting books, CDs and DVDs, donating them for our January Book Sale. We ought to call it the Friends January Extravaganza, for as one avid reader told us at our book tables at the Saturday Market, "I wait all year for your January weekend of books! I'm there every single day to cart away bags full of my favorite authors!" Donating Books: We're always glad to hear from our fans, and even happier to have an opportunity to remind everyone that this is a good time of year to donate their old books, too.
Ginny Warren, Bettyanne Dicken and other volunteers have been working all year sorting and boxing what's already come in, but we can always use more. As our friend at the Market said the other day, "The more the better to choose treasures from!"
To Donate Books, simply bring them to Brown Library and put them in the basket just inside the front doors before the Circulation Desk. If you have boxes of them and need assistance, ask for Perry, who helps us manage the donated books and is usually available in the mornings.
Each book we sell, summer or winter, gets translated into new and better materials, equipment, furnishings--and yes, books!--for Brown.
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Thanks! Summer's fading, but not before we thank all our patrons for the 2013 Summer Book Sale at Saturday Market on the waterfront in downtown Washington. We have a few Saturdays more to offer our great book bargains, so come down and take your pick until early October.
Let's also take this time to give great thanks to Diane Giffin, who coordinates the sale and gathers the many generous volunteers who come out to attend our tables each week from April through October, quite an organizational feat. We wouldn't want this to get around too much, but, actually, volunteering at the Summer Sales is fun! Readers line up to see our selections and chat about what they've read; sipping cold coffee, we wave to marketing friends and catch up on neighborhood gossip. (Oh, and we sell lots of books, too...) What could be a better way to spend a few hours on a Saturday morning in summer? If you'd like to volunteer for next year's Summer Sale, just send Diane a note at dgiff.diane@gmail.com. No experience necessary--we'll train you on the spot.
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We Never Take Reading for Granted Pairing up with the Literacy Volunteers of Beaufort County, the Friends are co-sponsoring Craven County native EARL MILLS, who will read from his book of poetry, From Illiterate to Poet. Join us on Sunday October 6, 2013, 2-4 pm at Wesley Hall in the First United Methodist Church, West Second Street in Washington.
Mills' story is one we all need to listen to, especially those of us who take reading and education for granted. Mills graduated from high school in 1971, but he couldn't read beyond a second grade level, something only his wife of 39 years knew. One night he was called on to read at his church. His heart sank. He tried to think of some excuse: "I couldn't find my glasses. I stumbled through every word."
Then he discovered the Craven County Literacy Volunteers, and at 48, he read his first book. A whole world opened to him, and since then he has read more than 70 books and novels, and written over 40 poems. Like many people the Literacy Volunteers (pictured below) help, he found the gift of reading in himself.
Our fall program is free and open to the public.
