Numbers are still up for the Fort Myers Beach Library
Weekly Activities
Preschool Story Hour on Wednesday, Aug. 26, at 10:30 a.m.
Question and Answer computer class on Thursday, Aug. 27, at 10:30 a.m.
Jewelry Making class on Thursday, Aug. 27, at 1:30 p.m.
Activity Details
Question and Answer is arranged so that you can get into the specific point or concern you have regarding computers. Pre-registration is needed. When you register for the class, also hand in your question so that research can be done, if needed, before the class.
Jewelry Making class, under the guidance of Carrie Hill, on Aug. 27, will enable participants to craft a beautiful piece of jewelry-necklace, earrings, bracklet or anglet. Pre-registration and $10 materials fee are needed. See photo on poster for examples of recent creations.
Upcoming Activities
Knitting group meets again on Sept. 2.
Will Bronson, author of “How to Get to Heaven,” will be here on September 3, to share his reflection on this sublime subject, while also addressing how to deal with environmental and the poor of society issues.
Sullivans Island
Dorothea Benton Frank’s novel, “Return to Sullivan’s Island” (sequel to her 2000 publication, “Sullivan’s Island”) continues the story of the (fictional) Hamilton and Hayes families, descendants of early settlers on this (real life) South Carolina low country island. Both can be found in fiction FRA and available in regular and large print.
Beth Hayes, a member of the upcoming generation in this large but close family, is a recent college graduate. She’s preparing to take over a one-year stewardship of Island Gamble, the family home in which she spent most of her childhood, while her mother is in France. Her adventures give us a multi-level coming-of-age narrative, but there’s also an ominous back story. Land development is seeping into this sleepy island paradise like the incoming tide.
Fort Myers Beach readers will relate to much of that story, but perhaps even more to the charming and intriguing descriptions of unspoiled Sullivan’s Island: its easy lifestyle, dazzling natural beauty, its rhythm of life so profoundly embedded in nature’s rhythms. The author vividly evokes the clannish preference islanders demonstrate for their traditional ways, old-time families, and just about everything that pays homage to the past. The story has a generous helping of romance, mystery, “haunts,” and lively characters. Not a perfectly crafted tale, but worth reading for its portrayal of the island life that is bound to resonate with our island readers.
Magazines
If you’re electronically inclined or searching magazines from home, go to our webpage, www.fmb.lib.fl.us, click on Electronic Resources, then on Databases, on ‘here’ on the left column, and click on Proceed (from home, put your library card number in the box and then click on Proceed), and then page down and open Popular Magazines. You can then search among 25,965,458 articles in 400 some magazines.
Consider pre-registering for the Magazines Galore tutorial on September 10, which will take 30 minutes, to make this search more intuitive and easy.
Busy
We are staying busy. Last month, number of people using the Beach Library in person was up 5 percent, and the number of titles checked out was up 10 percent. This followed June where number of people was up 4.5 percent, and number of titles circulating was up 9 percent.
Book Format
We’ve had a project underway for the past years whereby library users could download books on their hand held electronic devise. We have not experienced much interest or usage of this option.
This comes as no surprise to me as the digital future of reading remains unclear even though Oprah, the queen of book clubs, has blessed the Kindle, Amazon’s e-book reader.
In spite of the advantages of e-books, there is some nostalgia for the bound book. The books we had as children were more than the words on the page. The books we read in school and those we got from the library or bookstore were tactile, physical things that gave us pleasure beyond reading the printed page.
It is a common experience to receive books too as gifts and others become gifts as we read and enjoy them.
We continue to develop our book collections as it’s been more than two millions years that we have evolved to read and savor our world through five interlocking senses, and as readers we come to our books with more than just a hunger for words and ideas. Not only can one hold and open a book but there’s possible pleasure in the binding and font and illustrations.
I suspect that there is some loss in the digital format that reduces a book to a string of letters across a screen. The trip to the library also puts us in the company of many other books and dozens of other readers.
Library Hours
Don’t remember library hours? Call for information. When we are closed, a recorder gives the hours of operation, either on 765-8162 or on 765-8163. Except for holidays, which would be mentioned on the recorder, we are open Monday and Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Saturday 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. We look forward to seeing you.