Beach reading is an activity I look forward to every year as soon as I get tired of snow and lose my last pair of warm gloves.  I’m already reading reviews of summer releases  before Valentine’s Day so I am ready to move on to my favorite summer authors by Memorial Day.  It is easy to blame Covid-19 and, perhaps, my expectations were unusually high, but summer reading 2021 has been a serious disappointment.  I’m not saying the books were not well written, but the first few pages left no doubt that it would be a bumpy road ahead. My reaction was to switch to several mystery ..read more

 Several weeks ago I described the non-fiction titles I read over the summer.  Yes, I have been reading more than usual during the summer of quarantine, but summer has always been my happy reading place.  Although my summer selections invariably include several beaches, in 2020 only Rachel Beanland’s Florence Adler Swims Forever made the list.  Set in Atlantic City in 1934, Florence is training to be the first Jewish woman to swim the English Channel.  Florence isn’t the main character as much as a way to introduce the other characters and the secrets they are hiding ..read more

Back at the beginning of the summer I posted a tic-tac-toe reading challenge to BHPL’s Facebook and website.  People were already reading more downloadable titles and it seemed like a good idea to suggest that readers expand their reading horizons.  I, for the first time ever, made a vow to read more non-fiction before Labor Day than I normally would. The game categories included a book on any branch of science, a book based on something/anything currently in the news, a non-fiction title about an unfamiliar subject, and a biography or autobiography.    I started with ..read more

Quarantine Reading Have your reading habits and choices changed during the Covid-19 Quarantine?  After realizing that mine have, I asked several BHPL staff to write a paragraph about what’s happening to them.  Starting with me, in the very beginning I simply couldn’t find a book that held my interest for more than twenty or thirty pages.  I didn’t like the characters, story, writing, or anything else.  I reverted to a few of my favorite authors for several books before I started venturing back out of my reading shell.   Also, I stopped watching news programs on T ..read more

Time does fly and having fun may or may not be part of the equation. A recent Facebook post reminded everyone that BHPL just celebrated the 2nd anniversary of our arrival at 110 Roosevelt Avenue. Unfortunately, we closed for service in mid-March and our re-opening date is not yet known. Planning has already started, focusing on keeping the public and staff safe and an orderly return to normal, if modified, services. Let me catch you up on what’s been happening. Having never been involved in anything more complex than remodeling a kitchen, meetings with the Architect, MAST, furniture vendors a ..read more