April Brings New Activities to the Library by Janice Clauser

The Crawfordsville Library offers many activities in April. Today and weekly at 4 p.m. the Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic Card Games program convenes until 8:30 p.m. Very beginning Spanish lessons begin April 9^th at 5 p.m. On Thursdays Spanish classes for children meet from 5-6 p.m., and Spanish for English Speakers meets 6-7 p.m. and 7-8 p.m. Sign language classes are scheduled April 6^th and 20^th from 2-4 p.m. while Novices of the Old Ways studies herbs this Saturday (4/6) 1-3:30. Sundays the 7^th and 21^st there is a Prayer Shawls/Wedding Shawls knitting class at 2. Next Monday (4/8) at 6:30 the Deweys Do Book Club will discuss “The Dogs of Babel” by Carolyn Parkhurst. Tuesdays 6:30-8:30 p.m. on the 9^th and 23rd you are invited to Paint-in with Mike Bowman, directed this month by Dawn Goggin. Call the Circulation Desk at 362-2242, extension 1, for details. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In “West of Here” Jonathan Evison chronicles the life of a small Olympic Peninsula town on the eve of Washington’s statehood in 1889. Bringing early-twentieth-century New York alive, the neighborhoods, bars, the park in upper Manhattan, boat traffic, mansions and sweatshops, Mary Beth Keane’s “Fever” tells of the forgotten life of Mary Mallon, known as “Typhoid Mary.” “Capital” by John Lanchester is a social novel set at the height of the financial crisis. It’s 2008, and the residents of Pepys Road, London are receiving menacing postcards, each of which features a photo of their front door and “We Want What You Have.” Peter Carey’s “The Chemistry of Tears” features London in 2010. “A Tale for the Time Being” by Ruth Ozeki tells the life of a 16-year-old girl whose lunch box washes up on a beach of a remote island in the Pacific Northwest, containing an antique wristwatch, a pack of letters, and her diary, debris from Japan’s 2011 tsunami.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A grief-filled museum conservator studying an eerie automaton uncovers notebooks written by the treasure’s original English owner who traveled to Germany in the 19^th century to commission it as an amusement for his consumptive son. Of course, the conservator finds a link between herself and that early owner. Next, Nihad Sirees’ “The Silence and the Roar” shows a Middle Eastern country resembling Syria where the entire populace celebrates the 20-year anniversary of the reigning despot; an author in the congregation is arrested and somehow keeps himself truly free in mind despite the state’s imposition on his life.

In “Middle Men” by Jim Gavin, California is the subject of six stories; in one a group of men, from young dreamers to old vets, makes forays into middle-class respectability; in another a game show producer moonlights as a stand-up comedian. The men in these stories all find themselves stuck halfway between their dreams and the crushing reality of their lives.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The Wanting” by Michael Lavigne shows an Israeli father and his daughter and the cost of extremism in the aftermath of a suicide bombing. Finally, a story set in Plainfield, Indiana gives the experiences of a trio of high school pals in the 1960s and through the next four decades. The three meet each Sunday for delicious food, juicy gossip, tears, and laughs; they are Edward Moore’s “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The nonfiction “Becoming Europe” by Samuel Gregg tackles situations like economic decline, and how America can avoid a European future even though since our recession in 2008 our economy has drifted in a distinctly “European” direction. The book says that the European experience should serve us as the proverbial canary in the coal mine.