The Friends of the Library will hold their annual Holiday Puzzle Sale on Saturday, December 3rd from 8 a.m. to Noon. With a variety of puzzles, holiday items, and library merchandise, you’ll find something to spread holiday cheer at the Friend’s sale!
Light up the Holidays with the Solon Public Library Foundation’s library luminaries. Orders can be placed at the Library through December 10th, and with the Foundation at the Festival of Trees at SUMC’s Family Life Center on Saturday, December 3rd. Pickups can be scheduled on a variety of dates through December 17th. Your support helps the Foundation with scholarship funds, and the long-term growth of the Library.
Last chance to donate to Toys for Tots! Our toy collection box will be picked up on Monday, December 5th. Please consider donating a new unwrapped toy to support this Holiday program.
Library Events
There’s still time to register for the annual Gingerbread House Decorating Workshops! Each registered family will receive one “gingerbread” house made of graham crackers, frosting and misc. candies to decorate. Register to join us on Tuesday, December 6th at 5:45 p.m. or 6:45 p.m. Or register for a take-home kit. Enjoy the “gingerbread” fun at a time that works best for you! Links to register are available on our website, solon.lib.ia.us, register at the Library, or over the phone (319-624-2678).
Family Fun Night is Saturday, December 10th at 6 p.m. with gym games and showing The Grinch (2018) at 7 p.m. in the Solon Community Center auditorium. Join the Library and Solon Recreation Department for this free night of family fun! Reminder: during the winter months we’ll be at the Solon Community Center, 313 S. Iowa Street, Solon.
Join us Tuesday mornings at 10:30 for Storytime! We’ll share songs, books, and games with friends and caregivers. We also continue to share Digital Storytime with you, anytime on your favorite device! Visit our website or find us on YouTube to enjoy.
Your Space is just for teens! Tuesdays after school the Library’s meeting room is just for 6th-12th graders to hang out, play games, challenge friends to a competition on the Nintendo Switch, and of course eat snacks. Tuesdays after school until 5 p.m.
Early-out Thursdays at the Library are all about the kids!
BAM POW activities begin at 1:45 for Kindergarten through 5th graders, walk over to the Library after school to Build and Make, Play or Watch with us! Thursday, December 1st: Watch It! Rumble [PG] with popcorn!
CATS activities begin at 3:30 for 6th-12th graders and include some of our Creative Amazing Teens of Solon favorites like outdoor games, Kahoot!, trivia, and more. Thursday, December 1st: Movie Day! Sing 2 [PG] with popcorn!
Library Access
Regular Library hours are Monday-Thursday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Friday-Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed Sundays.
December changes: Friday, December 16th open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. to allow time for staff in-service. Friday, December 23rd: closed. Saturday, December 24th: closed. Monday, December 26th: closed.
Don’t forget, the digital library is always available! Find an eBook, eAudiobook, magazines and more with the Libby app. You can even stream classic films, discover new favorites, and more with Kanopy.
What’s New?
It’s the season for curling up and enjoying a quiet evening with a good book. Discover something new on the new fiction shelves.
Box 88 by Charles Cumming. Lachlan Kite is a member of BOX 88, an elite transatlantic black ops outfit so covert that not even MI6 and the CIA are certain of its existence–but even the best spy can’t anticipate every potential threat in a world where dangerous actors lurk around every corner. At the funeral of his childhood best friend, Lachlan falls into a trap that drops him into the hands of a potentially deadly interrogation, with his pregnant wife, also abducted, being held as collateral for the information he’s sworn on his own life to protect. Thirty years earlier Lachlan, then just out of the upper class boarding school where he was reared, was BOX 88’s newest recruit. In the haze of a gap year summer, in which the study of spy craft was intertwined with a journey of self-discovery, he cut his teeth on a special assignment on the coast of France, where a friendship allowed him special access to one of Iran’s most dangerous men. Today, Lachlan’s nostalgia for the trip is corrupted by recollection of the deceit that accompanied it but, in order to save his family, he’ll be forced to revisit those painful memories one last time.
Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting by Clare Pooley. Nobody ever talks to strangers on the train. It’s a rule. But what would happen if they did? From the New York Times bestselling author of The Authenticity Project, a heartwarming novel about unexpected friendships and the joy of connecting. Every day Iona, a larger-than-life magazine advice columnist, travels the ten stops from Hampton Court to Waterloo Station by train, accompanied by her dog, Lulu. Every day she sees the same people, whom she knows only by nickname: Impossibly-Pretty-Bookworm and Terribly-Lonely-Teenager. Of course, they never speak. Seasoned commuters never do. Then one morning, the man she calls Smart-But-Sexist-Manspreader chokes on a grape right in front of her. He’d have died were it not for the timely intervention of Sanjay, a nurse, who gives him the Heimlich maneuver. This single event starts a chain reaction, and an eclectic group of people with almost nothing in common except their commute discover that a chance encounter can blossom into much more. It turns out that talking to strangers can teach you about the world around you–and even more about yourself.
The Kingdoms of Savannah by George Dawes Green. Savannah may appear to be “some town out of a fable,” with its vine flowers, turreted mansions, and ghost tours that romanticize the city’s history. But look deeper and you’ll uncover secrets, past and present, that tell a more sinister tale. It begins quietly on a balmy Southern night as some locals gather at Bo Peep’s, one of the town’s favorite watering holes. Within an hour, however, a man will be murdered and his companion will be “disappeared.” An unlikely detective, Morgana Musgrove, doyenne of Savannah society, is called upon to unravel the mystery of these crimes. Morgana is an imperious, demanding, and conniving woman, whose four grown children are weary of her schemes. But one by one she inveigles them into helping with her investigation, and soon the family uncovers some terrifying truths–truths that will rock Savannah’s power structure to its core. Moving from the homeless encampments that ring the city to the stately homes of Savannah’s elite, Green’s novel brilliantly depicts the underbelly of a city with a dark history and the strangely mesmerizing dysfunction of a complex family.
Library News
December 1, 2022