Christmastime, Game Night, & the Best Books of 2011

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian


It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! We’re in the process of putting up holiday decorations in the library. We have displays of holiday books on the children’s side and on the adult side, above the movies. It’s fun to make the building look festive.

Story time with Santa’s niece

We’ll be taking a break from story times after December 9th, since people’s schedules get busy later in the month. We hope that families will join us on Thursday, December 15th, at 7 p.m. for a visit from Santa’s niece Kris Kringle and a craft led by Jan Pease. Kris Kringle is also known as Kristine Marshall, one of our library board members.

Game night

If you happen to be looking for something to do on Monday evenings this winter, join us for game night at the library. On December 12th, we’ll be playing card games. We have just a few here at the library (Pictureka, Scrabble Slam, and one or two others), so feel free to bring your own. On December 19th, it will be board games. So far we don’t own any of those, so bring in some you’d like to play with other people who come. We’ll set up in the large meeting room and have the space available for gaming from 6:30 until shortly before 8, when we close. We’ll be closed the Monday after Christmas and the Monday after New Year’s Day, so we’ll resume game nights on January 9th. This is open to all ages and skill levels. Bring the whole family!

Best books of 2011

Besides our Christmas book displays, we have another by the front desk that features the best books of 2011. The best-of lists of the year are coming out, and it’s fun to see what the reviewers are listing. Here are some that the Litchfield Library has in its collection:

• 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. This novel was a bestseller in Japan and has been on every list I’ve seen so far of the best books of the year, praised as a masterpiece. The story begins in 1984 in Tokyo but enters an alternate reality, with a love story and references to George Orwell’s 1984.

• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. This biography is based on more than forty interviews with Jobs over the course of two years, plus interviews with more than a hundred people who knew him. It is being called the definitive biography of the late technological innovator – and is described as having an intensity that matches Jobs’.

• The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht. This novel was a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction, despite being a debut novel by a 26-year-old. Set in eastern Europe, the book examines the role of myths and memories in making sense of the tragic past.

• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. This fantasy novel involves a love story between circus magicians who have been trained since childhood to compete against each other.

We also own copies of In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson, Bossypants by Tina Fey, and many of the other books that you’ll find listed as the best of 2011.

One trouble you’ll find with books that are wonderful, however: many of them never make it to our shelf of new books. When a book is in high demand, it often goes from person to person on the waiting list, and you won’t find it by browsing the shelf until its popularity has died down. If there’s a book you’ve seen listed as one of the best of the year and you’d like to read it, I suggest you check our catalog or ask a library staff member for help, because there’s a good chance that you’ll need to reserve it. We’d be glad to help.