News from the Library, by E-mail and RSS

If you have ever given the Library your e-mail address, like this newsletter editor did when he signed up for a Palo Alto Library card, you have probably noticed that they are sending you one to a few e-mails per month.

The Library would like you to know that they're celebrating Latinx & Hispanic Heritage Month from September 15 to October 15.

You can read more about this on their blog. You can subscribe to their blog with an RSS reader.

The Library also has an Events Calendar that is full of stuff to do.

-Frank McConnell

 
September Sale notes

The end of summer is normally a strong month for FOPAL in terms of donation volume and this year is no exception. The Main Room has been blessed with a large volume of donations and will also have dozens of rare and collectible books offered for September, reasonably priced. Look for books from FOPAL's High-Value August sale now to be found in their respective sections.

Thanks to a huge donation of books on European Languages, Italian & French and FOPAL's European Language Section Manager Susan S. suggestion, FOPAL has created an Italian & French September Special. Check out the specials shelves for books included from the Art and History sections with Italian and French themes, some in English and many in Italian & French. History received a large number of books on the Italian renaissance this month so you'll see these offered in the specials area. Included is a very nice copy of The Greater Journey, about Americans in Paris in the 19th century, mostly artists. Art is contributing 20+ art books either in French or Italian, plus a nice selection about French/Italian art. And, from Art History look for art or history books in Italian that have a high value - $30 to $60 - described as esoteric. These will be marked down for the September sale.

Our Puzzles & Games manager reports a generous selection this month, including several that are Fall/Autumn inspired. The Music section has a higher than normal volume of offerings, look for full shelves in both the Main and Bargain Rooms.

-Janette Herceg

 
Art

Several art history books in French and Italian have been added to the foreign language special for September. The highlights include a 12-volume history of art in Italian with nice color photographs, a sumptuous catalogue from a 2014 exhibition of the sculpture of Baccio Bandinelli, and a 7-volume boxed edition of Vasari's Le Vite, the lives of Italian artists. Everything is very, very reasonably priced, far below the online values.

-The Art Team

 
History

A varied selection this month, from Freud's analysis of US President Woodrow Wilson to ancient Greek and Roman politics and a lot in between. We got a large donation of books on medieval and Renaissance Europe, including several on women's roles and lives. There are also some older books (one from 1827!), many of which have nice-looking bindings (and the holiday season is coming up).

-Lin McAllister

 
European Languages

We received several shelves of scholarly books on Italian (especially Venetian) literature and poetry. We also received a lot of fiction in French, mostly translations (lots of Auster, Asimov, Mishima, McBain, and other mysteries/thrillers).

-Susan Strain

 
Puzzles and Games

Puzzles this month features a special section at the entry in the case to the right of Fall and Halloween puzzles. In addition, the corner puzzles section is again jammed full.

Lots of great games including all those named in a Board Night survey for a game night at a local library--Code Names (Pictures and Words), Bohnanza, Carcasonne. Plus, we have a dozen other strategy games. The big find, though, is a Base Game of Warhammer 40000 with Corebook and 14 Code X books being sold as a set.

-Vicky Evans

 
Home & Crafts

The September Home section includes beauty and wedding guides, including The Wedding Dress, as well as In Vogue: 75 Years of Style. You'll also find costume design theory plus The Kimono as Art. Other shelves feature home building and remodeling, as well as home maintenance planners, such as The Home Edit: A Guide to Organizing and Realizing Your House Goals. Look for interior design concepts for kitchen and bath, color theory and painting furniture, and styles from Safari Chic to Living with Zen. Other titles range from country homes and arts & crafts style to modern home design.

The Crafts shelves provide books on floral arts and arranging, featuring Inspired Floral Arrangement by Toshiro Kawase. Enjoy craft designs and art crafts, including watercolor and oil painting guides: The Art of Oil Painting and Different Strokes Watercolor. You'll also find a delightful number of coloring books, like Seashore Life, and other titles such as The Joy of Origami. This month these shelves include: sewing, knitting (curious titles like Knitting from the Center Out), multiple crochet titles, needlepoint, and embroidery books. There's an abundance of quilting titles: 5500 Quilt Block Designs, The Simple Joys of Quilting, and Quilter's Handbook, to name a few. Browse these shelves for detailed guides to help with all your new Fall projects!

Photos can be found at www.fopalbooks.com.

-Virginia Perry

 
Antiques & Collections

New for September in Antiques & Collections: Clarice Cliff: The Bizarre Affair, plus A Guide to Art Nouveau Style by William Hardy. You'll also find A Directory of Antique Furniture by F. Lewis Hinckley and a reduced price for Perfume by William Kaufman. A special series, Lionel: A Collector's Guide and History to Lionel Trains, Volumes I-VI, is available for train buffs. Other titles include: the Encyclopedia of Antique Restoration and Maintenance, plus rugs and furniture, French ceramics, and other unique items for your collecting reference.

Photo can be found at www.fopalbooks.com.

-Virginia Perry

 
Poetry

Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh so mellow.
Some Olde English rhyme will help pass the time
From Beowulf to that Chaucer fellow
And even further back to when
The Greeks and Romans wield the pen.

-Mandy MacCalla

 
Nature

Just like the category it highlights, there's always something exotic and exciting to find after some weeding through the Nature Section. In September, new sub-categories highlight butterflies and some gorgeous vintage hardback donations we received with subjects ranging from geology to entomology. For funghi lovers (and fun guys), copies of the pantheon book Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora adorn our shelves, as well as Mushrooms of the Redwood Forest. Get them while they're here, at an unbeatable price.

-Serena Bramble

 
Judaica

Browse the Judaica section for books on the Jewish religion and culture including editions of the Torah and other basic texts, Kabbalah, Jewish history, the Holocaust, memoirs, Israel, Jewish Women, the Jewish American Experience and other related subjects.

New this month - Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai; This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation; The Book of Esther A Commentary and History; Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean; Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America; Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict; The Nazi Hunters.

Most fiction with Jewish themes will be found in Modern Literature/Classics or Current Fiction. Books entirely in Hebrew are shelved in the European Languages section.

-Charlotte Epstein, Judaica Section Manager

 
Computers

Donations were lightish and some sections are a bit slim. Look for the first Sedgwick Algorithms 4th edition we have received, and a 1st edition of Wiener's Cybernetics.

-David Cortesi

 
Children's Room

The theme for the September sale in the Children's Room is Abundance. All our sections are fully stocked (over-stocked, even), thanks to our donors. Keep it coming, and come to the sale!

Look in the Picture Book section for multiple copies (5 to 20 of each book) of all the following titles, all in new condition: Mr. Peabody's Apples by Madonna, Smoky Night by Eve Bunting, Mailing May by Michael O. Tunnell, Charlie the Courageous by Joslynn Jarrett-Skelton, It Could Always Be Worse by Margot Zemach, Fancy Nancy by Jane O'Connor, The Araboolies of Liberty Street by Sam Swope, Chester's Way by Kevin Henkes, assorted board books by Sandra Boynton, assorted Mr. Men books by Roger Hargreaves, and assorted Babybug books.

In the World Languages section you'll find lovely traditional Chinese picture books, including the wildly popular 屁屁偵探 series, and the manga/chapter books section is full of both simplified and traditional Chinese. The Korean shelves continue to be well stocked, and the French and German shelves are also quite full.

The Activities sections are packed with games, science kits, hands-on science and math books, and gobs of graphic novels for all ages and interests. Lots of toys, too.

Look for books for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah in the Religion section. We have a great variety of Beginning Readers, including lots of sets that could add to classroom libraries. And on the DVDs shelves, Disney movies from "Cinderella" to "Frozen" and more, all priced at a dollar or less.

School-age Fiction offers boxed collections in excellent condition of the following titles: in Classics, Dr. Dolittle, and a hardback set of The Chronicles of Narnia; in Fantasy, five different boxed sets of Erin Hunter's best-selling Warriors series; on the Popular Authors cart, sets of Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger, and a complete set of Land of Stories by Chris Colfer; in Early Chapter Books, sets of The Boxcar Children, Jigsaw Jones mysteries, My Weirder School, and Junie B. Jones. In addition, there's a beautiful hardback copy of Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes by Rick Riordan and a lovely illustrated copy of Pippi Longstocking.

-Carolyn Davidson

 
Medicine

There are terrific books in the Medicine Section this month: Rabid -  A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus describes the prevention of ghastly deaths in man and animals from the rabies virus due to Louis Pasteur's 1885 nerve tissue vaccine, and makes you want to name your firstborn after him!

The Amgen Story: 26 Years of Visionary Science and Powerful Medicine chronicles breakthrough biotechnology drugs from the people who brought you Epogen (anemia), Neupogen (infections) and Enbrel (wonder drug for arthritis and psoriasis) and many others that have transformed medicine.

Visit our collection of beautiful Anatomy and Physiology books, Guide to Psychopharmacology, and The Mayo Clinic's Going Gluten Free, textbooks of Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Neurology, Infectious Disease, and a vast array of vintage Medicine books from the 1800's.

-Pam Parke

 
Health

It's September and the Health section offers a great array of books. A brand new addition is The Facemaker, by Lindsey Harris. This is the account of a surgeon in Britain who devoted his practice to healing and improving the facial wounds suffered by World War I soldiers. Dr. Harold Gillies became known as 'the Father of Plastic Surgery.'

Five Days at Memorial (Sherri Fink, et al) recounts the struggle to care for hospital patients during hurricane Katrina, New Orleans. Another addition is Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America (Mary Otto) which discusses the general view that oral health problems 'are seen as a failure of individual responsibility rather than misfortune.' An interesting read.

-Suzanne Cholko

 
Children's Vintage

Another good month to browse through the children's vintage section! Some of the highlights for younger kids are a first edition This Is London signed by the author, M. Sasek. Also featured are several oversized Platt and Munk/Watty Piper books from the 1950s, two copies of Sylvia Plath's The Bed Book, and an early edition of When the Root Children Wake Up. Older kids can find some beautiful Black Stallion and Island Stallion books by Walter Farley (in dust jacket and mylar protective covers) as well as sports books written by Tex Maule and others (also with dust jackets, some in mylar). Donna Parker and Doc Savage in series books and several Danny Dunn books might be good additions to your collection as well. See some photos of what's on offer at www.fopalbooks.com.

-Lisa Heitman

 
Curious Books

Communication is the theme of September's Curious Books section.

Communicate by emoji, bumper sticker, or other usual and unusual channels. From traditionally inspirational words to modern coding, you can participate in the exchange of words and ideas.

-Donya W.

 
Self Help

These Featured Books touch on life's challenges and tools to help deal with them. Their popularity on Amazon attests that we are not alone in our quest for personal and spiritual growth:

The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery 2023; How We Live is How We Die, Pema Chodron 2023; Quit, The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away 2022; The Great Book of Journal Writing 2022; Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst; Belonging- Remembering Ourselves Home; Beyond Done With The Crying; The Worm at the Core.

As always, books are organized with: Popular on Amazon; New Arrivals; and then different subsections on specific topics. Most are a great bargain at $2-3. Browse in Peace,

-Marnie

 
STEM

This month we have received a large donation of materials science from a real rocket scientist. While they are rather specialized, they have been priced to go. All books left over from last month and the high value sale have been priced down. All these books deserve to be in your hands, not ours. Math continues to receive strong donations. Many STEM books came in this month that are best for the bargain room, expect to see a large selection there. As usual shelf pictures are available at https://fopalbooks.com/STEM.html.

-Edwin El-Kareh

 
Sheet Music

A steady stream of good quality items, mainly piano and songs, continue to come in this month. As always, there is a lot of bargain room level sheet music. Music continues to be sorted by instrument and shelf pictures are available at https://fopalbooks.com/sheetmusic.html.

-Edwin El-Kareh

 
Music Records and CDs

No Music Pop-up sale outside the Main Room this month. Stocks of records and CDs in the Main and Bargain Rooms have been replenished so check those out instead.

We are also beginning to list higher-priced records on Discogs again and you can see those on our Discogs store. We have also followed the lead of our Art book Instagram (@fopalartbooks) and set up a FOPAL records Instagram (@fopalrecords).

-Frank McConnell

 
Donations

We have made it past Drop-off Donations 3.0 and have returned to accepting donations without the need to make an appointment.

HOWEVER....

We are closed for donations from Sunday September 3 through Sunday September 10 to prepare the Main Room for this weekend's sale. Please hold your donations until Monday September 11.

Please read our donation guidelines before you bring materials to us.

All that said, our normal hours for drop-off donations are Monday through Saturday, 3pm-5pm. (But not the week before the sale.)

 
Suggestions?

We're always eager to hear your suggestions for ways to improve our book sale. Please email us at suggestions@friendspaloaltolib.org.