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 the Summer Reading for a Cause program has ended and participants can pick up certificates and prizes through the end of August while supplies last at Children's, Mitchell Park, and Rinconada Libraries.

They also want you to know that Rinconada Library will on September 6 begin hosting a weekly Memory Café program, to help people with memory issues make social connection and increase brain function. 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

 
What's Special for August 2023

Donations were especially strong since the last sale, and considering we had a backlog from July, our shelves are sagging under the weight of all the books, puzzles, and games. This means a super selection for buyers; this will be a great sale! The Children's Room and Children's Bargain Room/H2 are jammed with great books...in all categories, as a result of a generous donation from the 14+ teachers that retired or moved classrooms in the Menlo Park City School District/MPCSD. You’ll likely find some books from the MPCSD donation throughout other sections as well.

Sharing the spotlight in the Main Room is a nice selection of the remaining High-Value books and Ephemera from FOPAL's July Summer Super Pop-Up Sale. As you may recall last month FOPAL offered dozens of books and other items pulled from the High-Value storeroom. For August look for the High-Value books and Ephemera in the specials areas to your right just as you enter the Main Room.

And, featured this month is a selection of books from a former United States Geological Survey geologist who contributed to the geologic mapping of the Earth's moon and to the geologic training of the Apollo astronauts. These books can be found in the Nature section and likely in the Science section too. A FOPAL shout out to the Nature section's new manager Serena B.! Serena is a longtime customer that heard the call to volunteer regularly adding another way she’s supporting FOPAL and the community. Welcome, Serena!

Also, for FOPAL's August sale 2023, look for another terrific special of Music CDs, and Vinyl, inside and outside the Main Room. Enjoy this opportunity to shop the media inventory/back stock at this Music Pop-Up during the August sale, Saturday 8/12 only!

-Janette Herceg

 
Children's Room

Summer reading certificates can be used in any of our Children's Room sections. For example, in School-age Fiction there's a pristine set of all the Dr. Dolittle stories, and a collector's edition of A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. On the award-winners shelves you'll find gift-quality Philip Pullman books--first editions of volumes 1 and 2 of The Book of Dust; and like-new copies of The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck, by Brian Selznick. Also, look for several special illustrated Harry Potter editions and a boxed set of the Five Kingdoms series by fantasy author Brandon Mull. And the Popular Authors cart is bulging.

The Asian Languages section is well stocked for back to school, with books in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Indian languages. Check out the cart with Korean language hard-cover picture books, priced to sell. On the Chinese shelves are popular curricula for all levels, as well as VCDs and DVDs for family fun while immersing in the language.

The counter under the front windows is full of beautiful board and pop-up books, fun with moving parts, for the youngest "readers."

In Activities, August's most eye-catching offering is a horse stable(!) suitable for play with 18-inch or larger dolls. We also have graphic novels galore, electronics kits, loads of math workbooks, and books for puzzle solvers. Have you heard this is an El Niño year, likely to bring rainy days? Plan ahead: We have many more board games (most like new) than you can shake a stick--I mean an umbrella--at!

Finally, teachers and home-schoolers should check out our Non-fiction section, which has books full of classroom activity suggestions, resource materials, and workbooks--in addition to shelves of fascinating books on history, biography, geography, dinosaurs, Native Americans, oceans, nature, etc., most priced between 50 cents and a few dollars.

-Carolyn Davidson

 
Children's Vintage

We have some special books in the children's vintage section this month! If you weren't able to come to the pop-up high value sale in July, now is your chance to snag some really lovely books for your collection. In the older kids' department, there is a special section set aside for these books, and you will also find them sprinkled alphabetically by author in the usual places. There is also a gold-boxed gift edition of The Hobbit and a Heritage Press boxed edition of Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne. More Landmark books that make history come alive.... And finally, there are bound copies of St Nicholas magazine, a children's monthly magazine with stories and poetry from the turn of the (last) century (1880s-1920s).

For younger readers, we have an expanded "golden oldies" section for those delicate volumes from an earlier age. Many of these are from the July high value sale and represent a real value as they are priced at least at half of the retail/eBay price. And Dr. Seuss and Richard Scarry are featured prominently with many volumes of their classics.

-Lisa Heitman

 
High Value

As a result of our successful Outdoor High Value Sale in July this month we are having an Indoor High Value sale. As you come in through the front door these books will be on the right hand side of the main aisle. In all there will be three bookcases with around 300 books. Every book has an online value of between $20 to $30 and every book is for sale for $10, each book will be designated with a yellow dot. The books cover a wide range of categories including: Art, architecture, photography, fiction, non-fiction, health, history, STEM, and music. This sale is only for August and then will be taken down.

-Nigel Jones and N Miller

 
Popup Music Sale

FOPAL will continue with its monthly music pop-up sale of CDs and vinyl on the tables outside of the Main Room entrance. In addition a greatly expanded section of value-priced LPs will be offered next to the CD bins inside the Main Room.

-George Chaltas

 
Politics

Enjoy the tail end of the summer with SO MANY books on politics! Each day we inch closer and closer to anarchy *cough* democracy so why not kick back and relax with a semi-lackluster book on some second-rate politician striving to become relevant? No? *Cough* I mean revel in the gloriousness of our fearless leaders and peruse through their various exploits! Fear not, the world isn't actually burning as we speak!

-Margaret

 
Humor

This month Humor includes three large collections of books. We have 18 books from the ever popular P. G. Wodehouse, ranging from good hardbacks to much used paperbacks. Also in the UK vein we have on the top shelf a variety of modern and old classics humour. Of particular note are three books by Irish author, Flann O'Brien, always supported by James Joyce as the greatest writer in Ireland.

Also on the top shelf we have seventeen books of New Yorker cartoons including two volumes of the complete cartoons.

-Nigel Jones

 
Curious Books

The theme for Curious Books this month is "Information, Misinformation, and Disinformation". As always, there is plenty of humor on our shelves, along with some outstanding books that merit serious consideration.

-Donya W.

 
Home & Crafts

This August the Home section includes beauty and wedding guides, including Martha Stewart's Weddings, plus Emily Post's Etiquette, as well as fashion and costume design theory. Other shelves feature entertaining, such as Tracey Porter's Inspired Gatherings and Carolyne Roehm's seasons of entertaining, Seasonal Notebooks collection. Look for interior design concepts for kitchen and bath. Try California home interiors from San Francisco to Los Angeles, including Hollywood. Other titles range in source from French and Greek home design, to Adobe, Chinese, and Victorian styles.

The Crafts shelves provide books on floral arts and arranging, featuring Flowers Rediscovered. Check out the craft guides from jewelry-making to scrapbooking, including Ribbons: The Art of Adornment. You'll also find BTS's Dots Lines Spirals coloring book and Origami Omnibus. This month these shelves include: sewing books, unique quilting titles like Go West: Quilting and Community, knitting offerings such as For the Love of Knitting, plus embroidery and needlepoint crafts.

Photos can be found at www.fopalbooks.com.

-Virginia Perry

 
Antiques & Collections

Among the August offerings in Antiques & Collections: Treasures in Your Home, Perfume Bottles, and Paper Money. New in this section: Sketch Me, Berta Hummel!, a biography of Sister Maria Innocentia of Hummel Art. Other titles include: rugs and furniture; Masterpieces of French Jewelry, Fabergé in America, and The Art of Rene Lalique; guns and The Book of Knives; antiques encyclopedias and more for your collecting reference.

Photo can be found at www.fopalbooks.com.

-Virginia Perry

 
Poetry

August days are hot and still,
Not a breath on house or hill.
So let's be cool on August nights
With lots of Beats from City Lights.
Take some time to rest and sit
With Dottie Parker's sparkling wit.
Let Billie Collins make you smile
And browse our shelves a little while.

-Mandy MacCalla

 
Philosophy

We have received a large donation of philosophy books from a Stanford professor. Those by specific philosophers have been integrated into the left hand bookcase alphabetically and those on philosophical topics have been shelved on the right hand bookcase with all new arrivals on the top two shelves. To accommodate these new arrivals at least 100 philosophy books have been sent to the Bargain Room so make sure to take a look over there, you will find some very good material at Bargain Room prices.

-Nigel Jones

 
European Languages

We have lots of French books, mostly fiction but some politics, psychology, and social sciences. One book, Drole de Cochon ($4), consists of very large pictures of happy pigs, with appropriate quotations. We also have about three shelves full of Hebrew books.

-Susan Strain

 
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 - A Bridge of Longing: The Lost Art of Yiddish Storytelling; A Voice Called - Stories of Jewish Heroism; The Jewish Olympics: The History of the Maccabiah Games; Glimpses of Jewish life in San Francisco; Positivity Bias; A Godless Jew: Freud, Atheism, and the Making of Psychoanalysis; The Jewish Dream Book.

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, Section manager for Judaica

 
Medicine & Health

For August, Medicine is featuring two interesting choices. The first: Genomics and Personalized Medicine: What Everyone Needs To Know by Stanford Geneticist, Michael Snyder. Also to be found: Surviving Mold; Life in the Era of Dangerous Buildings.

The Health section is brimming with many wonderful choices: The Blood Pressure Solution, How Covid Crashed the System, Cancer Fighting Kitchen, The Big Fat Surprise, Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine. There are more than 500 books in just these two sections alone...have a look!

-Suzanne Cholko

 
History

History is full this month of diverse titles. We have a whole shelf dedicated to Genghis Khan and his empire, and one of our red carts has a shelf on Alexander the Great and his empire. Included in the usual sizable offering of books on ancient Rome are a couple of offerings from Mary Beard. British History has a large selection of books on Ireland. It also has a curiosity, a "how to" book on painting by Winston Churchill. There are several new arrivals in China, including a hardback of Jung Chang's biography of Mao.

The African-American section has greatly expanded this month, including two copies of the Pulitzer Prize winning The Hemingses of Monticello. There are two unusual books in the 20th century US area. The first is a copy in good - very good condition of Nan Britton's The President's Daughter, about her affair with President Warren G. Harding - it was considered so scandalous at the time that no reputable publisher would touch it! The other is Strike from Space, by Phyllis Schlafly, which seems to be about...something. It's a curiosity.

On a lighter note, there are a lot of books this month on the Offbeat History shelf of one of the red carts, so you can read about the roles sugar, salt, rum, and barbed wire played in history.

Lastly, there is an extensive collection of The Annual Report of the American Historical Association, ranging from the 1900s-1950s (not complete) near the front door, priced at $2/volume.

-Lin McAllister

 
Puzzles and Games

Puzzle shelves again this month are stuffed at all piece levels. We also have a couple of new puzzle companies, each with several puzzles.

In our games section we have some popular strategy games from the last decade as well as lesser known newer ones. We also have multiple versions of some classics like Monopoly and Risk and other family or adult games. Come and check out this busy corner of the main room.

-Vicky Evans

 
Science Fiction and Fantasy

In Science Fiction and Fantasy, the main event is a big selection of boxed sets. Robert Jordan, Garth Nix, George R. R. Martin, Cixin Liu, and more. Look on the top shelf of the Fantasy paperbacks for a big selection of Terry Pratchett novels, and on the bottom shelf for a bunch of Babylon 5 books.

-Rich McAllister

 
Graphic Novels and Comics

In Graphic Novels and Comics, more new arrivals in manga, and a copy of Art Spiegelman's MetaMaus reflections on his noted Maus books.

-Rich McAllister

 
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 August 6 through Sunday August 13 to prepare the Main Room for this weekend's sale. Please hold your donations until Monday August 14.

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.