The e-books are coming! The e-books are coming! Okay, maybe not this month, but they will (hopefully) be here very shortly after Christmas. The contract is signed, and our vendor is working hard behind the scenes to get  everything to roll out next month. We will be partnering with ten other libraries to make this happen, and we will begin offering tutorials on how to download e-book materials as soon as we can.

Until this happens, though, there are other avenues for legally free e-books. While some genres are better represented than others, you can still find a number of good titles in most of them. Some of the books you will find are by mainstream authors, while many of them are self-published.

Also, any book published before 1923, or published by an author who died before 1942 (70 years ago), is in the public domain. Now, just because they are no longer protected by copyright does NOT mean that they are automatically available as an e-book. Publishers receive no monetary benefit from resetting these books into e-book form, therefore most of the “classics” you find are hand-typed by someone. That’s right, someone took their copy of one of great-uncle Frank’s 19^th century penny dreadfuls and painstakingly hand-typed it into a word-processor. They uploaded it to a website called “Project Gutenberg,” who then made it available to everyone with internet access. Another site that uses mainly the same content, but with a different interface, is Many Books.

Of course, given all of the fantasy and science fiction that I read, one of my favorite sites is the Baen Free Library. They make a number of their books free to be downloaded. These books have no restrictions, other than that you can’t sell them yourselves! They mainly have the first few titles available in a series, and the later ones are only available for purchase.

Another good site for free SF and F books is The Fifth Imperium. When Baen Books releases new hardcover books, they generally ALSO provide a CD with about 8 or 10 e-books with it. These are, yet again, available with no reproduction restrictions, other than “please do not resell these books.” This site collects all of those CDs and makes them available to anyone who wants to download them.

I’ll post more as time allows, even once our e-book collection is available. Enjoy your reading!

The Library will soon offer e-books to our patrons. However, as we all know, funding is scarce for new initiatives. We are still buying books with our limited budget, but we have carved out a portion of it for our new e-books collection. Still, we need help if we are going to meet the demand for our new collection.

We are therefore asking our patrons to helps us. All around the library this month, you will find little holly leaves with authors, titles and prices on them. These are all e-books that we would love to be able to include in the collection. Some of the titles displayed will be bought regardless, but if you want to ensure an e-book is purchased, please consider donating the purchase cost to the Friends of the Library. Adopting an e-book is 100% tax-deductible, and we can even put your name on the record as the donor.

New things are always exciting, and we hope that everyone is looking forward to this as much as we are.  If you have any questions about this, please give us a call at 804-561-4559!

Come to our party tonight at 6 pm! Crafts, games, story times, food and costume contests… we have it all!

Tomorrow night we will host a NaNoWriMo kickoff at 6:30 — food, music, and creativity-boosting games will abound. All writers are invited.

Also, this Saturday, we will host our writers workshop at 11 am, a bookbinding workshop at 2  pm, and the Friends Dance at 8 pm. Lots of stuff to do this week!

Our November Calendar of Events!

The October Program calendar may be found as a .pdf at:

OCTOBER PROGRAM CALENDAR

A couple of weeks ago I read Foundation by Mercedes Lackey, the first book in the Collegium Chronicles. The book takes place in Velgarth, a world created by Lackey, where magic may be found in people with the gift for it. They are found by beautiful white horses called “Companions,” who happen to be much more intelligent than your average horse. The young, gifted person they choose becomes their “Chosen,” and is taken to Valdemar to be trained how to use their new power(s) so that they may become a Herald and service their country.

Mags has worked in the Pieter’s mines all of his life. He earned the name Mags or Magpie because of his ability to spot “sparklies” in the stone tunnels. He lives on meager portions of cabbage soup and bread and huddles for warmth in the basement of Cole Pieter’s house with other children who the Pieters force to work in the mines. All of the children are orphaned or unwanted and told how grateful they should be for their place in the mine. The only hope Mags has of escaping the mines is waiting until he turns sixteen and becomes a legal adult, no longer under the Pieters’ guardianship.

It comes as a surprise when one day a stranger comes on a white horse to take him to Haven. Mags is informed that he has the gift of Mind-Speak and is taken to the Collegium at Haven to be trained. There, for the first time in his life, Mags has friends: Dallen, his Companion; Lena, a Bardic Trainee; and Bear, a Healer Trainee. But he also learns of a plot to destroy this new found peace and must fight for the right to learn at the Collegium.

I loved this book! I could not put it down and took it almost everywhere with me until I finished it. I enjoyed Mags’ story and his character. Foundation could be suggested to anyone who enjoys fantasy adventures, who likes magic, or likes Mercedes Lackey. She has multiple series that take place in Velgarth and this certainly is not the first one. However, with a little background information, I feel that this book can be read without reading the other series first. This book will be one of my picks, displayed near the front desk.

The Collegium Chronicles: Foundation, Intrigues, and Changes (coming out this year!).

For a full list of Mercedes Lackey’s books, here is a great website: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/l/mercedes-r-lackey/

Although her pig didn’t get the most money, Dora kissed the pig at the County Fair, to the great delight of the patrons present!

We may not have closed for the eathquake, but we closed for the hurricane at 2 pm. All library programs are cancelled.

Have a safe hurricane, and you can track it here:

Repositionable hurricane map – from Palm Beach, FL, but really nice in its scalability.

Yes, that IS what that was! According to the USGS, it was a 5.8 quake with the epicenter in Mineral, VA. Find out more here:

Or more here…

We are still open until 8 pm tonight.

Recently I finished reading Magyk by Angie Sage, the first book of the Septimus Heap series. The book starts with Silas Heap, an Ordinary Wizard, trudging through the snow one night after visiting a witch to get medicine for his baby. On his way home, he comes upon a baby girl wrapped up in a bundle in the snow and takes her home with him. Once home, he finds out his baby boy, Septimus Heap, did not survive and the midwife carries the boy’s body away into the night. The Heap family takes in the baby girl and names her Jenna.

The Queen is murdered the night that Silas finds Jenna and the Supreme Custodian (like a dictator, I think) closes all Magyk schools. Wizards are now considered lower than scum and all Magyk books are burned. Silas rescues some books and teaches his children Magyk illegally. Ten years later, the ExtraOrdinary Wizard comes to the Heaps and informs them that Jenna is in danger. She is actually the princess, daughter of the deceased Queen, and the Supreme Custodian has found her. The Heaps, the ExtraOrdinary Wizard, and a young guard named “Boy 412,” who became involved by pure accident, must go on the run, pursued by The Hunter. There is a much greater villain after Jenna and he will do whatever it takes to rule the land.

I picked up Magyk because it was reviewed as being a fun read that is similar to the Harry Potter series. I loved the magic and adventure of the book, however it could be slow at times. The author tries to follow all of the characters, which spreads the story out a little too thin. The story does pick up it’s pace eventually and becomes a completely enthralling book. I suggest that if you liked the Harry Potter series, you give this book a try. It is more similar to the earlier works of J.K. Rowling, before the books got so dark and morbid. The Septimus Heap series are in the juvenile section of the library and are suggested for children between ages 9 and 12 by Amazon.com.

Septimus Heap series order: Magyk, Flyte, Physik, Queste, Syren, and Darke.

The Summer Reading Program begins NEXT WEEK! Check the calendar on the side of this page for programs, or get even more information from our PROGRAMS page! We are offering something for everyone in the family this year… just stop by the Library for the full schedules and the program materials.