Another July 4th has come and gone and that means summer is counting down and the days are again getting shorter!  For me this is always a good thing because it gives me more chances to read and less guilt while doing so!  Right now we are enjoying a lovely rain and that makes a good day to read as well!  (I have enumerable excuses to read!)  The corn should certainly love this wonderful drink of water given us and it and should just grow amazingly.  Also we can hope that the smoke-filled skies will be cleansed and we will see blue sky again!

As mentioned in last week's column, we have been working in the children's room and I have been enjoying a couple books picked out while re-arranging.  The first is Jim-Dandy which I will review below and the second, which I am enjoying today, is Lad, a Dog.  I am finding that there are as many good books in the children's room as in any other room of the library!  Sometimes we need a break from mysteries that make us tense and romances that leave us feeling unfulfilled and enjoy a story about an animal--one that the author or his characters love beyond all reason or one that leads them through a difficult period in  life.  Just because they are marked young adult or children's doesn't need to be significant!  Try a change of pace; try an animal story!

Thanks to those of you reading the paperbacks at Finley Motors and leaving $$$ as a donation to better our books in the library.   Seeing books that had been pulled for reading or perusal when I checked last week gave me a good feeling.  We hope you are enjoying them as well.

Remember, we now have a shelf with newly added paperbacks in the library so you are aware of new arrivals.  We thought perhaps that when they were going straight to the shelves in the back room and they weren't being noticed, so began this new shelf-- just like the hard covers.  They will be there two months and then shelved with the others, again just like the hard covers.

Also we have another new shelf that puts on display recently reviewed books of note.  And if you are interested in librarians' favorites, those may be found on Face Book.  If you come in every few weeks, and if you are interested, you will be able to pick the brain of the librarian on duty for books they have read and enjoyed.  Joyce was just in and was pleased to see that the old books from the People's Book Club now have their very own shelf--the bottom one--under the regular print books on the north wall of the main room.  She found several she wanted to read.  Come in and check us out!

Here's a couple reviews:

The Sentry by Robert Crais.  (HC/RP)  (Joe Pike series #3)  (2011)  Pike is getting gas when he realizes the sandwich shop across the street  and its owner are being attacked by several ruffians.  He rushes to the rescue of the owner who wants no help, but Pike being Pike, doesn't let up.  He also meets the owner's niece and she makes a deep impression on him.  As usual, things are not what they seem, but Pike is all in.  As the situation becomes more complicated, Pike brings in his friend, Private Investigator Elvis Cole, who has different connections.  There is lots of action, lots of mean killings and lots of lies.  Pike is such a great character that the reader would find it difficult to be on any side but his.  He believes in wrong and right.  There is not much grey in his life!  Pike and Cole are such good friends, have been through so much together, and that shows up very much in this book.  I, and  many others I know, have been fans of author Robert Crais and his characters since the first Elvis Cole novel, The Monkey's Raincoat (1987) (which Finley Library has).  Joe Pike just makes the whole thing better.

Jim-Dandy by Hadley Irwin.  (HC/RP)  (Y/A)  (1994)  Caleb lives in Kansas with his step-father after the Civil War, but before Custer's Last Stand.  He is twelve and misses his mother who recently died and his "real" father who was killed in the Civil War.  When Jim-Dandy and Athens comes into his life, he feels like he just might make it. Then the farm suffers through a dry year and the only way to get cash to buy seed is to sell Dandy.  The U. S. Calvary is looking for good horses to use in their Indian Campaign, so the horse is sold to them.  What an adventurous time for a now thirteen year-old boy!  Not to give too much away, but Caleb is not happy about the sale of his horse.  Read what he does to keep Dandy in his life and how things end.  There is an afterword at the end of the book which I read after the book.  It added to the specialness of Caleb's adventure and his horse, Dandy.  Young adult, remember, does not mean that the book cannot be enjoyed by an "adult" as well. There are so many levels to this and most (Y/A) books that would probably only be picked up by the adult reader.  In this one, for instance, I found it quite ironic that southern slaves had just been freed by warfare and President Lincoln and now another entire group would be  enslaved by warfare and a different President--the one who won the war for the north--Grant!