Altamont Library Notes for Thursday, September 27, 2018
In the library world, we always talk a lot about summer reading programs, and great beach reads, and good vacation books, but for my money, there’s no better time than fall to get into a good book. Fall can be a time to try something challenging and hardy like a big biography or a classic you’ve always meant to get to.
Fall can be a time to slip back into something warm and comfortable, like an old favorite author whose work you haven’t kept up with. Or fall can be a time to go “go back to school” and read a groundbreaking work of non-fiction or rediscover poetry.
Fall is what you make of it, and it’s the season we do best here in Upstate America. Stop on by to pick up your next fall favorite.
Library Expedition
Altamont Free Library is incredibly lucky to belong to a community of spectacular libraries throughout Albany and Rensselaer Counties. Each library is unique, as are the communities they serve. Some lend out drones and have high tech maker spaces. Some have life-sized mastodons, or paintings by Grandma Moses. Some even are former train stations!
If you’d like to learn more about the community of local libraries, try your hand at the 2018 Upper Hudson Library System Library Expedition! Think of it as a kind of Cannonball Run for nerds. The idea is for folks, either as individuals, families, or teams, to visit every single one of the 36 library locations in our two-county library system between the beginning of September and the end of November. Prizes will be awarded for visiting 5, 15, 25, and all 36 libraries.
It’s a fun challenge for folks who love libraries and want to explore parts of the Capital District they may have passed by or passed through but never stopped to smell the books. If you would like to be a 36er—and who wouldn’t? ---stop by the library and pick up your official map and get your official Altamont Free Library stamp on your passport! All aboard for adventure!
“A Man Called Ove”
On Monday, Oct. 1, the First Monday Book Club will meet at noon to discuss “A Man Called Ove” by Frederik Backman. This beloved Swedish bestseller follows a curmudgeonly elderly man as he hilariously deals with the changing world around him. This is sure to be a fascinating discussion, so please join us.
Mystery Book Club
On Thursday, Oct. 18, at 7 p.m., we’ll be holding the first meeting of a new book club dedicated to mysteries! Our inaugural book up for discussion will be “In the Woods” by Tana French.
This Edgar Award-winning novel is full of psychological suspense, action, and mystery, and is sure to provoke a great deal of amateur sleuthing! Come pick up a copy today and join us!
YA Book Bingo
Even though the kids summer reading program has ended, the young-adult book bingo contest is just getting going. Stop in for a bingo card, read the books on the squares to get bingo, and get entered to win cool prizes.
And these prizes are something else: We’ve gotten swag packages from some of the top YA authors in the country including Julie Murphy and Brendan Reichs and we’re giving them away to our top readers! For further questions and rules email us at or stop in the library and ask a staff member. Happy reading!