Tuesday, May 13, 2014

A day at the Library........

There is a Greek word:  “Agora” which literally means “assembly’ or “gathering place” or “discussion place.”  If ever there was an appropriate word for the Lee County Library, agora is it.  This is especially true on Friday afternoons.  We have a rotating cast of characters who come in and the discussions are wide ranging and open.  As well as books, current events and top news stories are discussed.  All the debates are good natured and usually pretty funny.  Our Friday regulars really light and lighten up the day. 

Not long ago, a friend/patron returned a book and recommended it to me.  It was called “Still Life with Crows,” by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs.  I read it and loved it and recommended it to another friend/patron.  We all started recommending it and everyone loved it.  We are now having a run on Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs books that cannot be believed.  Once, we had an entire shelf of them and now at last count there were about three of them on the shelf.  Showing the power of word of mouth!!

These could be classified as mysteries, but they are way, way more.  The protagonist, Aloysius Penergast is an FBI agent with some really unusual abilities.  He also has a back story that is dribbled out with new twists in each book.  This is a book series but they can be read as standalone novels.  All the ones I have read are slightly eerie, maybe even scary, but they are definitely interesting.  This brings us back to the Lee County Library “agora.”  Last Friday there was a heated discussion on old Aloysius’ back story and each of us had something different to add.  We are ordering copies of the titles we don’t have from SCLends. 

The upstart of all of this is that the original friend/patron who recommended it to me came in Friday and couldn’t find any copies.  I think he was a little cranky!  But we all had a good laugh; since we are all reading the copies and the original recommender couldn’t find his.  

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