October is National Reading Group Month. It is sponsored by the Women’s National Book Association. The library has two adult book discussion groups. Great Books has been meeting for over 20 years. It is led by Bev Jirsa. Carolyn DeAre and I have been facilitating the Contemporary Book Group since 1995. Check our website for times [...]
Sale08 004, originally uploaded by Wheaton Public Library. Join us this weekend for our annual book sale. For times, hours, and rules, please see our website: http://www.wheatonlibrary.org/friends.html
Many of my friends, and fellow librarians, read Stephenie Meyer’s extremely popular YA series, the Twilight Saga. Teenage vampires? Not really my thing, I thought. After much encouragement and one friend’s comment that “they’re better than Harry Potter,” I finally decided to take the time to read the four intriguing YA novels. To be honest, [...]
Awoke Friday to a sunny day. Didn’t carry a jacket or an umbrella. Didn’t worry if we might have forgotten something. Didn’t have to look at the routes for the Underground. We simply walked out the front door of the hotel and crossed the street to the British Museum! You could easily spend a week [...]
Leaving from Waterloo Station, we took our second daytrip on Thursday. I love English history so I had suggested that Dave and I visit Hampton Court Palace. Hampton Court was originally a medieval manor. In 1514, it was leased by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who rebuilt it as a palace. Henry VIII admired it so much that [...]
It’s still Wednesday and my brother and I are at the National Portrait Gallery on Trafalgar Square. If you visit this museum, I suggest starting on the top floor and working your way down. This will give you an historical perspective. You’ll find portraits of the Tudors at the top, and Queen Elizabeth II and other contemporary figures [...]
Wednesday started out sunny and windy. We walked over to Fleet Street (quite a hike) to catch the No. 15 bus to St. Paul’s Cathedral. The first cathedral was built on this site in 604 AD. The current cathedral was built after the previous one was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. Sir Christopher [...]
On Tuesday, August 12, my brother and I rode the train from Paddington Station to Bath, or Bath Spa, as the station is called. This was our second time at Paddington and we finally found the Paddington Bear sculpture! Michael Bond’s Paddington Bear stories are wonderful children’s books. Bath is a spa town west of [...]
Monday was our day to do the typical London sightseeing. We took the Underground to Trafalgar and trekked over to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. We learned that Parliament building is still called the Palace of Westminster and it was used as a royal residence until 1512. The Houses of Parliament, as we [...]