News
Your Family Tree: Beginning Genealogy
Genealogy workshops for those getting started in family history, February 10th, 17th and 24th at 7pm.
Feb. 10th: Getting started: forms & charts; the family interview, census, where to find vital records, military records.
Feb. 17: Cindy Rowzee – Latter Days Saints genealogist. information on LDS resources and research centers.
Feb. 24: Peg Edwards, Town of Lake George Historian; Wayne Wright, City of Glens Falls Historian.
Please call and register.
BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP will meet on February 8th at 7pm. They will discuss The Book Thief.
LIBRARY BOARD meets the 3rd Friday of January, May, September and November at 9am.
Selected New Books
Fiction
Remarkable Creatures. Tracy Chevalier.
Tracy Chevalier has sunk into a fertile historical moment to examine the way a smart but untrained young woman interacts with overconfident, dismissive men. In this case, the girl is Mary Anning, an unjustly forgotten, real-life figure in 19th-century paleontology. She was the daughter of an amateur fossil hunter who died young. Mary helped support her impoverished family by combing the shore for fossils that could be sold to gentleman hobbyists. She developed an extraordinary ability to spot a variety of objects from what we now call the Jurassic period. Her ichthyosaur and plesiosaur are still on display in the national museums of London and Paris. Indeed, the discoveries made by this self-taught young woman proved important to the work of Georges Cuvier, Louis Agassiz and other leading geologists. (And if you think they gave her the credit she deserved, you know nothing about how natural selection has engineered the masculine mind.) Mary Anning narrates chapters with a raw simplicity that’s endearing, if a bit jejune. More commentary comes from chapters narrated by her older, well-bred friend Elizabeth Philpot, who moves to Lyme with her two sisters. Though separated by class, Mary and Elizabeth share a deep interest in fossil-hunting and feel the sting of being excluded from the scientific discussions based on their work. As unmarried women with eccentric interests, they struggle for years to create a livable space for themselves — caring and not caring about the rumors that swirl around them. Chevalier attends to matters of decorum, dress and manners even more than to the scientific and theological implications of Mary and Elizabeth’s discoveries — and that emphasis will largely determine whether this novel excites you. The Washington Post.
Non-Fiction
The Murder of King Tut, James Patterson.
Amazon.com Review
Thrust onto Egypt’s most powerful throne at the age of nine, King Tut’s reign was fiercely debated from the outset. Behind the palace’s veil of prosperity, bitter rivalries flourished among the Boy King’s most trusted advisors and after only nine years King Tut suddenly perished, his name purged from Egyptian history. To this day, his death remains shrouded in controversy.
Enchanted by the ruler’s tragic story and hoping to unlock the answers to the 3,000 year-old mystery, Howard Carter made it his life’s mission to uncover the pharaoh’s hidden tomb. He began his search in 1907, but encountered countless setbacks before he finally uncovered the long-lost crypt.
Now, in The Murder of King Tut, James Patterson and Martin Dugard dig through stacks of evidence–X-rays, Carter’s files, forensic clues, and stories told through the ages–to arrive at their own account of King Tut’s life and death. The result is an exhilarating true crime tale of intrigue, passion, and betrayal that casts fresh light on the mystery.
How You Can Help
- Make a donation – any amount is welcome
- Volunteer
