If you're feeling a little lazy this weekend after eating all your Thanksgiving nummies, you may be pleased to find that you can now search the library catalog straight from the library's homepage!

Go check it out! http://www.monterey.org/library/

And from everyone at the library, we hope you have a great Thanksgiving!

The Library's gift shop is open for business, and we have some great reading-themed items that make perfect gifts for teachers, writers, and book lovers. The selection includes note cards, sweatshirts, travel mugs, "Dewey Decimal" coffee mugs, "Bookstacks" scarves and ties, "Red Hat" bookmarks, book bags, and t-shirts. "Born to Read" knit hats and bibs, Library ball caps, "Curious George" erasers, and pencils, make great stocking stuffers for kids. For history buffs, we have a large selection of local history books. Best of all, when you purchase items from the Library store, you're helping to support the Library. Happy shopping!

On Sunday afternoon, the City of Monterey rolled out the red carpet for our huge volunteer work force, with a nice lunch and words of praise and appreciation from the Mayor, a Councilmember, the City Manager, and the City's Volunteer Coordinator.

Representing the Library along with my colleague, Dina, I felt honored to be on hand to say "thanks" to the Library's many volunteers, and to take stock of just how much they do to make the Library a better place. Our volunteers keep order in the bookstacks and keep the book jackets clean. They assist with programs and special projects. They keep the house plants looking beautiful, greet customers, and give directional information. They deliver books and other library materials to homebound customers. They help with children's activities and the Summer Reading Program. They assist with shelving and other projects in the California History Room. The list just goes on and on. Thanks, volunteers, we couldn't do it without you!

In Rules of the Road Jenna got her driver's license and her first job - driving an elderly woman around the country to visit her shoe stores. Jenna likes driving, but she's not sure about working with shoe stores. It may not seem like the coolest job in the world, but by the end of the book, Jenna gets caught up in the shoe business, and really respects the old lady. In the second book, Best Foot Forward, the 16 year-old gets a view of the despicable and even illegal activities that can be part of business today. She meets a guy who works at his family's doughnut shop and who is into retail too. Sounds weird, but this book gripped me all the way. Jenna is a girl you want to know. She's one of my favorite characters. Anybody else want to say who their favorite characters are?

I just finished reading The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, and I highly recommend it for book discussion groups. It is a complex story centered around an aging Holocaust survivor living in New York, and the book that he wrote 50 years ago. The History of Love is at once heartbreaking and healing. Krauss turns from the comic to the tragic and back again with great adroitness while exploring lost love, dislocation, and the business of being alive. If you're in a book discussion group, put this one on your list!

Election Day night - and I'm two hundred miles from one of my favorite proud-to-be-an-American institutions - my neighborhood polling place.

Because I'm in Sacramento, learning about the design and planning of library buildings, I submitted my mail-in ballot late last week. I miss standing in line with familiar folks, smiling at my elderly neighbor who faithfully shows up every two years, casting my vote with pride, showing off my "I voted" sticker all day long.

Luckily, I'm just down the street from another of my favorite civic institutions - the public library - where democracy grows and thrives on the free availability of information, the strength of human connections and the promise of lifelong learning for all.

The polling places have closed for another two years, but the local public library will open again tomorrow morning. And I'll walk through its doors and open my book - my personal vote for libraries made once again.