Travel the world with VCU!

Diversity, Discussion, Desserts!

This event is hosted by VCU's Global Education Office. Virginia Commonwealth University is ranked one of the Top 100 Global Universities. The Global Education Office brings the world to VCU. VCU’s Global Education Office is your passport to the world.

Enjoy dessert with the Main Library and with VCU's Global Education Office and with VCU International students who will share their stories from their native countries. Become part of a diverse learning group and "travel" around the world as these students share their experiences and answer the questions that you have.

Held Tuesday December 6th at the Main Library from 1:30-3:00 pm, call ahead now to reserve your seat on this wonderful trip around the world.

A Christmas Tradition

Dressed in period costume and using stage notes from Charles Dickens' actual performance, Dr. Eric Douglass presents a dramatic reading of A Christmas Carol. In this one man show, Douglass follows the practice of Dickens in his performance, bringing to life a tale of greed and redemption. Come enjoy refreshments and experience the Victorian traditions of the holiday season.


A Christmas Carol is one of the holiday classics. Written by Dickens in 1843, the tale has been viewed as an indictment of nineteenth century industrial capitalism and was adapted several times to the stage, and has been credited with restoring the holiday to one of merriment and festivity in Britain and America after a period of sobriety and somberness.


The book was written and published in early Victorian era Britain when it was experiencing a nostalgic interest in its forgotten Christmas traditions, and at the time when new customs such as the Christmas tree and greeting cards were being introduced. Dickens' sources for the tale appear to be many and varied but are principally the humiliating experiences of his childhood, his sympathy for the poor, and various Christmas stories and fairy tales.


Presented at the Main Library on December 8th, at 1:00 pm

Celebrate the holidays with us and the Richmond Boys Choir!

Join us for our fifteenth annual Gellman Room concert with the Richmond Boys Choir. It's a holiday tradition! The concert is free and the public is invited to sit with us and enjoy the beautiful music that the choir brings.
Now in its 16^th season, the Richmond Boys Choir (RBC) began as a collaborative project of Theatre IV and the Boys and Girls Club of Richmond. After citywide auditions in the fall of 1996, 25 boys were selected for membership. In 1997, the Richmond Boys Choir became an independent, non-profit 501(c)3.


Over the past 16 years, members of the Richmond Boys Choir have been provided opportunities to represent their beloved Richmond throughout the U.S. by traveling to such places as Fayetteville, Kansas City, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and New York.


In 1999, the Richmond Chamber of Commerce deemed RBC “Richmond’s Ambassadors of Song.” In keeping with that title, the Richmond Boys Choir continues to showcase its personal, academic and musical excellence, while representing Richmond's diverse cultures through music and membership. RBC uses such opportunities to share with all who would hear the rich musical talent found right here in central Virginia. RBC welcomes members from all socio-economic, religious and cultural backgrounds. 

This wonderful event is held Saturday, December 10th at the Main Library at 2pm 

Holiday Happenings at Your Library

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and now that we're all well-fed and in a festive mood, it's time to do some full-force celebrating. Richmond Public Library is holding many events this year to help you and your family enjoy the holiday season. Build a gingerbread house, spend an afternoon with Charles Dickens, watch a family Christmas movie, or hear the Richmond Boys Choir perform their annual concert. All these events are free. And of course, we have an almost endless supply of books to help you share the holiday spirit. Click here to read about all events happening at Richmond Public Library branches.

And take note: we'll be closed on Friday, December 23rd through Monday, December 26th for the Christmas holiday and then on January 2nd for New Year's.

"Series"ly, folks . . .

Stephanie Plum, Harry Bosch, Kinsey Milhone . . . Harry Potter, Sookie Stackhouse, Bella Swan, Harry Dresden . . . Jack Reacher, Gabriel Allon, Alex Cross . . . Mitford, Thrush Green, Middle Earth, Winterfell . . .

For those of you who eagerly await the latest installments of your favorite series, there are always new arrivals at RPL. Right now there seems to be a holiday rush of thrillers and detectives:

Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone is back with V is for Vengeance.
Lee Child’s latest Jack Reacher, The Affair, has been wait-listed for a month.
Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum is in trouble again in Explosive Eighteen.
John Sandford’s Virgil Flowers is in for a Shock Wave.
James Paterson is ready to Kill Alex Cross.
The Drop is next month for Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch.

Can’t keep track? Check out http://www.blogger.com/goog_74332351 , a website designed by a fantasy series lover to “Track your series”.


Series have been popular as long as they have been around (Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot), particularly in children’s literature, where familiar characters become friends and fantasy worlds seem as real as the backyard.  I remember walking out of my branch library with a stack of Moffat books as long as my arm, and I believe I read them all in a week. I did the same with Pippi Longstocking, the Rescuers, and Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. When I discovered a new series, I gobbled it all up at once: from the beginning, in order, and with nothing in between.

As an adult I also enjoyed reading series, for a while. I tired of Sue Grafton’s alphabet at around  L (is for Lawless). Ayla’s adventures in Jean Auel’s romantic version of prehistory no longer interested me by the time The Land of Painted Caves was finally released eight years after Shelters of Stone.  Dismas Hardy (John Lescroat) became just one more lawyer, and no longer a particularly interesting one. I now avoid most series completely, suspecting that I will lose interest sooner rather than later, and not wanting to start something I know I won’t finish.

There are a few exceptions to my series avoidance. Kate Atkinson’s private investigator Jackson Brodie, introduced in Case Histories, is the protagonist of four books so far (which have been made into a 6 episode BBC miniseries, now available on DVD.)  I followed Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus all the way through his retirement in Exit Music, and now await the continued police work of his younger colleague Siobhan Clarke. I have my fingers crossed that Lev Grossman turns The Magicians and its sequel The Magician King into a series (how many books make a series?)  

I have also found that I enjoy listening to some series, although I don’t read them. I read The Sorcerer’s Stone, but listened to Harry grow up in Jim Dale’s extraordinary performances. The first four books in David Baldacci’s “Camel Club” series were fun (and I love Baldacci’s favorite reader, Ron McLarty), but by Divine Justice its quirky heroes and conspiracy-driven plots had, alas, became too predictable even for half-attended audio. I have kept up with Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller in Michael Connelly’s popular series, and am looking forward to listening to the the fourth (and final) installment of Gregory Maguire’s “Wicked Years” saga, Out of Oz, its 23 discs on order here at RPL.

May we suggest . . .?

Readers at the Main branch of RPL are busy folks, dropping in on their lunch hours or on their way home from work, with just enough time to pick up a hold or seek out a recently reviewed release. But what if they don’t know what they’re looking for? When confronted with aisle after aisle of books differentiated only by the color of their spines, lunchtime browsers often limit themselves to the “New Releases” section, or may leave empty-handed. That’s when the display table just inside the General Collections department seems to help. Recent displays have attracted a surprising amount of attention, and prove that RPL readers have wide-ranging tastes and interests.

A display of the books described in September’s ”What Are You Reading?” blog post as “A Bibliography of Human Fallibility” included books such as Daniel Ariely’s Predictably Irrational, Joseph Hallinan’s Why We Make Mistakes, and Duncan Watts’ Everything is Obvious, Once You Know The Answer. The topic must have struck a nerve: two weeks after the display went up, one lone book out of 21 was left on the table.

Fiction readers enjoyed the next display, a tableful of Man Booker Prize winners going back to 1975, some of them coming up from the stacks for the first time in decades. Paul Scott’s Staying On (1977) was checked out for only its third time. Two readers rediscovered the magic of The God of Small Things (1997), by Arundhati Roy. One reader was perhaps surprised to see that Schindler’s List was an award-winning book by Thomas Keneally before it became an award-winning movie by Stephen Spielberg, and was originally published as “Schindler’s Ark.” Four of this year’s six finalists were read several times before the winner, Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending was announced on October 18th. In twelve days, Main patrons checked out 24 of the 36 titles displayed.

In October, RPL was host to the traveling exhibit Abraham Lincoln: A Man of His Time, A Man for All Times and held a month-long series of Lincoln-related films, programs, and special events. We gathered two dozen books--some popular (Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, on which is based a movie currently being filmed here in Richmond), some scholarly (Henry Winkle’s The Young Eagle: the Rise of Abraham Lincoln), some whimsical (Adam Gopnik’s Angels and Ages: a Short Book About Lincoln, Darwin, and Modern Life), some polemical (Mario Cuomo’s Why Lincoln Matters, Today More Than Ever)-- all related to Lincoln. Surely this was too serious a collection to attract the same attention as British literary fiction! On the contrary - readers checked out 11 of 24 titles.

Currently on display is a collection of both fiction and nonfiction inspired by “Bonjour Paris!”, the most recent installment of our Vicarious Traveler series, presented by Richmond author Karen A. Chase, whose new ebook is Bonjour 40, A Paris Travel Log (soon to be available through RPL’s eBook catalog). Paris has been the setting for classics by Victor Hugo, Honore de Balzac, and Dickens; memoirs by Ernest Hemingway, Julia Child, and Adam Gopnik; and recent novels by Julie Orringer, Muriel Barberry, and Dan Brown. Its history delights as well: David McCullough’s latest book, The Greater Journey, Americans in Paris, is a New York Times best seller; Parisians, An Adventure History of Paris by Graham Robb, was a 2010 Notable Book. This display has been up for less than a week, and patrons have already snapped up 11 of the 32 Paris-themed selections.

What’s next? You tell us - what do RPL readers want to see usfeature at Main?

Compost Now!

Come to the Ginter Park Library next Saturday to meet Marlene Sehen, a local gardening guru and owner of E-Scapes Landscaping. She will be holding a free class introducing a variety of ways to compost as preparation for better growing and better environmental stewardhsip.

The class will be held at Ginter Park Library (1200 Westbrook) on November 19th from 2-3PM. Stop by and get some tips on saving money while growing beautiful flowers and produce this spring!

Film for Lunch Series Returns!

The James River Film Society revives its Film for Lunch series at the library this winter in the basement auditorium, with Great Adaptations of the Silver Screen on Thursdays at noon on November 3, 10, 17 and December 1. It's free, but donations are accepted. You are encouraged to bring your lunch. All films will be projected in 16mm.

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November 3, Noon
The Magnificent Ambersons: Welles’ version of Booth Tarkington’s novel chronicles the demise of a prominent family at the dawn of the 20th century. Welles would later disown the film; he’d been in South America shooting It’s All True for the State Department and had no control during the editing, but it still packs a narrative and visual punch.

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November 10, Noon
Great Expectations: Lean’s adaptation of Charles Dickens is the second of three screen versions. The lighting, set design, acting and directing would set the standard for many noteworthy adaptations to later emerge from the British cinema. The tale of an orphan whose rise to social prominence through the manipulations of a mysterious benefactor is a timeless classic.

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November 17, Noon
The Big Sleep: Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled novel isn’t nearly as upbeat as Hawks’ movie—a convoluted, campy noir romance between Humphrey Bogart as a private detective and Lauren Bacall as the good/bad elder Sternwood daughter. Their love interest sizzles just beneath the surface as the body count grows.

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December 1, Noon
A Place in the Sun: Director Stevens, in his version of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, manages to capture the human element in the machinations of America’s social disparities and its myth of the “classless society.” As the social climber who falls for his socialite cousin, Montgomery Clift did perhaps his best acting and one can sense the talent beneath Elizabeth Taylor’s knockout beauty.

African American Studies Community Course

We are so excited to host a six-week course on African-American studies that will be totally free and open to the public. Explore the history, culture, politics, and contemporary life of persons of African descent through lectures, films and discussions. These classes will be presented by Dr. Shawn Utsey, VCU Department of African American Studies and Afrikana Student Union, VCU. 

The first class starts this week on Wednesday, November 2nd at 6:30 PM. The topic for tomorrow's lecture is the American Voodoo Construct. Students will explore the Voodoo concept in American popular culture. Special guest, Dr. Iyelle Ichile, will help discuss the Voodoo Construct as a collection of images and rhetoric concerning African spirituality.

"This topic emerged as a result of several contemporary incidents of harsh material and social consequences meted out to followers of these faiths in place like Louisiana, Haiti, and even Ghana. 'Voodoo' is more a part of Euro-American folklore than any black religious tradition. As such, 'Voodoo' reflects both the racial ideologies and racialized nationalist anxieties of white America."   - Dr. Shawn Utsey

Classes will be held on Wednesdays from November 2nd through December 14 (except the Wednesday before Thanksgiving), from 6:30-8:30 PM at the Main Library. This is such a special opportunity for the Richmond community, and we hope to see many people in attendance. Please call Dr. Utsey at (804) 828-1384 with any questions.