Mercer County Library Blog

October’s crisp air and turning leaves invite us to enjoy cozy, nostalgic meals made with seasonal ingredients. Think chili, banana bread, and pumpkin lattes—comfort foods for body and soul. This is my favorite time of year, because it's when I can finally turn my oven back on and enjoy hearty, soothing meals during the chilly days and nights ahead. By the time October comes, I am ready and eager to indulge in these comforting delights! This season, treat yourself to some old favorites or explore new recipes with the many titles the Mercer County Library System has to offer. Here are a few books to get you going: The Complete Autumn & Winter Cookbook: 550+ Recipes for Warming Dinners, Holiday Roasts, Seasonal Desserts, Breads, Food Gifts, and More America's Test Kitchen 641.564 COM 2021 Good Soup: 52 Colorful Recipes for Year-Round Comfort Bijdendijk, Joris 641.813 BIJ 2023 Half Baked Harvest Quick & Cozy Gerard, Tieghan 641.512 GER 2024 Homestyle Kitchen: Fre...

Have you ever wished there was a webpage you could go to that would teach you about writing an email, keyboarding skills, artificial intelligence, Google Calendar, and creating animations in PowerPoint- all in the same place? If so, you are very ambitious. If not, have no fear, because that is exactly the niche that the Technology Instruction LibGuide seeks to fill! The Technology Instruction LibGuide is the hub for all information relating to the Mercer County Library System’s technology instruction. For those unfamiliar, LibGuides is a content management system (CMS) that library staff use to manage digital content on a variety of subjects. The collection of guides created by the Mercer County Library System is housed under the “Resources” tab on the MCL website. LibGuides are meant to be easy to quickly update if information changes. Due to the evolving nature of some of the topics covered in the Technology Instruction guide, such as artificial intelligence and the impending end ...

We are fortunate enough to be alive at a time in which all the information we could ever dream of learning is at our fingertips. I’ve always lived in a world with instant access to the internet; I could always Ask Jeeves or even text ChaCha when I was away from my computer, and got my first iPhone just before starting high school. I cannot imagine living in a world without the ability to pull up a video of my favorite Real Housewives fight whenever I want to see it. (Mine is the Amsterdam fight from Beverly Hills. If you know, you know.) Or worse, growing up without Real Housewives at all… I shudder at the thought. Those who forget history… Instant access to information does not mean instant access to reliable information, though; the spread of misinformation is as old as time itself. With each technological advancement, more opportunities for misinformation arise: in the 1480s, Dominican friars used the recently-invented printing press to spread a wildly successful, Pope-approve...

You might not think of memoir as a genre that lends itself to invention – it’s supposed to be true. But memoir is a literary form that can be inventive and innovative, in its form and prose style. I hope to show you, with a list of examples, just how imaginative memoir can be. Some of the books below incorporate dreams, formal experiments, and even fiction to get at an emotional truth and tell the story of a life or lives. I included pieces of publishers’ descriptions in quotation marks, and my own words alongside. Pathemata, or, The Story of My Mouth by Maggie Neslon “ Pathemata merges a pain diary chronicling a decade of jaw pain with dreams and dailies, eventually blurring the lines between embodied, unconscious, and everyday life. In scrupulously distilled prose, Pathemata offers a tragicomic portrait of a particularly unnerving and isolating moment in recent history, as well as an abiding account of how it feels to inhabit a mortal body in struggle to connect with others.” I...

Here are some of the events and programs from around the Mercer County Library System for the month of October. For a complete list of events at your local branch, visit the MCLS Events Calendar , and check out the flyers in this post! October Brings Spooky Fun and Cultural Celebrations This October, MCLS branches come alive with Halloween fun and Diwali celebrations. Enjoy spooky crafts, costume parades, and themed storytimes alongside vibrant Festival of Lights programming featuring dance performances, traditional crafts, and cooking demonstrations. For Kids Diwali Storytime & Craft with Author Prarthana Gururaj Saturday, October 4, 11:00 am West Windsor Branch Pumpkin Painting Saturday, October 4, 11:30 am Tuesday, October 7, 4:30 pm Hickory Corner Branch Diwali Celebration Sunday, October 5, 1:00 pm Sunday, October 5, 3:00 pm Ewing Branch DIY Scarecrow Craft Monday, October 6, 4:00 pm Tuesday, October 7, 4:00 pm Ewing Branch Find Your Gourds to Decorate Wedne...

A pumpkin is rotting under your feet, why are you counting someone else’s mustard seeds?--- would be my father’s putdown in response to neighbors or relatives minding our business. Too polite to say it to their face, of course. Yet, the imagery it brought forth never failed to amuse us. Maybe it is one of the fairly easily-translatable ones from Konkani, my mother-tongue, or maybe it is that everybody is minding everyone else’s business these days, that this is an oft-repeated one in my household from the treasury of dad’s idioms. Although my approximate translation does not capture its full color, I think I’m somewhat able to retain the spirit of the vernacular. A few thousand years ago, text for translations were not easy to come by; and, for that matter, text was not easily translatable. I was recently reminded of the fact that, in ancient India, scholars travelled several thousand miles for several years, from neighboring regions to Nalanda , to come across Buddhist teachers and ...

As the leaves start to fall, many children are diving back into school, homework, and nightly reading logs. But what do you do when your child, who is used to picking out a Level 2 or 3 about their favorite character, or easily reading through an Elephant and Piggie favorite, hits a roadblock when making the jump into the Juvenile chapter books? Finding the right book for your child can be challenging, but the Mercer County Library System is full of resources that can help you discover enjoyable books that grow their reading muscles! Schools use different systems to check a child’s reading or comprehension proficiency, often leaving parents and caregivers wondering what the level, number, or letter even means. Many are familiar with the Step Into Reading , I Can Read! , and DK Super Reader Easy Reader series, with levels from 1 to 4. But what happens when your child has graduated from the Easy Reader section? Most of the Easy Reader series do have Level 4 books, which contain the sa...

September is Happy Cat Month. Happy Cat Month was started by the nonprofit CATalyst Council to bring awareness to the welfare of cats. It can be hard work to understand your cat’s wants and needs…I’m still figuring it out with my own cat! I adopted my cat Svetlana when she was 7 years old. She is now almost 14 and is as playful as ever. Providing your cat with enough mental stimulation is one of the most important aspects of taking care of your cat. I have tried to get my cat interested in all sorts of toys over the years…from cat houses to ball tracks, but some days her favorite toy is a simple ping pong ball. I think she, like most cats, lose interest rather quickly, so it is important to introduce new toys and games often. The American Animal Hospital Association has a list of DIY Enrichment games that you can make at home and enjoy with your cat, like homemade feather toys and a toilet paper roll puzzle. Another important part of a cat’s health is hydration. A lot of cats do not ...