Mercer County Library Blog

Throughout the year, we like to share essays by members of our Teen Advisory Board (TAB). TAB members help with programming, suggest books for purchase, and create the quarterly TAB Zine. This month Sharon Vasudevan writes about the library’s role in her life. Being a senior in high school, it's come to a point where I need to sit back, relax, and reflect on my life. As I embark on a new chapter of life in college, I want to take a moment to remember specific aspects of my childhood that shaped me into who I am today. What first comes to mind, you may ask? The answer is obvious: The Mercer County Library System. Since I was seven years old, my dad would bring me and my two brothers to the library at least twice a month. As soon as I entered this book haven, I immediately ran to the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, my hands caressing the delicate pages of Dog Days and feeling the elation of getting to read this book…again! On our way to the checkout, I’d pass tables full of crayons ...

Summer picnics can be notorious for ants, bees, and other bothersome insects. Not to mention stifling humidity! Families stuff their coolers with cold drinks and summer fruits and they must not forget the suntan lotion and bug spray. Instead of suffering through a picnic in the height of summer, why not plan a family fall foliage picnic instead? A picnic in the fall can be so colorful and beautiful, and there’s no need to worry about irritating insects and uncomfortable heat. Your fall picnic will require warm blankets and dressing in layers. Bring scarves, sweaters, and a lightweight jacket. Fill your thermos with hot chocolate or hot tea, and bring a sandwich or salad! The vast Mercer County Park system, which includes not only Mercer County Park (which alone encompasses more than 2,500 acres), is an ideal place for a fall picnic. Grab a table and bench, or spread a blanket on the lawn. In addition to the county’s flagship park, other beautiful areas to picnic include: Baldpate Mo...

With Halloween just around the corner, I am endlessly in search of all things haunted, spooky or mysterious. Whether it be a scary book, movie, or destination – you can always count me in! As a child of the 90’s, I grew up with a love for spooky books like R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz, and tuned in weekly for shows like Are You Afraid of the Dark and Goosebumps (yes, obviously I couldn’t get enough of R.L. Stine’s stories!). I fondly remember making annual visits to places like Shady Brook Farm in Newtown, PA for their fantastic Haunted Hayrides that would leave me screaming….with joy of course! And my parents driving us up to Gravity Hill, where they’d put the car in neutral, tell us a spooky story, and “let a wayward ghost push our car to safety.” (For anyone unfamiliar with the site, Gravity Hill is a place where an optical illusion makes it seem like cars are rolling uphill. It occurs because the lack of a clear horizon...

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 ...