
Fans of the New Yorker Magazine! Latham Library has something new for you!
A generous donor recently gifted Latham Library digital access to the New Yorker. The library will use this gift to host an article discussion group. The format will be similar to a book discussion group. Wide ranging topics from current events to more entertaining pursuits will be chosen once a month for the hour long discussion. The library host will faciltate the hour. If possible, a guest who has experience or expertise on the selected subject will join the group to help deepen the conversation. This group will meet on the last Wednesday evening of the month on Zoom.
Participants will need to register in advance on a first come, first serve basis. He or she will receive a confirmation email that includes a Zoom link to the meeting, a link to the selected New Yorker magazine article that may or may not also contain an audio version of the article, and a PDF of the article that one can download and print at home. If you do not have access to a printer, you can call Peter Blodgett at 785-4361 for a copy.
At this time, we can only register 8 participants on the library’s New Yorker subscription. However, if you are already a New Yorker magazine subscriber, you are welcome to join in what hopefully will be an interesting hour.
These Discussions will take place on the last Wednesdays of the month from 5:00-6:00pm.
If interested, please email Latham Memorial at NYarticles.Latham@gmail.com. See you then!

Book Discussion Group for 7&8 Year-Olds: Discussion of “Ramona Quimby, Age 8” by Beverly Cleary, date and time TBA. Books are now available to borrow! All are welcome. Please email Emily at librarians@thetfordlibary.org to sign up.

Latham Library will be starting up a Seed Library to be made available to Thetford Libraries patrons in the spring of 2021! With your library card, you will be able to “check-out” seeds grown locally…you are welcome to simply use them in your garden, or you may choose to complete the circle by harvesting the seeds from your plants and giving them back to the Seed Library. In preparation for our new venture we are offering a Seed Saving Workshop for kids and families. Join local growing gurus Cat Buxton and Claire Lafave over Zoom as they explain the basics of seed saving. A packet of supplies will be sent home beforehand to make this a hands-on class! Please register by emailing librarians@thetfordlibrary.org. All ages welcome, though young children will need an adult helper.

Hello! Need a rest from pandemic and other worries? Why not join us on Wed, Nov 25, at 5 PM to talk about Thanksgiving? This month we are reading 3 different New Yorker articles. Curious about what one does to cook this very American holiday while living abroad? You can read what it was like for journalist Jane Kramer in “Pilgrim’s Progress, Thanksgiving without Borders.” Ever want to know what’s in a tofurkey and how this food came to be? Read about it in Jonathan Kauffman’s “Where Does Your Tofurky Come From?” For the more serious side of Thanksgiving, learn about what really happened on that first Thanksgiving in Philip Deloria’s “The Invention of Thanksgiving.”
For these articles and other matters, please email nyarticles.latham@gmail.com or call Latham Library at 785-4361.

Join Thetford author Dean Whitlock over Zoom as he reads from the Carver’s World series, to be released as a boxed set next month. The audience will vote to choose which book in the trilogy Dean reads from! See below for blurbs about each book. Dean will also give a sneak preview of his forthcoming novel, The Bell Cannon. To sign up and get the Zoom link, please email librarians@thetfordlibrary.org.
Carver’s World: the Compelling Fantasy Triptych
Three friends are drawn together by one’s misfortune, but each has wrongs to right and a story to tell.
Sky Carver: Carver, a talented self-taught sculptor in wood, is trapped in the shadow of his father’s painterly genius and his mother’s rough talent as a seer. Though they are long gone downriver, presumed dead, Carver is forced to follow his father’s trade, until he suddenly shows rare talent as a weather mage. Befriended by a bemagicked girl in raven form and bond boy tending fire on a cruel baron’s steamboat, he travels downriver in search of a mentor. Fleeing the baron, they hide among outcasts in a city of filthy canals and spewing workhouses, where mages are hunted and magic refuses to work. Finally, lured by a living picture, they arrive at the magic apparatus of the great mage Krimm. There, Carver must confront the enchantments of the mage and the images of his missing parents to save his friends and choose the best use for all his talents.
Raven: Hardly a year since meeting Carver – and four long years since running away from cruel Baron Cutter – Raven risks recapture to return to Cutter’s estate. She’s an experienced bird mage now, but the memory of her escape haunts her. Did her mother abandon her that night, or did Raven desert her mother in her hour of need? What she discovers rekindles a buried rage and confronts her with two bad options: keep running away or help the mother who’s as strong-willed and sharp-tongued as she is, and has just born the baron’s heir. With unexpected and often clumsy help from Fireboy’s impetuous little brother, aptly nicknamed Hero, Raven must outsmart the minions of two Barons, cross wild highlands booby-trapped with magic, and learn to control her own erratic talent and temper on an unwanted quest, finally looking beyond magic – and herself – to save what is most important.
Fireboy: After a hard year working on the stinking canals of Dunsgow, Fireboy’s skill with steamboats has earned him barely half the money he needs to pay off his mother’s bond. Only then can he reunite his family on the clean waters of the River Slow. A chance meeting with a seer inspires him to gamble everything by hauling a cargo for Baron Miner – who holds his mother’s bond – a chance to free her in one trip. With a wily juggler and a half-human water sprite as unlikely companions, Fireboy journeys to the tangled, bemagicked rapids of the highest reach of the land. Caught between the mind-binding spells of a demented mage and the binding lies in the Baron’s campaign to destroy magic on the Five Rivers, Fireboy desperately risks losing his new friends and his own free will, unless he can discover which bonds really matter.

Book Discussion Group for 7&8 Year-Olds: Discussion of “Bunnicula”
by James Howe. Discussion will be via Zoom on Friday, December 4 at
4:00pm. Books are now available to borrow! All are welcome. Please
email Emily at librarians@thetfordlibary.org to sign up.

Readers who enjoy good writing, history, travel, foreign culture, and food in general would find this series interesting. The discussion group will meet on the following December Wednesdays at 4:00pm:
Week 1: December 9 – “Baking Bread in Lyon” by Bill Buford
Week 2: December 16 – “Raw Faith: the nun and the cheese underground” by Burkhard Bilger
Week 3: December 23 – “The Chocolate Scented Air” by Joseph Wechsberg and “Extreme Chocolate: the quest for the perfect bean” by Bill Buford
Register for articles and Zoom invitation at Nyarticles.Latham@gmail.com.
Call 785-4361 or email librarians@thetfordlibrary.org for print copies.

Readers who enjoy good writing, history, travel, foreign culture, and food in general would find this series interesting. The discussion group will meet on the following December Wednesdays at 4:00pm:
Week 1: December 9 – “Baking Bread in Lyon” by Bill Buford
Week 2: December 16 – “Raw Faith: the nun and the cheese underground” by Burkhard Bilger
Week 3: December 23 – “The Chocolate Scented Air” by Joseph Wechsberg and “Extreme Chocolate: the quest for the perfect bean” by Bill Buford
Register for articles and Zoom invitation at Nyarticles.Latham@gmail.com.
Call 785-4361 or email librarians@thetfordlibrary.org for print copies.