The Library in April: Celebrating Libraries and Bookshops

by Anne Pelish

The theme for National Library Week in 2025 is “For a Richer, Fuller Life, Read”. This annual celebration highlights the valuable role libraries, librarians, and library workers play in transforming lives and strengthening communities.

Highlighted books in our library include Dewey, (NF) by Vicki Myron. The story tells of an abandoned kitten that transforms a sleepy library, inspires a classic American town, and captures the hearts of animal lovers everywhere. The Library Book (NF) by Susan Orleans chronicles the 1986 fire in the Los Angeles main library and its aftermath to show the role of libraries throughout history.  The Giver of Stars by JoJo Moyes and The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Richardson are both fictionalized accounts of “Book Women” who became packhorse librarians delivering books to remote areas of Kentucky during the depression. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig follows a 35-year-old English woman unhappy in her dead-end life who is given the opportunity to experience lives she might have had if she had made different choices.

Bookshops, as well as libraries, have long served as hubs for intellectual exchange and community engagement. Today, independent bookstores promote local authors, host readings and events, and preserve a diversity of perspectives.

Published quietly in 1945, then rediscovered nearly sixty years later, A Bookshop in Berlin (NF) by Françoise Frenkel is a remarkable story of survival and resilience, of human cruelty and human spirit. The Bookshop: a History of the American Bookstore (NF) is an affectionate and engaging history of the American bookstore and its central place in American cultural life. The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan tells of Nina Redmond a librarian who buys a van and transforms it into a mobile bookshop that she drives from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling.

Bookshops are also fertile ground for mysteries. Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan is a heart-pounding mystery that will keep you guessing until the very last page. Silverview by John le Carré centers on a young bookseller, an enigmatic Polish immigrant, and a British agent hunting down a leak.

Come to the RVM library For a Richer, Fuller Life, and Read.

Library volunteer Anne Newins invites all to the celebration