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Catchy title, right? And the bizarre cover photo further piqued my interest. I decided I had to read this book, just to hear the rest of the story. It turns out, back in the Depression era unemployed adults couldn’t just sit around and surf the internet or play their Wii. They had to invent their entertainment. And this group of local men decided to create a game that would also serve their community: a two-week-long rat hunt. For fourteen days these gents captured as many rats as they could and posed for the photo at the hunt’s conclusion. This is just one of the tales, some true, others not so much, that underscore the deep value of community held by the residents of Walnut Creek. The book reads like your favorite uncle is sitting at the kitchen table telling you stories; the tongue-in-cheek prose suits the material of rumor and legend, and one can imagine whispered secrets and playful pranks happening among friends. Especially the story of the drunken cows. Or the banty cheese (it involves a rooster’s demise – you have to read it to believe it). My favorite was a story about a tramp: a man named “Trilby” earned so many friends that although he was originally buried outside the cemetery when he expired, people of Walnut Creek later included him into the community by moving the boundary fence. Another tramp, a beloved Holmes County regular with an intellectual disability, evoked  Steinbeck :  “On seeing fog rise from the woods one morning, he said, ‘the rabbits in the woods are cooking their soup.’”

The author’s description plunges you into an idyllic, pastoral setting of rolling hills and babbling brooks; through it you can reimagine the evolution of society from a need for roads and post offices to a need for bed & breakfasts. The comparative photographs placed throughout the book show the impact the tourism industry has had on the town’s structure and style.

I found this book very entertaining and informative, although sometimes the line between fact and fiction gets a little hazy. But that’s how it is with the best stories, isn’t it? At least I learned where Trail bologna comes from, and how they make the holes in Swiss cheese.

Claire Kandle

Local history

I have always loved reading. When I was growing up, I read as often as possible–and then some. My mom frequently had to tell me to stop reading and clean my room. The only problem: as I was cleaning, I’d come across some book that had slipped under my bed, or behind my desk, and I’d quickly become immersed in the pages. At school, I’d try to finish my work as quickly as possible so that I could get back to reading whatever book I’d brought for the day.

As I got older and gained new responsibilities and commitments, from sports teams in high school to challenging courses in college to driving to work, my time for reading got smaller and smaller. Fortunately, a couple of years ago I discovered audiobooks! These became my solution to my lack of time to read. When I’m driving, exercising, cooking, or cleaning, I’m almost always listening to an audiobook. From Stephen King to Jane Austen to J.K. Rowling, I’ll read just about anything on audio. It’s perfect! In fact, I often find that I catch more details of the book because I’m not skimming over pages when a story gets intense.

The library has always been the perfect place to feed my book addiction, and the same is true of audiobooks. At Dover, we have a wall full of books on CD, including nonfiction. We also have three different ways to check out audiobooks digitally, each with a slightly different collection. The Acoustik app by Axis 360 has some awesome titles available only to Dover Library patrons, from the latest Janet Evanovich to Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken. The Ohio Digital Library has a ton of titles to choose from, and you can listen right from your Overdrive app. Hoopla also has a lot of titles, and the best part is that you never have to wait! Everything is free and easily accessible with your Dover Library card.

Next time you’re dying to read a book but can’t seem to find the time, I encourage you to try checking out an audiobook. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be hooked 🙂

-Kathryn,Technology Manager

For the first time in thirty years, DPL staff member Mary Prysi will not be kicking off the new year in the library. Mary has decided to retire from the library to spend more time with her family. Mary started out in the Children’s Room many moons ago and worked in nearly every department of the library over the years. For the last five years Mary was the Technology Manager in our Tech Room. Like any other business, things in the library change over time. Our collection is digitized and automated now. We do lots and lots of programming and eBooks have changed how we do business. What hasn’t changed, however, is our commitment to kindness. Some call it “customer service” or “user experience.” At DPL, we call it being kind and Mary Prysi was the kindest of them all. Thank you for all you have done at the library and please know how much we will miss you!

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

-Jim Gill, Director

My Cargo – Items ready to travel back to their Home Libraries for the Holidays

I want to share a great service that the Dover Public Library has to offer.  If you wish to check out some something that we do not have in our collection, we CAN get it for you. It’s called an Inter – Library Loan or ILL. You just need to fill out a form, or we can do it for you. You need the author, title of the item you are requesting, your name, phone number, and library card number. We then take the paper and place the order or the HOLD from a library consortium of about two hundred different libraries from all over Ohio. Once the library gets the item, we call you. You can request DVD’s, too. You can keep a DVD for a week, a book for three weeks. There is a 50 cent a day fine and no renewals as we need to get the item back to its home in a timely manner.

You can use our website to request items, too. If you look at the menu bar at the top of our website, you can see the ADULTS menu. Hover your mouse over ADULTS, and a drop-down box will appear. Look down to ORDER MATERIALS FROM OTHER LIBRARIES and click. This page has a little more info about ILLs and a form you can fill out. This form is used if you want to request something that we at the Dover library do not have. It is just like the form we all use inside the library to request an item. Once submitted, the form is sent automatically to me, Denise, at johnsode@doverlibrary.org.

We can also do an ILL for teachers, book clubs, and anyone who might need more that one copy of a book with the same title. Just let us know what you need and we’ll do everything we can to get it for you!

If you need anything, we here at the Dover Library are here to help.

Thanks for reading,

Denise

Adult Services

Me & an ILL Form