The Thomaston Public Library Mystery Book Club will meet on Thursday, February 6 at 11 am. In response to the prevalence of male detectives in mysteries, for February the book club will switch its focus to the opposite. Book club members are welcome to read the book of their choosing, provided it is a mystery with a female protagonist, and can see the librarians for additional resources and help in choosing a title.

The Thomaston Public Library Mystery Book Club meets the first Thursday of every month at 11 am. March’s selection will be decided at February’s meeting. For more information, please contact the library at (207) 354-2453 or at programs@thomaston.lib.me.us.

Join us Monday, February 10 at 5:00 pm for Family Movie & Pizza Night! Free and open to all, and pajamas are welcome. This month, they are showing Ralph Breaks the Internet!

Video game bad guy Ralph (John C. Reilly) and fellow misfit Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) must risk it all by traveling to the World Wide Web in search of a replacement part to save Vanellope's video game, "Sugar Rush." In way over their heads, Ralph and Vanellope rely on the citizens of the internet -- the netizens -- to help navigate their way, including an entrepreneur named Yesss (Taraji P. Henson), who is the head algorithm and the heart and soul of trend-making site BuzzzTube.

Ralph Breaks the Internet is rated PG for "some action and rude humor" by the MPAA. The runtime is 112 minutes.

All films for Family Movie & Pizza Night are shown with closed captioning.

To RSVP or for more information, please visit our Facebook page, or contact us at (207) 354-2453 or at programs@thomaston.lib.me.us.

The Let's Talk About It book group, facilitated by author and mentor Lee Heffner, will meet Tuesday, February 11, at 11 AM at Thomaston Public Library to wrap up the series "So Near & So Far: An Exploration of Cuban Literature" with Havana Red by Leonardo Padura.

From the publisher:

“Winner of the Café de Gijón Prize, the Novela Negra Prize and the Hammett Prize.

“The first of the Havana quartet featuring Lieutenant Mario Conde, a tropical Marlowe. A body is found in a Havana park. A young transvestite dressed in a beautiful red evening dress, strangled. The victim had fled his family, finding refuge with Marqués, a forgotten man in his own country, an author and theatre director once condemned by his government for being a ‘heretical homosexual’, living alone surrounded only by books, his house in ruins. In the baking heat of the Havana summer Conde moves through a Cuban reality where nothing is what it seems, a dark, fascinating world of men and women born in the Revolution who live without dreaming of exile and seek their identity in the midst of disaster.

“Padura’s masterful prose and eye for detail evoke the Havana that millions of tourists have come to know: crumbling architecture, peeling paintwork and a pulsating, searing sensuality beneath the tropical sun.”

These discussions are always thought-provoking and lively, and anyone is welcome to join for one book or the whole series! Light refreshments are served.

March’s book selection will be announced at February’s meeting. For more information, please contact the library at (207) 354-2453 or at

 programs@thomaston.lib.me.us.

We have some fun stuff in store for the week of school vacation! Programs will start each day at 1 pm, and delicious snacks will be offered.

Tuesday, February 18: Lego Competition!

Wednesday, February 19: Launch of the Anime Club! We're beginning with Haikyuu!!

Thursday, February 20: Art Day!

Friday, February 21: Newspaper Forts!

Please note these activities are open to kids of all ages, but children under the age of 7 should have a parent or guardian present with them during the program. We expect most of the activities to take about 1 hour. All of the programs are free of charge!

On Tuesday, February 18 at 2:30 PM, the Thomaston Intergenerational Book Club will discuss Enchantress of Numbers: A Novel of Ada Lovelace by Jennifer Chiaverini.

From the publisher:

“New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini illuminates the life of Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace—Lord Byron’s daughter and the world’s first computer programmer.

“The only legitimate child of Lord Byron, the most brilliant, revered, and scandalous of the Romantic poets, Ada was destined for fame long before her birth. But her mathematician mother, estranged from Ada’s infamous and destructively passionate father, is determined to save her only child from her perilous Byron heritage. Banishing fairy tales and make-believe from the nursery, Ada’s mother provides her daughter with a rigorous education grounded in mathematics and science. Any troubling spark of imagination—or worse yet, passion or poetry—is promptly extinguished. Or so her mother believes.

“When Ada is introduced into London society as a highly eligible young heiress, she at last discovers the intellectual and social circles she has craved all her life. Little does she realize how her exciting new friendship with Charles Babbage—the brilliant, charming, and occasionally curmudgeonly inventor of an extraordinary machine, the Difference Engine—will define her destiny.

“Enchantress of Numbers unveils the passions, dreams, and insatiable thirst for knowledge of a largely unheralded pioneer in computing—a young woman who stepped out of her father’s shadow to achieve her own laurels and champion the new technology that would shape the future.”

On the third Tuesday of every month, the Intergenerational Book Club, a group of men and women of all ages, comes together at the library to share their opinions and ideas about the selected book. All are welcome at the Thomaston Public Library on February 18 at 2:30 PM. If you live in Thomaston and would like to attend but need a ride, please call the library at (207) 354-2453 a week before the discussion date.

For March, the group will be reading A Year by the Sea: Thoughts of an Unfinished Woman by Joan Anderson. Copies will be available to borrow at the library and through interlibrary loan. For more information, please contact the library at (207) 354-2453 or at caroline.wardnesbit@thomaston.lib.me.us

Join us for afternoon tea on February 21 from 3 to 4:30 PM! Delicious treats and hot tea will be served, and all are welcome in the community living room at Thomaston Public Library.

Food stamp funding has been significantly cut and many of our neighbors are struggling, so we would also like to encourage folks to bring a non-perishable food, pet care, or personal care item to donate to the food pantry.

Postponed from February 7! Join us on February 21 at 5:00 PM for a reading from poet Jason Grundstrom-Whitney, whose first book of poetry, Bear, Coyote, Raven, was recently published by Resolute Bear Press and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a National Book Award!

A bear can be a person, though most prefer to be bears. Did a coyote ever lead you to a story?  Have you ever lost yourself in the blue-black eye of a raven?  Imagine three such creatures transitioning from people to animals and back, walking along a desert highway dressed in their finest three-piece suits: ribbon shirts, jeans, and moccasins, foraging a city alley for supper, or sharing stories under a starlit sky. If you listen closely, you could learn something from these three magical creatures. In his first book of poems, Jason Grundstrom-Whitney introduces us to numerous variations of this American trio. Sometimes Bear gets his paw stuck in a back-street dumpster. Coyote shows people how to trick themselves. Raven travels to the far north to bring back another story.

The poems in Bear, Coyote, Raven welcome the reader into their shape shifting world, where themes of environmental degradation, violence, and technological troubles explore what we have lost and suggest solutions: to connect with the web of being and those blessed in their own right. An old native epigram invites us to walk in the moccasins of others, to be in touch with the present, aware of the past, and to laugh at our missteps when we step into something we did not see. The poet asks us to engage, to take the time to invest our energy, and to explore this different way of being.

Jason Grundstrom-Whitney’s poetry has appeared in 3 Nations Anthology: Native, Canadian & New England Writers and in the Underground Writers Association’s Anthology of Maine Poets. The band Osha Root recently produced a CD featuring his music and poetry. Jason has spent a lifetime working on Native American Rights, sexual assault and domestic violence survival, hospice and end of life care, homeless and environmental issues, and alternative medicine practice. A Bear Clan member of the Passamaquoddy Tribe, Jason studied with native teachers and many others while he hitchhiked across America for two and a half years. Jason is a father, grandfather, and husband, and has been in recovery for 37 years.

The reading will begin at 5:00 pm and light refreshments will be served. For more information, please contact the library at (207) 354-2453 or at programs@thomaston.lib.me.us.

"Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading!" - Rainer Maria Rilke

Need an excuse to set aside some time to read? Or perhaps you haven't joined a traditional book club because it feels too much like the assigned reading in high school? Check out Thomaston Public Library's Silent Book Club!

Join us for a few minutes of low-key (and completely optional! Introverts welcome!) socializing to share what we have read lately or are currently reading and some light snacks, followed by reading in companionable silence. There is no required reading, so bring your own book or ask the librarians or the fellow book club members for a recommendation to borrow when you arrive. We typically meet at the library on the evening of the third Monday of every month from 6:00 to 7:00 PM but due to the holiday we are pushing it back a week this month. Learn more about Silent Book Clubs here!