Dear Gentle Reader,

All year long we accept book donations for Chatham Reads. Your donations reach families and young readers all across Chatham County through multiple literacy projects and campaigns. This summer we’re collecting books for CORA’s SNACK! program. SNACK! (Summer Nutritional Assistance for Chatham Kids) distributes free groceries to children and their families at sites across Chatham County from mid-June to mid-August. Chatham Reads will provide boxes of books at several sites to distribute to families along with their groceries. You can shop from our display in person or browse and purchase from the wishlist on our website. These titles are the ones students MOST requested during the Books on Break book fairs, so we know they will be very appreciated!

This Saturday, June 21st at 2pm, we welcome beloved author and poet Judy Goldman, who visits to share from her latest The Rest of Our Lives. In this memoir, she brings dispatches from the edge, that narrow section of our lives where we are briefly deposited before the end. Goldman shows how turning eighty can be as surprising and baffling as losing your virginity or seeing the Beatles at Shea Stadium. In this lively and poignant exploration of aging, Goldman circles to those other unchartered moments of our lives when we are at once anxious and excited  about what might happen next.

Next Sunday, June 29th, we host our June event with the North Carolina Poetry Society. Come out to hear Irene Blair Honeycutt, Joseh Mills, and Michael Dechane,

And a little housekeeping… We will be open Friday, July 4th from 10am – 6pm (regular hours), Starting next week we will be sharing some of our summer reading picks. And we have a great selection (can we say that?!?) of jigsaw puzzles for you to throw on your stack for the beach or mountain trips.

The Usual Suspects,

Pete, Johanna, Sarah G., Tyler, Amy, Sarah C. and Keebe