With the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster on April 15th, 2012, there has been renewed interest in the ship and its untimely end. Inspiring countless movies and books, the Titanic sinking is the worst maritime disaster in history, with 1,514 passengers and crew members losing their lives. The library is marking the anniversary with a program April 19th by local historian Kathy Ridge. Ridge will talk about the great ship, its passengers, and its fateful journey.

February was Library Lover's Month and the Belt Branch celebrated by inviting patrons to write valentines to the library describing what they love about it. We received over 65 valentines and had them on display in the entryway throughout the month. Here are some of our favorites:

We've had a lot of questions lately about historical fiction-- mostly related to our adult winter reading program! So, what makes us classify a book as historical fiction? Well, it needs to be set in the past, at least fifty years past the event, and actual historical research is the key element in the writing. Authors employee two different styles - one that uses a real person set within an invented story while the other invents the character and sets him or her in a historical context. Many readers, drawn to a particular era, find a historical novel appealing not only for the setting but because a really good historical author will have done the homework and gotten the details just right.

In the young adult novel "Thirteen Reasons Why", Hannah Baker has something to say to the people who have passed through her life: 13 reasons why they contributed to her death and how they could have helped her if they had only listened. Now, they have to listen because Hannah has recorded her reasons and sent them the tapes.

Clay Jenson isn't sure why he got the tapes; he'd admired Hannah for years but only once worked up the courage to connect with her. So Clay spends the night with Hannah's voice haunting his ears, following the events that led her to do the unforgivable.

What's not to love about apocalyptic literature? Granted, it's filled with carnage and the end of the world as we know it, but it also includes a heap of incredible challenges for our inspiring protagonists to tackle.

In Daniel H. Wilson's "Robopocalypse", the challenges come in the form of technology that has gone haywire, seeking to obliterate humanity. This tale is set in the not-so-distant future when robots and computers are just slightly more ubiquitous than today.

"Family Skeletons" by Bobbie O'Keefe is an almost cozy-type mystery novel set on the northern California coast that includes a missing dad, an old Victorian home and the heroine who has survived two marriages and an addiction problem.