What lies behind this sheet in front of the Booknook?  Dare you look? 
​Click the image to find out, if you dare  . . .

See the Events page for more information about our book sale

Yes, we are getting back to a certain level of normal. We've had book sales and we are planning more events and activities for the remainder of 2022!

In the meantime, we need more books we can sell to help us with our fundraising efforts. Please donate your books you no longer need to us. We have a slot in the lobby for the Booknook where you can drop off donations. If you have more donations, let us know.

If you have been following the news, then you've heard that Congressman John Lewis passed away on July 17, 2020. This week the nation is celebrating his life and work along with his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. He participated in the March on Washington in 1963. On March 7, 1965, Bloody Sunday, shows him crossing the bridge on his way from Selma to Montgomery.  He and the other protesters were severely beaten by police with billy clubs that fateful Sunday. Yesterday, Sunday, July 26, he crossed that bridge for the very last time in a carriage carrying his coffin.

He wrote a graphic-novel trilogy that describes the movement and what they encountered. The three-volumes make for very fascinating read.                                     -- Zita Podany

The Art, Wine event has been cancelled. It was supposed to take place this weekend, July 25 and July 26, 2020. It will be rescheduled at a later date. Until then, keep supporting your libraries, library foundations, and library friends groups as they strive to meet daily challenges during this pandemic.

The FVRL Foundation is hosting an Art, Wine Fundraising event at Latte Da Coffee House and Wine Bar on Saturday, July 25 (9 am to 5 pm) and Sunday, July 26 (9 am to 4 pm).

Proceeds go to support the FVRL Foundation. At a time when we have the world shut down for an extended period of time, remember to support your library foundation so they can continue to provide great services amidst all the challenges we face.

At this time all 2020 Mini Book Sales have been cancelled.

Due to the COVID-19 situation, and in support of curbing the spread of the virus,  we will not be holding the mini book sales until further notice. Once the library re-opens, we will once again schedule future mini book sales and post the new dates and times.

In the meantime enjoy the books you have purchased in previous book sales. 

 Stay healthy, stay safe, stay in touch. 

The new FOVCL Facebook page is up and running. Kay Ellis and Gretta, a Booknook, volunteer will be updating it on a regular basis. Do take a look and become a friend to find out about the latest news from the Friends of the Vancouver Community Library.

As you look at your blank 2020 calendar, be sure to mark them for the mini book sales  -- we just had one and there were a lot of reading treasures on those tables.  So don't miss the ext one in April!

Be sure to mark your calendars for the exciting 2020 Mini Book Sales. They are held every two months on Fridays and Saturdays. Here is this year's schedule.  Print it out and post it on your refrigerator.  Don't miss out on great finds!

Today is our last day of the
Holiday Book Sale!!!

Don't miss out on some of the great items in this sale.
Just yesterday I spotted customers buying all of sorts of great books for a bargain. Coffee Table books on submarines, lighthouses and history of trains! Wow, as the cashier I was absolutely envious of some of the great finds people found!

All books will be $1.00 today!  

There are many wonderful books left, which will make great presents and many hours of good reading.  Come early for the best selections! 

We will open at 10:30 am , and sell until 5:00 pm. 

If you want to get more books for your buck you can purchase a bag of books for $10 from 4-5 pm.

We are located in the main library on C Street and Evergreen in Vancouver, Washington.

Thank you for supporting our library!

Mark your calendars for the annual holiday book sale at the library. Download the flyer and post it on your refrigerator. Spread the word.                                             PDF flyer

Happy 50th Anniversary Apollo 11!
Launched July 16, 1969
Moon Walk July 19, 1969

A handful of good books to read:

The library building will be 8 years old on Sunday, July 14, 2019. A fun-filled Milky Way Ice Cream party will be held in the Columbia Room from 1 pm to 4pm.  It will be out of this world with sprinkles, and fluffy whipped cream clouds and free books for children.  Enter a raffle to win a free book on the universe. Budding astronauts can decorate their ice cream planets any way they want --- so come and join the fun!

Mark those calendars for the mini book sales for the rest of 2019.

Great way to pick up bargains and stock up for that summer reading!!!  Tell all your friends, neighbors and anyone you see about these mini book sales located in the lobby of the library. Treasures abound!

Last December 31st we fired up the twin Yamaha 115HP engines aboard Great Ambition and complied with Washington State DNR's order to vacate the state, despite paying tens of thousands of dollars in taxes and fees over the last 10 years. You don't want me around? Fine, you don't have to tell me twice! And it wasn't the first time DNR kicked us out, so we should have known better, but sometimes you just don't learn the first time.
That said, it turns out the whole thing was a blessing in disguise. Our new moorage is great! We have an unfettered view of every sunrise right off our front deck, we are right next to the West Hills so we have mountains right out our back door. We are just 3 miles from Scappoose (instead of 8 miles from Vancouver) and 8 miles from Portland. We are patrons of two libraries that serve all our needs, and we have been grandfathered in to our very livable liveaboard marina for life, so we'll never be kicked out again. The owner recently told the marina manager, "If everyone who lived here was like Dan and April, this place would be great!" Sometimes when bad things happen to you, you just need to do what's required (it was a ton of work and money to get re-integrated back into Oregon) and hope for the best. Now, we couldn't be more pleased. It makes us wonder why we didn't make this move years ago.

Several years ago I befriended a female cat, who (as Charity Payne put it) was sorely in need of a friend. She had been dumped at the end of Lower River Road by the Humane Society  and left to be eaten by the coyotes (how humane is that?!!!). She moved into the marina we were at, but the residents didn't like her living there, so they trapped her and moved her by boat to Caterpillar Island. Very much like the Indian woman who lived all alone on San Nicolas Island (where I served in the US Navy) and fictionalized in the book, Island Of The Blue Dolphins, Gracie had a hard time living all alone on Caterpillar Island. No humans, no other cats, and hungry coyotes everywhere. No structures to escape the cold, snow or rain, no warm saucers of milk, just moles (which she was really good at catching) to eat. I built her a warm, cozy and coyote-safe home and made daily trips out to the island to feed her hot chicken broth, scraps, even salmon, turkey and once a whole goose! She loved me, and I her, but I couldn't let her live aboard my houseboat, it was just too small for a cat that was used to living out doors. One day I took her for a boat ride over to Reeder Beach on Sauvie Island where I used to patrol the beach looking for coal from old steamship wrecks. Gracie dutifully followed me along the beach, but in an act of exploration, climbed to the top of a hill, looked out and saw in the distance an unlimited number of homes, farms and barns to live in. Without even a "meow" she took off and I never saw her again. When I tell people that story, I imply that she died by saying that "she went to a better place ... Oregon." And now I'm there too. A better place, and just like Gracie, I'll never look back.

My wife and I got some bad news just before Christmas: Washington State is kicking us out of our dream life at the marina just outside Vancouver. No laws were broken, no rules violated, DNR just doesn’t want us here anymore (and they didn’t care much for my river pool). So after 18 years of being good stewards of Fisherman’s Slough and Caterpillar Island, picking up tons of trash and broken glass, assisting local law enforcement, rescuing more boaters than I can count, contributing to the arts, poetry and literary community, we are being de-ported, literally. Apparently in Washington State, no good deed goes unpunished.
This means we’ll be firing up Great Ambition’s engines and leaving for a welcoming port, and luckily, in the dead of winter, we found one near Scappoose, Oregon. I’ll have to give up my Booknook shifts, and without the Booknook, I have no inspiration to write the Booknook Blog, so my cute little blog will probably fade away.
I want to use my last post to say what an honor and a privilege it was to serve you, the people of my adopted home, Vancouver. I really love this town and I will miss it, and the library more than you can know. I’ve lived all over the world, from Australia to China, Munich to LA, but there is no place nicer than Vancouver USA.
I want to thank Nancy, Milton, Charles, Maureena, Paula, and all the Friends for the opportunity to contribute to our community. I also want to thank Jackie Spurlock for allowing me teach my YouTube and Getting Published classes and for being a friendly face at the library. And of course thank you to all the librarians and the security staff at Vancouver Community Library who keep our library safe.
Thank you all, it has been a pleasure. I shall miss you.
Dan P. Bullard

I found this book in the library after a Google search for some concept or another. Written by a Liberal scholar, it points out the differences between Liberals and Conservatives and, if enough people read it, could help these two groups understand each other. I found it so riveting that I started quoting it on Facebook. When some of my friends took interest, I jumped online went to their local library web site and found it in their library (thank you Internet!). I snagged the link and sent it to them, allowing them to check it out easily, rather than forcing them to buy it just to see what I'm raving about. Anytime you find a good book, rather than buying your distant friends a copy, try to find the book at their local library. I found that the Sacramento library system has 6 copies of this 2012 book, so no excuses! If you really find it interesting, here's the link, put a hold on it then read and enjoy!

In a previous Booknook Blog post, I told you about a book, The Half Life Of Facts that explains that facts change so quickly, a doctor who graduates today has 10 year old facts in his brain that are all wrong by now. I've been reminded of this effect again and again. Facts don't last long in our world, since much of the previous world was based on ridiculous fabrications that, we now know are completely wrong. Two years ago I wrote a book called Distortion: The Cause of Harmonics and the Lie of THD. Recently I released a second edition, and shortly afterwards got my best review so far (5 stars). The book came about because I made a video chastising my client's competitor for an  incorrect supposition in his book regarding harmonics and where they come from. I was challenged on my video and forced to defend myself, Distortion was my defense.
As it turns out, the mistake made in the book I was critical of is not alone in using fantasy to explain how harmonics are created from distortion. At the recent holiday book sale, I found another book on electronics, looked in the index for "harmonics," found the entry and read it. I burst out laughing, complete idiocy! Here is just a snippet. 
"For example, theoretically speaking, a square wave contains all harmonics, but predominantly, odd harmonics"  
Sounds reasonable, right? No, it's not. As my book points out, a square wave consists of harmonics based on a simple formula where the only variable is duty cycle. Duty cycle defines how much of the wave is high divided by the entire wavelength. A 50% duty square wave is high half the time, and low half the time, and has ONLY odd harmonics. Clearly the writer of the book never actually looked at a square wave or a spectrum of one, he was just making it up! Shouldn't we be allowed to point out mistakes in other people's books?

The Friends made over $3000 on the holiday book sale! Money to support your library! Thanks to all the volunteers and Foundation people who helped make it happen!

Guy Kawasaki, old time Macintosh evangelist, entrepreneur and author once told a funny story about proofreading, I like to codify that into the Kawasaki Rule. He and the coauthor of his new book read it until they were sick of it, then crowdsourced the proofreading out to seventy people, who found some errors and allowed Guy to submit the (hopefully error free) manuscript to the publishing house, where they found 1400 errors. The Kawasaki Rule says that you are going to make some mistakes that will evade all detection, sometimes in the most unlikely places, and you will feel like a fool. But I say, what the heck! It's going to happen, no matter who you are. 
And then one day I was reading the description of the speaker for this year's FVRL Author's and Illustrator's Silent Auction and Dinner, and I came across this:
"Rebecca Skloot's award-winning science writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine; O, The Oprah Magazine; Discover, and many other publications.  She is curretnly (sic) working on a new book about humans, animals, science, and ethics."
Well, I think we have a problem here, and in a teaser for a new book no less! Makes you wonder if the book will be spelled as well as the promo piece. 
But don't worry friends, it happens to the best of us. I myself am working on version 22 of The Reluctant Road Warrior and I got my best reviews from the very first, and very error filled, copies. Guy Kawasaki says, don't sweat it, at least it wasn't 1400 errors!