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The next meeting of "The Can-Do Connection" will convene at Bernardsville Public Library on Wednesday, April 23 at 7:00 pm. Led by Andrea Mastrobattista, this workshop will help participants discover a new perspective on networking. "Part of making your dream come true involves connecting with people who can help you," said Ms. Mastrobattista, "While networking seems like a huge chore, it doesn’t have to be."
This workshop is an outgrowth of last year's "The University of Can-Do Master's Program." Ms. Mastrobattista has been leading her inspirational workshops on Wednesday evenings at the library since 2006. She heads a company called Operation INSPIRATION and also facilitates workshops in the Somerset Hills such as "Facing Your Fears" and "Transforming Negatives Into Positives" in which she helps people to fully form their goals and develop a strong can-do attitude for achieving them. Her core belief is that, no matter what circumstances people face, they have the strength and ability to create and live fulfilling and inspiring lives. She also owns Golden Slipper Productions, a company which creates websites and promotional materials for small and mid-sized businesses.
There is no charge to attend the library workshop, but advance registration is requested. Register online at www.bernardsvillelibrary.org, and follow the link from Adult Programs, or call the library at 908-766-0118 to sign up.
For rising seniors and high school juniors too: Avoid stress in the fall by getting a head start on writing the essay for your college applications this summer. Come to Bernardsville Public Library on Thursday, April 24 at 7:00 pm when expert Randy Levin will help you spring into action and avoid the top five mistakes students make on their college application essays. Parents are also invited.
Essays are now more important than ever. Mr. Levin will help listeners set themselves apart from all other applicants and avoid wasting valuable time writing the wrong essays. Whether applying to local colleges, state schools or the Ivy League, this presentation will provide solid guidance to listeners on how to stand out and write great essays unique to them. Mr. Levin's clients have been accepted to many prestigious colleges including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, M.I.T., Columbia, Georgetown, U of Chicago, Duke, Brown, NYU, Northwestern, U Penn, Dartmouth, Swarthmore, and Amherst.
Randy Levin has a Master's in English and an MFA in Creative Writing. A former English teacher, he has also developed curricula for expository and creative writing (including persuasive writing). He has worked at the New York State Department of Labor teaching resume writing and interview techniques, and, for close to thirty years, he has been a stand-up comedian performing at Westbury Music Fair, Mohegan Sun, comedy clubs, corporations, and on cruise ships.
There is no charge to attend the program at the library, but advance sign-up is required. Sign up at www.bernardsvilllelibrary.org or call the library at 908-766-0118. The same workshop is also being offered at Bernards Township Library on Wednesday, April 16 at 7:00 pm.
In commemoration of National Poetry Month, April 2014, the Raritan Valley Federation of Municipal Libraries is publishing a National Poetry Month Celebration Anthology. The booklet features the original works of local New Jersey poets from participating libraries— Bernards Township, Bernardsville, Dunellen, Middlesex, New Brunswick, and Raritan. Poets who submitted their work to Bernardsville Library will read their poems to the public on Tuesday, April 22 at 7:00 pm in Bernardsville. The poetry-loving public is invited to attend and bring poems to read too. An open mic will follow the reading by poets in the anthology.
This year there was a suggested, though not required, theme for the poems submitted for the anthology: “Our Town,” commemorating the 75th anniversary of the play by Thornton Wilder. One pair of tickets to the play, which will be performed at the George Street Playhouse in late April through May, will be awarded to the poet whose poem best illustrates this theme.
There is no charge to attend the program, but advance sign-up is requested. Register online at www.bernardsvillelibrary.org and follow the link from Adult Programs, or call the library at 908-766-0118 to sign up.
The next meeting of Bernardsville Public Library’s book discussion group, Memoirs and Coffee, will be held on Tuesday, April 22 at 10:30 am in the library’s Community Room. Pat Kennedy-Grant, Readers’ Services Manager for the library, will lead the discussion of “She Matters: A Life in Friendships” (2013) by Susanna Sonnenberg. [The author will not be present.]
The book describes the friendships that have influenced, nourished, inspired and haunted the author through her life, and it is a testimony to the emotional significance of the intense bonds between women.
Susan Chira wrote in The New York Times, "Sonnenberg demonstrates a self-awareness that is clearly hard-earned, one of the many qualities she has absorbed from her eclectic and generous friends. In the end, that determination to learn from the women who are close to her, to investigate where she failed and where they did, is what gives the book such resonance. 'She Matters' lingers with you, inviting you to construct a patchwork quilt of your own life and salute the many women who helped you along the way."
There is no charge to attend, and no registration is needed to join the discussion. Call the library at 766-0118 for more information.
Join us at Bernardsville Public Library on Monday, April 21 at 7:00 pm for the advance publication party, hosted with The Bookworm, for Jenny Milchman’s new book, “Ruin Falls: A Novel.” Refreshments will be served, and books (which go on sale the next day) will be available for purchase and signing.
In "Ruin Falls," her second novel, Ms. Milchman ratchets up the tension with the edge-of-your-seat story of a mother determined to find her missing children. The story is thrilling and complex, and showcases the author as an electrifying voice in psychological suspense. The New York Times wrote of the book, “Milchman reveals an intimate knowledge of the psychology of grief, along with a painterly gift for converting frozen feelings into scenes of a forbidding winter landscape.”
Ms. Milchman's debut novel, "Cover Of Snow," was published by Ballantine/Random House in January 2013 and earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist, as well as praise from The New York Times, San Francisco Journal of Books, the AP, and many other publications. She is the Chair of the International Thriller Writers Debut Authors Program, and the founder of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, which was celebrated by over 650 bookstores in all 50 states and four foreign countries in 2013. The host of the "Made It Moments" forum on her blog, which has featured more than 300 international bestsellers, Edgar winners, and indie authors, she also founded the literary series Writing Matters, which attracted guests from coast-to-coast and received national media attention. She teaches writing and publishing for New York Writers Workshop.
When “Ruin Falls” comes out, Ms. Milchman will set out on a four month/20,000 mile book tour with her family, editing her next novel en route, "car-schooling" the kids, and writing about the adventure for Shelf Awareness. Formerly a resident of Morristown, where she still owns a home, she lives in upstate New York when not on tour with her family.
There is no charge to attend the program, but advance sign-up is requested. Register online at www.bernardsvillelibrary.org and follow the link from Adult Programs, or call the library at 908-766-0118 to sign up.
Join us at Bernardsville Public Library on Tuesday, April 8 at 7:00 pm for this unique seminar presented by SCORE® Central Jersey mentors who ran successful private businesses in different industries. They will share their experiences with what worked and what did not in their businesses. SCORE®, Counselors to America’s Small Business. Free. Advance sign-up is requested.
Bernardsville Public Library’s book discussion group, Saturday Samplers, will meet on Saturday, April 5 at 3:30 pm to discuss New York Times bestseller "Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants" (2004) by Robert Sullivan. [The author will not be present.]
The book dispenses gruesomely fascinating rat facts and strangely entertaining rat stories as Mr. Sullivan gets to know not just the beast, but its friends and foes. He collected his material with night-vision gear, sitting in a stream-like flow of garbage. He studied New York rats and rats in Chicago, Milwaukee, and other cities in America. The book is funny, wise and sometimes disgusting, but always readable—a classic of nature writing.
Mr. Sullivan is also the author of "The Meadowlands," "A Whale Hunt," and most recently, "The Thoreau You Don’t Know." He is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship, and his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York magazine, A Public Space, and Vogue, where he is a contributing editor. He was born in Manhattan and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Led by Evelyn Fischel, Saturday Samplers is a book discussion group dedicated to sampling various kinds of literature, including short stories, nonfiction, new and old novels, and even teen fiction. Its goal is to search out interesting, noteworthy, and sometimes overlooked books. Readers can find information about the group and about the books and authors on the reading list at http://saturdaysamplers.blogspot.com. No sign-up is needed to join the discussion. Call the library at 766-0118 for more information.
