Great Decisions will be meeting at the library on Tuesday, Feb. 9, from 4:15 to 5:45 p.m. in the library meeting room. This group meets monthly to discuss topics important to the world today. The February meeting will focus on “Energy.” Everyone is welcome to attend and join the discussion. The library has a copy of the book from which the topics and basic information about the topic can be obtained.

The library has some exciting opportunities coming up. As a result of dedicated funding to preserve Minnesota’s arts and cultural heritage, funded with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on Nov. 4, 2008, the library has a number of free tickets to area museums and events. Stop by the library to see the full selection, dates and times, but we have tickets to “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” at the Reif Center and two other concerts. We’ll also have passes to the Carlton County Historical Society, the Fishing Museum in Tofte and the Duluth Depot Museum. These passes need to be checked out to you so we can get an accurate count of how many people utilize these new resources, but they are available to anyone interested in attending. At this point in time, there is no transportation available to any museums or events. Come in soon to check out these opportunities as some of the events are coming up quickly.

A new fiscal year has started for the library and we are beginning to purchase new materials again after a couple of months with limited new items. So be sure to stop in and see what we’ve added. A couple of new items available for borrowing include A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein. This is a sad tale of best intentions. Pete only wants what’s best for his family and in the process destroys his whole life and devastates his family. It was very easy to see how if circumstances would have been just slightly different or someone would have reacted a little less then all would have turned out just fine.

True Confections by Katharine Weber is a clever play on words in this tell-all account of a fictional family candy dynasty with runaway slaves, Hungarian immigrants, and cacao plantations in Cote d’Ivoire. Alice, the narrator, has married into the Ziplinsky family and her greatest ambition in life is to belong, truly belong to the heritage she has tried so hard to earn.

And for fantasy readers, we have a new series entitled “Chronicles of the Raven” by James Barclay. The ‘Raven” is six men and an elf whose only loyalty has been to themselves and their code. In Dawnthief they must search for the Dawnthief, a spell created to end the world, and it must be cast if any of them are to survive. The second and third books in the Chronicles are Noonshade and Nightshade. All three titles are available, so no waiting for the author to finish the story.