Together we read! And we invite YOU to join our book club…

Every other month, a different Community Library staff member will choose a book and host a book discussion. Our exciting new book club features a wide array of genres, including popular fiction, science fiction, narrative nonfiction, literary fiction … even graphic novels.

There’s something for every reader, and participants can drop in for one session or attend them all!

Events are held in the Programs Studio inside the Children’s entrance to the Library on 4th and Walnut. Unless otherwise noted, they will be held on the first Wednesday of even numbered months.

Book Clubs are intellectually stimulating and a great way to connect to your library and community. To become a member, sign up here. You’ll receive reminders about upcoming sessions and updates on future dates and book selections.

The Community Library Book Club is hosted the first Wednesday of every other month and led by a diverse range of library staff. Books cover all genres from new fiction to classics to nonfiction, young adult, graphic novels, and everything in between.

Click here to learn about more upcoming book club dates.

A Generative Study & Writing Workshop with Christian Winn 

In this three-hour workshop we will take a close look and deep dive into a handful of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories and personal essays both as readers and as writers.

Registered attendees will receive digital copies of four pieces to read ahead of the workshop: “Soldier’s Home” and “The End of Something” from In Our Time, and “The Education of Bumby” and “A False Spring” from A Moveable Feast.

We will examine Hemingway’s literary techniques in these short form pieces in terms of style, mood, voice, character development, scene setting, use of dialogue, and the works’ overall artful impact.

We will also use these Hemingway pieces as inspirational models for creating the beginnings of our own new works of fiction and nonfiction during the workshop.

Registration required. Limited to 15 attendees.

This workshop will be held outdoors at the historic Ernest and Mary Hemingway House in Ketchum. Directions will be provided to registered attendees.

Christian Winn is The Community Library’s Writer-In-Residence at the Hemingway House. He was Idaho’s 2016-2019 Writer in Residence. Winn is the Boise-based founder of the Writers Write fiction workshop series, co-founder and former director of Storyfort, and producer of the Campfire Stories reading series and the Couch Surfer Artist Series. He is a graduate of Seattle Pacific University and the Boise State University MFA program.

More/register here.

…via the Columbia and the Snake Rivers

with Marc Onetto

In 2021, as the border with Canada was still closed, Marc Onetto decided to go south and reach Idaho with his boat. This cruise took him from Seattle to the open Pacific Ocean off the Washington coast, to the famous bar at the Columbia River estuary and Astoria where the river cruise began. The 450-mile river navigation included 8 locks on the Columbia and lower Snake Rivers before he finally arrived in Lewiston, Idaho, at an elevation of 740 feet.

Marc will share this navigation adventure and many beautiful pictures from the Columbia gorge waterfalls to semi-desertic landscapes in Eastern Washington and Oregon. In his talk Marc will also cover the controversial topic of the impact of the dams on the economy and on the salmon population. 

This program will be livestreamed and available to view later. More/register here.

Marc Onetto, originally French, is based in Seattle and Sun Valley, Idaho. He is now retired after serving in senior management positions in major U.S. companies. Every summer, for many years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Marc cruised the Inside Passage between Seattle and Southeast Alaska on his boat: a 65-ft Marlow Explorer. He named his boat Lapérouse after a famous French captain who explored the Pacific Northwest coast from Alaska to California in 1786.

Friends and Leaders in War and Peace

with Lee Pollock 

One was born in a small town in Texas, in a family with little to its name; the other, sixteen years earlier, was the grandson of a Duke whose ancestral home was one of Britain’s greatest palaces.

When the Second World War began, Dwight David Eisenhower was a little-known Lt. Colonel in a United States Army which numbered under 200,000, just the 19th largest in the world.  Winston Spencer Churchill was approaching his 65th birthday, with a mercurial political career that had already spanned four decades. Just a few months later, he and Britain would stand alone against a totalitarian power the likes of which the world had never seen.

The leadership of Winston Churchill in the critical days of 1940 ensured that the free world would survive its greatest challenge. Four years later, it fell to Dwight Eisenhower to command the largest amphibious invasion in history. Had either of them failed, the course of modern history would have been radically different.

Despite their disparate backgrounds, fate and destiny brought these men together. Sometimes they agreed and other times stood apart but together they helped determine the future of the world for much of the 20th century.

Join acclaimed Churchill speaker and popular Community Library presenter Lee Pollock as he tells the fascinating story of two of the greatest men of modern times and how their leadership in times of crisis changed history – and can provide lessons for the challenges of our world today. Lee Pollock is Director and Senior Advisor to the Board of The International Churchill Society.

Registration is recommended to save your seat. This program will be livestreamed and available to view later. More/register here.

…of the Intermountain West

with Jared Farmer 

Jared Farmer is the Walter H. Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. His temporal expertise is the long nineteenth century; his regional expertise is the North American West. His recent work has turned to global environmental history across the modern period.

Originally from Provo, Utah, Farmer earned his degrees from Utah State University, the University of Montana, and Stanford.

His book On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape (Harvard, 2008) won the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians for the best-written non-fiction book on an American theme, a literary award that honors the “union of the historian and the artist.” His subsequent book, Trees in Paradise: A California History (Norton, 2013), won the Ray Allen Billington Prize from the Organization of American Historians for the best book on the history of Native and/or settler peoples in frontier, border, and borderland zones of intercultural contact in any century to the present. His new book, Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees (Basic Books, 2022; Picador UK, 2023), has been reviewed in Nature, Science, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Review of Books, among other outlets.

His current project is collaborative: a GIS-based digital history of the lower Schuylkill River petrochemical corridor. His three long-term book projects are “God View: How Seeing Earth Changed Humanity” (a meditation on aerial technologies of seeing); “Vicarious Records” (a metahistory of family); and “The Everlasting Stone Age” (a cultural history of rocks).

In October 2023, Farmer will be delivering the 28th annual Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture in Logan, Utah; his presentation will be called “Music & the Unspoken Truth.”

This program will be livestreamed, but will not be available to view later. More/register here.

Join us for a summer open house at The Community Library, Gold Mine Thrift, Gold Mine Consign, and the recently unveiled Wood River Museum of History and Culture.

Join us to “Book Around the Block” for literacy, history, shopping, community, and fun! Our theme this year: We all make history! Activities for all ages include:

Sun Valley Celebrity Scavenger Hunt: Scour the Library, Wood River Museum, and Gold Mine Stores for fun facts and special items. You might even win a $25 gift card to the Gold Mine!

Children’s Fun: Musical Book Walk, craft table, bubble machine, straws & connectors, and the Bloom Truck bookmobile.

Lawn Games: Test your skill at hula hoops and corn hole on the lawn by the Children’s entrance.

Wood River Museum: Peruse the interactive exhibits; take a photo on an old ski lift chair; explore the Cabinet of Wonders to see if you can find all 25 hidden artifacts; and purchase special memorabilia from the Gift Shop.

“How in the World Did You Get to Sun Valley?” Read Out: Join local authors and celebrities for readings in the Library’s Tree House. Add your voice to the party with a short piece of your own.

Museum Reads: The Wood River Museum is illuminated in a special collection of books in the Library’s Foyer curated by our librarians. Topics include Sun Valley history, Bald Mountain, Native American tribes, Ernest Hemingway, and geology of the Wood River Valley. Check out a book/s and pick up a free bookmark and recommended reading list in the Library Foyer

Time Warp Photo Booth: Have your picture taken at a “green screen” Gold Mine thrift store/Library setting with Library cofounder Anita Gray (c. 1955).

Book Giveaway: Add to your own library with select titles from our overflow collection on the Library’s veranda.

Music on the Lawn: Music that Made History with D.J. Blind Willie.

Bites and Beverages: FREE delectables for kids and adults from Sun Valley Company

Taco Truck: FREE tacos from Taqueria al Pastor

Libations: Non-alcoholic margaritas, wine, and beer courtesy of Garden Bar