Vol 10 # 6 March 15, 2026

If you’ve just read a review in the Avid Reader and know you must read that book! Does the library have it, how do you get it?



Easy – go to the online catalog at OPL.

https://oaklandlibrary.bibliocommons.com/    Search for the book and anyone with a library card can click "place hold" and the next available copy will be put on the branch's hold shelf for them. If you are at the library, the staff at the front desk

would look up this same record and either tell you where to look on the shelf or place a hold for you if a book in the OPL collection is not available.



The Friends of PAL have a suggestion for a book that is an excellent resource for our Library Capital Campaign, Beyond Book Sales, The Complete Guide to Raising Real Money for Your Library, by Karin Slaughter. If you are intrigued by the thought of joining the Friends of PAL Capital Campaign Committee, perhaps uncertain if it is a fit for you – take a look! “This new resource will go a long way toward helping every librarian, trustee, Friend of the Library, and library lover avoid the pitfalls of fund-raising. In it you’ll find great ideas and specific suggestions for conducting all types of fund-raising activities.”



Here is the book's entry in the online catalog at oaklandlibrary.org:

https://oaklandlibrary.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S183C1899202

Toddler Storytime, every Tuesday,

10:15 - 10:30 am

Songs and stories for ages 18 months to 3 years. Stay and Play after Storytime with fun toys through 11:15 am.

Family Game Night, Wednesday, 3/18, & 4/15, 6 - 7:30 pm

Come to our library to play some board games! We’ll have snacks and drinks! Have fun and meet your neighbors.

MOCHA at the Library!, Saturday 3/21 & 4/18, 11 am - 12:30 pm

Join us for monthly art workshops for children and families led by teachers from the Museum of Children's Art (MOCHA). For ages 5-15 and caregivers.



Knitting & Crochet Circle with Susan Segal, Monday 3/23 & 4/13, 11 am - 1 pm

Join us for knitting and good company every 2nd & 4th Monday. If you're a seasoned pro or just starting, everyone is welcome!

Teen Pop Up Crafts, Tuesday, 3/24, 4/14 & 4/28

3:30 - 4:30 pm Teens, come to hang out, every 2nd and 4th Tuesday, and get creative with the library staff. Supplies provided.

Plot Twists & Page Turners: A Piedmont Ave. Branch Library Book Club, Tuesday, 4/7, 6 - 7:15 pm

With your fellow book lovers, discover your next literary adventure at our monthly Book Club. Share your current reads or just hang out and chat about books.

More Events -

Gardening Workshop: Gardening Basics, Saturday, 3/28, 2 – 3 pm

Join the Alameda County Master Gardeners for an introduction to successful vegetable gardening in our Mediterranean climate. This presentation will cover everything you need to know to get started, from preparing and enriching your soil to choosing the right plants for your space, creating a garden plan, planting seeds and seedlings, watering efficiently, and managing common pests. 

Coffee with a Cop, Saturday, 4/11, 11 am - 12 pm

Join your neighbors and public servants for coffee & conversation! No agenda or speeches – just a chance to ask questions, voice concerns, and get to know the beat officers in your neighborhood.

Gardening Workshop: Waterwise Vegetable Gardening, Saturday, 4/18, 2 – 3 pm

In this session, a UC Master Gardener instructor will cover practical techniques for calculating plant water needs, improving soil quality, and choosing efficient watering methods. You’ll also discover which vegetable varieties perform best with less water and how smart gardening practices can make your garden more resilient and sustainable.

Plant Swap, 4/25, 11 am – 1 pm

Got extra plants, seedlings, or plant cuttings? Bring healthy, labeled plants and swap them for something new! Whether you're growing a garden or sprucing up your indoor space, join us for a fun, community-friendly plant exchange.

Meet the Author: Noel Hassan, Saturday 4/25, 2 – 3 pm

Join us in welcoming Noel Hassan, a talented poet whose work beautifully captures her experiences as a Yemeni-American Muslim woman. She began her publishing journey at just 17 with her self-published book Poetry For Me, and her words have since been featured in the anthology Behind Our Names by Nomadic Press. Noel’s writing fearlessly amplifies the diverse voices within her community, building bridges for the underrepresented. Don’t miss this chance to meet an author dedicated to inspiring others to share their own stories.

Free Music Show, El Dia de los Niños, Thursday 4/30, 10:15 – 10:45 am

Join singer Verónica Freidkes for a joyful, interactive English/Spanish music program. Come sing, dance, and play together. We will have free books for kids, snacks and a fun craft to take home. A celebration of children, families, and reading.

From the Branch Firends Network:

The very successful Spring Branch Friends Network meeting took place at the Melrose Branch on March 7. After opening remarks to the overflow crowd by OPL Director Jamie Turbak, representatives from the assembled branches shared what types of events/techniques they are using to raise funds for programs and projects taking place at their branch.

The OPL Advocates' annual Spring Mixer will take place on Sunday, May 17 - your chance to connect with other OPL volunteers and supporters. Mark your calendars!

The Avid Reader by Louis Segal

I’ve been an avid reader since I could read. In high school I used to cut school to read in the Berkeley Public Library.  I’m writing this column to share some of the books I love. I hope, perhaps, you might grow to love a few of them. 

The Director by Daniel Kehlmann [2023], translated by Ross Benjamin [2025]

Daniel Kehlmann is a contender for the Booker Prize. His Director, a historical novel, is a marvel, a true tour de force. It is a work of genius. It is both comic and tragic. Intertwined in his work is a history of German and US cinema enmeshed in the rise and fall of the Third Reich, peopled by actors, historical and imagined, and their dreams, rationalizations, inspirations, dementias, desires, vanities, and unrequited loves. It treats fascism and fear historically; how it shaped and warped people’s lives. It is a history, a biography of the Reich and of a cautionary tale of complicity that has as much to do with now as it does with the middle decades of the twentieth century.

Front and center in the Director is W. B. Pabst, a contemporary of Leni Reifenstahl and a disciple of Fritz Lang, W. B. Griffith, and Bertolt Brecht. Pabst flees his native Austro-Hungry to Hollywood as Nazism consolidates its power and his native land becomes, in Nazi parlance, Ostmark. Pabst was celebrated in Europe but in brash and brutal Hollywood, to his chagrin, he is constantly mistaken for Lang, the auteur of Metropolis. In Hollywood, the studios considered cinema not as art but as a product, making films was called “the industry.” Disappointed and disenchanted and, against his wife’s counsel, he returned with both his son and wife to the Hitler’s Deutschland. Reichsminister für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda Goebbels gives Pabst an offer he cannot refuse. He is promised he can make art, not propaganda, to show the world that high culture still thrived in Deutschland.

As his wife grows distant, his son joins the Hitler Youth, and surrounded by handlers and spies and sycophants, the increasingly delusional Pabst embarks on creating a master work. And in the final chapters of Kehlmann’s middle section, “Inside,” Pabst rushes to Prague to complete his greatest film. As his work becomes feverish, as the film’s extras are dragooned from concentration camps, as the collapse of the Third Reich becomes obvious, as an armed Czech resistance becomes manifest, Pabst himself becomes increasingly delusional. He believes that the film is real, indispensable, and he sees Germany’s collapse in cinematic terms. He completes the film, takes the six reels of the film to Vienna to copy the original. The film, his imagined masterpiece, is lost in the chaos of the last days of the war. It is both tragic and comic.

All of this is historically more or less accurate. Liberties are taken but they are to illustrate greater truths. Pabst’s lost movie is apocryphal. The meeting with Goebbels probably happened. But as Ken Kesey said of Sometimes a Great Notion, “whether it happened or not, it’s true.” The moral dilemmas of artistry, ambition, complicity, and megalomania are with us today. We are all complicit in the world in which we live and that, too, is the story Kehlmann has written. As history and moral philosophy and literature The Director is most excellent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9iwBhXXXag

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqU2X5RiOfw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Iq4T_JAcUE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_zitl3vziw

Our library is open 6 days a week

Sunday Closed

Monday: 10 am - 5:30 pm

Tuesday: 10 am - 8 pm

Wednesday: 10 am - 8 pm

 Thursday: 10 am - 5:30 pm

Friday: 12 pm - 5:30 pm

Saturday: 10 am - 5:30 pm

Friends of the Piedmont Avenue Library Board of Directors 2024

President: Ronile Lahti; Secretary: Arleen Feng; Treasurer: Joanna Smith; Judith Smith

The Friends of the Piedmont Avenue Library is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Our tax ID is 84-4203055.

All contributions are tax deductible.

Donate to Friends of PAL