Update 6/30/20:

Thank you to all who participated in our Quarantine Reading Challenge! It was a close competition, but the winners have been selected. Our first place winner, Annette Tyler, read 12 books and our second place winner, Diana Merritt, read 11 books. Congratulations to our winners, and well done to all who participated!

Have you been reading as much as we have? The staff at the Morristown and Morris Township Library realize that many people have upped their reading while under quarantine. And while being stuck at home isn’t fun, we thought we could make it a bit more fun!

From May 1st-May 31st, we challenge you to read or listen to as many books as you can, and keep a list of how many you have read or heard. At the end of the month, submit your list to us and whoever has read the most books wins! First and second place winners will receive a gift certificate to a local restaurant which is delivering or offering curbside pickup during this time! This contest is for adults only (ages 18 and up) who have a library card with a library in Morris County.

Include in your submission: a list of each book you have read (title and author), your name, address, phone number, email address, and library card number. Only one submission per person. Submissions will be accepted via email or regular mail postmarked by or on June 7th, 2020.

Please email submissions to: amanda.murphy@mmt.mainlib.org

Or mail them to:

Morristown and Morris Township Library
ATTN: Reading Challenge
1 Miller Road
Morristown, NJ
07960

You can keep up with what we’re reading on our Goodreads page. You can access public domain ebooks and audiobooks free with your library card through the RBDigital website or app, and more recent titles free through the Cloud Library app with your library card. 

Enrich your lives with poetry during April, which is National Poetry Month, and during this time of collective hibernation. You can enjoy the magic of poetry from a variety of online resources!

You can sign up to receive A Poem a Day to be delivered to your email from Knopf Poetry here.

Poets.org also has the option for a poem-a-day sent to your email account if you sign up, or, you can read the daily poem on their website found here. Poets.org is sponsored by The Academy of American poets and has lots of poetry to browse and listen to in addition to the Poem a Day program.

The Poetry Foundation is “an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture.” As such, they have a large collection of searchable poetry, as well as browseable by theme or era.

The Library of Congress celebrated National Poetry Month in 2015 by launching their Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature, and have continued to grow their collection since.

Open Culture has a large collection of free, downloadable eBooks which includes poetry classics.

Poet’s House is a poetry library in lower Manhattan, and “is a comfortable, accessible place for poetry—a library and meeting place which invites poets and the public to step into the living tradition of poetry.” They are now offering many of their programs online.

We hope you’ll celebrate with us by enjoying some poetry this month.