LIBRARY

Library News

THE LIBRARY is really getting back into its post-lockdowns swing now, with lots of opportunities for you to avail yourself of a growing range of (mostly) free services. So have a look at these!

Firstly, a reminder that the library and café are now open every Wednesday morning from 10 to 12, as well as in the afternoon from 2 until 5. This adds to our usual timetable of Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings and Monday and Friday afternoons, for your convenience! On Tuesday 17th May we welcome the second surgery with Work Live Leicestershire, a project by the Rural Community Council, Leicestershire and Rutland. The RCC will be here to provide advice to anyone 18 yrs. and above who is not working. They specialise in one-to-one support, providing short courses, CV and cover letter creation, business start-up advice and specialist support. They’ll be with us from 10.30-12.30am. On alternate Wednesday afternoons from 3-4.30 you can get busy with our popular, after-school, construction club, building amazing edifices with a well-known Danish system of plastic bricks that begin with L and end with O… The first session in May is on the 11th. If it’s Thursday, it might just be a day that the Wriggly Readers meet! They’re here every other week, they’re pre-school and they bring their Mums and Carers to have a great time listening to stories and singing songs! And sometimes their Mums like to drink coffee together after! And there is cake… From 10.30-11 am on the 19th May and alternate weeks after that. On Fridays, everything happens! In the morning of the second Friday of the month, when the library is closed, we meet for A Cuppa and Company. It’s an opportunity for you to come down and enjoy a free cup of coffee with old friends and friends you haven’t yet met. We chat about absolutely anything and everything, sometimes guided by one of the library service’s mysterious memory boxes. Our May meeting is on the 13th, from 10-11am. Then, in the afternoon, we alternate between Crafternoon, a chance to meet and engage in some light crafting with all materials provided plus help and guidance from volunteers from Community Houses organisation, and Knit and Stitch, our long-running group of people who like to…knit and sew! Both groups meet from 2-3.30 and the first Crafternoon is on May 13th and Knit and Stitch on May 20th. So you have no reason to sit at home with nothing to do! Come down and meet our willing volunteers and your neighbours, for a good time. And what’s more we have the latest books for you to borrow, such as these, taken from the Sunday Times bestsellers’ list and in our stock • Lee Child and Andrew Child - Better off Dead • Richard Osman - The Thursday Murder Club • Colleen Hoover - Ugly Love • Peter Robinson - Not Dark Yet • Colleen Hoover - Verity • Santa Montefiore - The Distant Shores • James Patterson and Adam Hamdy - Private Rogue • Sheila O’Flanagan - Three Weddings and a Proposal • Lucinda Riley - The Missing Sister • Delia Owens - Where the Crawdads Sing Dave Robinson

A Warning Be careful if your mobile app tracks your jogging route

BEST SELLING author Peter James is well known as the creator of Detective Superintendent Grace, whose adventures returned to ITV for a second series in April.

Although he’s written enough Grace books for there to be many more series, he’s also written around two dozen other books, mainly thrillers but also including a children’s novel and non-fiction.

One of his latest books, I Follow You, features a married man who is obsessed with a woman he meets who looks like someone he knew in his earlier life. She is a fitness trainer and engaged to be married, but that does nothing to cool the obsession, and he discovers he can track her daily routines through a mobile application used by runners. It’s a cautionary tale for anyone who uses an app that tracks movements and allows others to see the information.

The idea for the plot was taken from real life. “My wife, Lara, is a keen runner, and has competed in thirteen marathons,” Peter James explained. “She had the spark of an idea about three years ago, while using a running app that plots your route, distances, times and all kinds of other data. Part of the fun of the app is to compare your times against other runners. As a runner myself, I know they are a competitive lot. But one day, she acknowledged a stranger who was running the same route as her, around local Sussex country lanes and footpaths. A short while after she got home, she discovered he had started to follow her on the app. That in itself didn’t initially bother her, but then she realized that, by looking at her start and finish point, this stranger could easily work out where she lived. And patterns in her routes, timing and locations could open up a wealth of information that, in the wrong hands, could be dangerous.”

“From the moment Lara told me this, the idea for this book took root. I debated whether to write it as part of the Roy Grace series, but I felt I could write a more claustrophobic story just keeping the entire focus on the principal characters themselves.”

He acknowledges that his books would never happen without an enormous amount of help and input from many other people, and this story required a huge amount of research about the world of the medics in the story, and his new home of Jersey, where it is set. To find out what happens next you’ll have to read this page turner, which is available at Groby Community Library. Norman Griffiths