Shelburne Public Library shares holiday hours, recommended read

December 18, 2025 · 0 Comments

Our team at the library wants to wish you a happy holiday season! We hope your days are full of family, friends, and great stories.

We are open:

• Dec. 23 (10 a.m. – 5 p.m.)

• Dec. 27 (10 a.m. – 4 p.m.)

• Dec. 30 (10 a.m. – 5 p.m.)

• Jan. 3 (10 a.m. – 4 p.m.)

The library will be closed Dec. 24 to 26 and Dec. 31 to Jan. 2. Regular hours resume Jan. 3. Don’t forget you can check out books from our Kiosk located inside Shelburne’s Foodland any time they are open, or by using the Libby or Hoopla apps 24/7.

If you’re looking for suggestions on what to read over the holidays, follow us on Facebook and Instagram to see the most popular books of 2025 at YOUR Library, as well as staff favourites from the year.

Spoiler alert: the most popular adult fiction book for 2025 was Canadian author Louise Penny’s The Grey Wolf.

Staff Pick of the Week

Humankind by Rutger Bregman: If there is one belief that has united the left and the right, psychologists and philosophers, ancient thinkers and modern ones, it is the tacit assumption that humans are bad. It’s a notion that drives newspaper headlines and guides the laws that shape our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Pinker, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we’re taught, are by nature selfish and governed primarily by self-interest. But what if it isn’t true?

Why Molly recommends it: Dutch historian Rutger Bregman has the audacity to argue for 496 pages that, at heart, humans are inherently kind. Rather than being petty, greedy, cruel creatures by nature, we are instead warped to become so through the variable parameters (an oxymoron) of ‘civilization’.

Interspersing well researched anecdotes of kindness and empathy between a detailed history of how agriculture, and even writing, has contributed to the worst of our qualities, Bregman is positive that our true nature is egalitarian and loving.

I was particularly taken with the account of Easter Island, which tends to be presented as a bloodthirsty one due to sensationalist writers. This book is one of hope, and it’s just in time.