If you’ve been in the Library over the last few years, you’ve likely spotted the window full of post-it notes. Maybe you’ve even added a note to the display. Each post-it is a book recommendation left by a Mercantile visitor. Throughout the year, we clear off the notes and catalog the recommendations, leaving space for new recommendations from the book lovers who come into the Reading Room. What always amazes us is the sheer variety of books that end up shared on this window. Books rarely are repeated, as you can see on this list of books recommended by Mercantile visitors in 2022. Books that ..read more

I was sixteen when I first went to the Mercantile Library. My uncle brought me as he was teaching me how to drive and used our lessons as an excuse to explore the city. I specifically still remember walking through the wooden doors and the wonderment I found inside. I had an odd fascination with historical spaces as a teenager. So, I was captivated by the Library’s interior of aged book stands, iron shelves, arched windows, oil paintings, and marble busts, which all embodied a century that was long gone. In that moment, I had the satisfaction of discovering something that had survived the fate ..read more

We recently asked our Bookless Book Club for their best summer reading recommendations. They offered up the usual beach reads, but also touched on big books that will last you all summer, books to celebrate America’s favorite pastime (or the days when baseball really was America’s pastime), mysteries, and more. If you’re interested in more recommendations like the ones below, join us at noon on the fourth Friday of each month for the Bookless Book Club, an open discussion for readers to talk about any and every book that’s caught their attention.  You can just show up at noon on the 12th ..read more

The First Friday Book Chat is our book club without a book. Every month, members gather to talk about what they’re reading lately, what they’d recommend, and what they want to read. At this month’s chat, a member asked for our best recommendations for Women’s History Month and wow, that got the conversation going. In […] To access this post, you must purchase Individual Membership, Individual Membership - Renewal, Benefactor Membership, Benefactor Membership - Renewal, Thackeray Society Membership, Thackeray Society Membership - Renewal, Sustaining Membership, Sustaining Membership - Renewal ..read more

Can you believe it? On Saturday, November 6th, 2021, George Saunders will deliver the Mercantile Library’s thirty-third Niehoff Lecture.  The MacArthur Fellow and PEN/Malamud, Folio, and Booker Prize winner began collecting accolades in the early ’90s for stories published in The New Yorker, Harpers, and Esquire. The collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (1996) and Pastoralia (2001) grew his following from the tortured denizens of graduate writing programs to something approaching cult status. You know a writer has gone all “cult”  when he shows up on Letterman, Colbert, or in c ..read more

Joseph Mersman: Mercantile Library member, Mixologist, Diarist It might seem odd to think of libraries at a time like this. But it might also be worth noting that libraries exist for times like this. Libraries and archives are storehouses of order through chaotic times. Harvard metaLAB director, Matthew Battles writes poignantly of this in The Library: an Unquiet History , which is both a fascinating history of libraries from Mesopotamia and Alexandria through to modern times and a catalog of the upheavals through which they (mostly) prevailed (biblioclasms anyone?). And as Bob Vitz writes ..read more

Occasionally, we include a One-Question Survey in our weekly newsletter. (The newsletter goes out every Sunday, and is chock full of information about upcoming events. If you’re not getting it, let us know!) For our first question, we asked members who their must-read author was. We wanted to know what author had a permanent spot on their TBR list, the author whose grocery list they would excitedly read, the author who never ever let them down. Dozens of members responded. Every answer was unique. No two readers had the same favorite author, and we are delighted. Our membership reads widely an ..read more

It’s rare for an institution of the Mercantile Library’s venerable age to possess almost complete records that capture so vividly its evolution through the ages. When such an institutional treasure trove survives, its preservation is of the highest priority. The Mercantile Library’s minute books are our institutional DNA. And these beautiful pages, most of which are hand-written and carry the names of Cincinnatians through the decades illustrate how interwoven the life of the Mercantile has always been with that of the city, and its influence during vital periods of Cincinnati’s cultural, inte ..read more

The inaugural First Friday Book Chat was a rousing success, in that everyone who attended — including our Librarians — came away with a long list of reader recommended books. The First Friday Book Chat is a book club without an agenda, without an assigned book. It’s a chance each month to gather with other book lovers to talk about what you’re reading, what books you’re loving or hating, the books you want to talk through or the books you can’t wait to share with someone else. The February First Friday Book Chat will be at noon February 4. You can show up in person on the 12th Story — no reser ..read more

You should have heard the grumbling when we asked our staff to pick their three favorite reads from 2021. If we’d had a dollar for every time someone muttered, “How can I pick just three?” … well, our book-buying budget for 2022 would be much larger. They persevered and winnowed their lists down to their favorites, as listed below. But rest assured: should you need more reading recommendations, our librarians have plenty. Al’s favorites: The Souvenir Museum (stories), Elizabeth McCracken A Town Called Solace, Mary Lawson Leave It As It Is: A Journey through Theodore Roosevelt’s American Wild ..read more