Kimbel has new Popular Reading shelf

“The One Hundred Foot Journey.” “Lucky Us.” “The Mockingbird Next Door.” “Now It’s time to Say Goodbye.”

These are just a few of the titles on Kimbel Library’s new “popular reading” shelf located near the Starbucks Café entrance.

When a focus group of students met earlier this year as part of the Feel the Teal initiatives led by Eileen Soisson, one of the suggestions was to include more popular books such as New York Times bestsellers in the library to check out.

About the same time, Soisson’s mother, Joan Dreibelbis, of Raleigh, N.C., passed away, and Leadership S.C., of which Eileen is a member, donated funds to the library to start the collection in her memory. Dean of Library Services Barbara Burd purchased about 20 books with these funds, and the book display was set up over the summer.

“The donation started the ball rolling and will serve as a fitting memorial for someone who loved books and wanted to make a difference,” says Burd, who plans to add to the collection periodically to keep the materials current.

“My mom was a librarian who loved books,” said Soisson. “It was the most touching thing they could have done for me.”