Merrill Memorial Library

Adult Fiction in Global Languages: Serving the New Mainer Community

Have you ever wandered through the stacks on the 2nd floor in adult fiction wondering why we don’t own any books in languages other than English? After all, we do have a fairly extensive collection of foreign films downstairs! Are you a first-generation immigrant trying to maintain ties to your ancestral homeland and prefer to read for leisure in your native tongue? Or, are you perhaps studying a romance language and want to challenge your reading comprehension by taking a stab at reading an Allende novel in the original Spanish? (As someone married to a Spaniard with moderately decent knowledge of Spanish, I wouldn’t be brave enough to attempt this, but kudos to anyone who is!) 🙂

Thanks to a small grant we won back in the summer months of 2024, we have the opportunity to build an equally small (but robust) collection of adult fiction titles in three different languages: French, Portuguese, and Spanish. The titles are not limited to literary classics that can be accessed through ILL (interlibrary loan) services from college and university libraries scattered throughout the state. We’ve made an effort to acquire popular, mainstream titles, and relatively current titles (most dated from 2015 and later). Read more….