If you were holding back from decorating until after Thanksgiving, your time is coming! Go ahead and unpack the boxes of Santas, snowmen and string lights. While you’re testing your lights, you will inevitably discover that a strand or two have burned out and are otherwise useless.

However, don’t throw the dead string of lights in the trash! This year, the Delaware County District Library has once again partnered with the Delaware Public Health District for the Recycle Right Holiday String Lights program. Whether you have strands of burned-out lights or you’re replacing your current strands with energy-efficient LED lights, the old strands can be recycled.

All Delaware County District Library locations are proud partners of this annual program, brought to the public in partnership with Keep Delaware County Beautiful and Delaware Knox Marion Morrow Solid Waste District. Other collection sites include the Ashley Wornstaff Memorial Library (302 E. High St.), Delaware City Public Works (440 E. William St.), Genoa Township Administration Office (5111 S. Old 3C Highway), Price Farms Organics (4838 Warrensburg Rd.), and the Delaware Public Health District offices in Sunbury and Delaware.

Upon entrance to any DCDL location, you will find a bin with the Recycle Right logo on it where your strings may be placed. The program runs now through Jan. 15, 2024. So just in case your lights kick the can before the season is over, you’ll be able to properly recycle them before you store them away or throw them away.

We hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday with those you love. The Delaware County District Library will close at 5 p.m. today, Wednesday, Nov. 22, and remain closed through the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, Nov. 23. Branches reopen with their regular operating hours on Friday, Nov. 24.

If you’re participating in Black Friday or Small Business Saturday shopping this weekend, perhaps you’ll want to gift someone one of the popular book titles from 2023. Here is the current list of New York Times best-sellers for you to see what’s hot.

1. “Dirty Thirty” by Janet Evanovich. The 30th book in the Stephanie Plum series. Plum tracks a local jeweler’s former security guard and has an overnight stakeout with relatives.

2. “The Exchange: After The Firm” by John Grisham. In a sequel to “The Firm,” Mitch McDeere, who is now a partner at the world’s largest law firm, gets caught up in a sinister plot.

3. “Fourth Wing” by Rebecca Yarros. Violet Sorrengail is urged by the commanding general, who also is her mother, to become a candidate for the elite dragon riders.

4. “The Secret” by Lee Child and Andrew Child. The 28th book in the Jack Reacher series. It’s 1992 and Reacher looks into the cause of a string of mysterious deaths.

5. “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus. A scientist and single mother living in California in the 1960s becomes a star on a TV cooking show.

6. “Holly” by Stephen King. The private detective Holly Gibney investigates whether a married pair of octogenarian academics had anything to do with Bonnie Dahl’s disappearance.

7. “Tom Lake” by Ann Patchett. Three daughters, who return to their family orchard in the spring of 2020, learn about their mother’s relationship with a famous actor.

8. “Let Us Descend” by Jesmyn Ward. Annis, who was sold by the white enslaver who fathered her, tries to comfort herself with memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother.

9. “A Fire in the Flesh” by Jennifer L. Armentrout. The third book in the Flesh and Fire series. The destinies of Nyktos and Sera may be out of their hands.

10. “Absolution” by Alice McDermott. Two American women form an uneasy alliance in Saigon in 1963.

11. “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver. Winner of a 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. A reimagining of Charles Dickens’s “David Copperfield” set in the mountains of southern Appalachia.

12. “The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese. Three generations of a family living on South India’s Malabar Coast suffer the loss of a family member by drowning.

13. “The Armor of Light” by Ken Follett. The fifth book in the Kingsbridge series. Change and turmoil affect various aspects of society in the latter part of the 18th century.

14. “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride. Secrets held by the residents of a dilapidated neighborhood come to life when a skeleton is found at the bottom of a well.

15. “Remarkably Bright Creatures” by Shelby Van Pelt. A widow working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium is aided in solving a mystery by a giant Pacific octopus living there.

If you have a question that you would like to see answered in this column, mail it to Nicole Fowles, Delaware County District Library, 84 E. Winter St., Delaware, OH 43015, or call us at 740-362-3861. You can also email your questions by visiting the library’s web site at www.delawarelibrary.org or directly to Nicole at [email protected]. No matter how you contact us, we’re always glad you asked!