January 2025 - Show and Tell


In concert with the library's "The Best Thing You Checked Out" survey, our book group will discuss favorite reads from the past year. (The books don't have to have been published in 2024.)

Join us Wednesday, January 15, at 1pm and/or 5:30. Bring copies, or just the titles/authors, of your "bests" and tell us what worked to make them memorable. You'll leave with a whole list of recommendations for your TBR list (to-be-read).  

Below are questions to guide a reflection of your reading year. Below that is a list of suggestions for setting reading goals for 2025. 

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2024 Year-End Reading Reflection

If you are interested in understanding what your reading year reveals about your interests and perspectives throughout the year, start with these reflection questions based on the books you read in 2024 (if you kept track):

  • Patterns: Which genres did you gravitate towards? Were there recurring themes, settings, motifs, or plotlines in your list?
  • Favorite authors: Were there authors you discovered or revisited this year? What qualities of their books work for you? What about their writing style did you like?
  • Personal connection: How did the books relate to your own life experiences? Is that kind of connection important to you when choosing/enjoying a book?
  • Personal growth: Which books challenged your perspectives or provided new insights into the world or your own experiences? Did any books significantly change your mind about or understanding of a topic? Did any prove applicable to your current situation?
  • Relatable Characters: Which characters stayed with you? Did you feel kinship with any? Which viewpoints offered you a “mirror” versus a “window”?
  • Rejected reads: What books did you abandon? What didn’t work for you?
  • Biggest impact or “best” books: Think about the five or so titles that most worked for you this year. What about them left the strongest impression on you? Was it the story? Writing style? A particular character? Or maybe the way it met you where you are (in that moment, in life, etc.)?

Use this reflection to inform your future TBR lists or reading goals. Maybe the exercise solidified what you know about your reading interests, but maybe it also revealed some tendencies you didn’t previously realize.

If you enjoy this kind of introspection, check out these resources:

www.onbookstreet.com/blog/reading-year-reflection-and-new-years-intentions

www.onceuponabookclub.com/blogs/ya/the-power-of-reflection-learning-from-what-we-read

www.journalreview.com/stories/reflecting-on-a-year-of-reading,103834

lib.d.umn.edu/research-collections/find-what-read-next/reflection-questions

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Set Reading Goals for 2025

For example, your goals might include items like…

 Start a reading reflection journal:

  • This post: www.anythinklibraries.org/blog/year-books, might inspire you to pick up a pen and write more (more words, more often, more thoughtfully) about the books you read.
  • While reading -- Jot down thoughts, feelings, key takeaways, quotes/lines that resonate, and questions that arise. 
  • When you finish -- Write about worked for you (or didn’t) in the book. List the themes, your favorite scene or character. It’s ok if each entry is different in size, scope, or tone.

 Create (more than one) TBR list:

  • Choose themes, authors, or settings, etc., that you want to explore in 2025 and make a short TBR for each.
  • Read more from authors you know you enjoy.
  • Pick up a new-to-you series, so you’ll always have something to read next, or in between other reads.
  • Work off someone else’s list – maybe choose a few books from the NYT “100 Best Books of the 21st Century” list or from Tookie’s List in the back of The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich.
  • This post: www.apartmenttherapy.com/reading-list-guide-37016621 has some helpful prompts for creating your TBR, like: lists for different moods, decide which unread books should rollover, and mix in short stories.
  • Make a short list and a long list. The short list is less negotiable – you want to read these books, and soon. The long list is more like, “maybe this year,” or just “maybe.”

Accept a reading challenge:

Schedule (more) reading time:

Discuss books more often:

  • Join (or start!) a book group. HTL’s group meets monthly on the third Wednesday. Talk to us if you want advice on starting a group (here or at your home) or connecting to an existing local group.
  • Initiate a regular meet-up with friends or co-workers to talk about what you’ve been reading. Trade favorites.
  • Write short reviews of books you borrowed from HTL. We’ll post them on the shelf so others might benefit from your reflection.
  • Attend an author event, like HTL’s evening with Linnea Hartsuyker (Feb. 19).


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December 2024 - The House in the Cerulean Sea

Amazon.com: The House in the Cerulean Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, 1): 9781250217288: Klune, TJ: Books

Wednesday, December 18, 2024

1pm and 4:30pm

Join us to discuss the novel:
The House in the Cerulean Sea 

 by TJ Klune

Linus Baker is a by-the-book case worker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He's tasked with determining whether six dangerous magical children are likely to bring about the end of the world.

Arthur Parnassus is the master of the orphanage. He would do anything to keep the children safe, even if it means the world will burn. And his secrets will come to light.

The House in the Cerulean Sea is an enchanting love story, masterfully told, about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place―and realizing that family is yours.

Resources: (stay tuned for more)

Keep reading:

Discussion prompts may contain SPOILERS (some borrowed from USFSM Libraries or Libromaniacs)

  1. What was your main take-away? 
  2. What worked for you? What didn't?
  3. Throughout the novel there are many aphorisms, one liners and life advice. For example: "We should always make time for the things we like. If we don't, we might forget how to be happy”, and “A home isn't always the house we live in. It's also the people we choose to surround ourselves with." Did any particularly resonate with you?  
  4. Klune has said (paraphrased): "I like making locations be as major of a character as the actual characters themselves. The orphanage is meant to feel lived-in, realistic even in the face of the fantastical. I want readers to hear every creak of the floor boards, every moment the building groans and settles.” Do you think he succeeded?
  5. DICOMY exercises some questionable institutional overreach. The slogans give insight into their real purpose: “We are happiest when we listen to those in charge”, “A quiet child is a healthy mind”, “Who needs magic when you have your imagination” and “See something, say something. Registration helps everyone”. Thoughts?   
  6. Interview Q: If you could write about anything in the world next, what would it be? KLUNE: Honestly? I’d want to write a bunch of shorter books starring Chauncey, where he’s the manager of a hotel, the bellhop, and he’ll also solve mysteries like who stole the diamond necklace from the woman in room 617? No worries, Chauncey’s on the case!  [interview 4/2023 –before the Cerulean sequel]
  7. Music and rock musicians such as The Everly Brothers, Sam Cooke, Little Richard, The Big Bopper, Buddy Holly, et al., are throughout the story. How is music used in the story and in the characters’ lives? Why the attraction (for Lucy) to the trio killed on The Day the Music Died?
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Nov 2024 - Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow


Wednesday, November 20, 2024

1pm and 4:30pm

Join us to discuss the novel:
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
 by Gabrielle Zevin

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry—a glorious and immersive novel about two childhood friends, once estranged, who reunite as adults to create video games, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives.

Read more: gabriellezevin.com/tomorrowx3/

Resources:

Discussion prompts SPOILERS (some borrowed from Libromaniacs)

  1. This book is #76 on The New York Times "100 Best Books of the 20th Century" list. They described it thus: "The title is Shakespeare; the terrain, more or less, is video games. Neither of those bare facts telegraphs the emotional and narrative breadth of Zevin’s breakout novel, her fifth for adults. As the childhood friendship between two future game-makers blooms into a rich creative collaboration and, later, alienation, the book becomes a dazzling disquisition on art, ambition and the endurance of platonic love." Thoughts on the summary and the listing?
  2. Sam’s mother, the suicide victim, and Marx’s mother all have the name Anna Lee. What was Zevin saying by making that choice?
  3. Sam’s mom Anna says “And this is the truth of any game— it can only exist in the moment it’s being played…in the end, all we can ever know is the game that we played, in the only world that we know.”  Is this philosophy one that you subscribe to? Why or why not?
  4. Are you a gamer? Are you familiar with the retro games or do you play MMOGs (massive multi-player online games? Did your familiarity with games (or lack thereof) matter to your enjoyment of the story?
  5. Sam says “The universe, he felt, was just— or if not just, fair enough. It might take your mother, but it might give you someone else in return.” And Marx says “What is a game? It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.” Yet, there is a quite a bit of grief and pain in the story, weren’t those losses permanent? Was there infinite redemption for the characters?
  6. When Sadie first came up with the idea for Both Sides, she called it a “a glimmer of a notion of a nothing of a whisper of a figment of an idea.” Have you ever had an idea like that? If so, what happened with it?

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October 2024 - The Sentence


Wednesday, October 16, 2024

1pm and 4:30pm

The Sentence: A Novel by Louise Erdrich

A wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman's relentless errors.

The Sentence asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention," must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

Related Resources (some may contain spoilers):

Keep reading:

Discussion prompts: (some borrowed from: www.vox.com/culture/22927681/sentence-review-louise-erdrich and libromaniacs.com/the-sentence-book-club-questions/)

  1. What do you believe we owe the dead?  (VOX)
  2. The Sentence veers pretty wildly between emotional tones. Tookie’s theft of Budgie’s body is very madcap and fun, and then her early days at the bookstore are settled and restrained and slice-of-life-esque. By the time Erdrich gets into the pandemic and the protests over George Floyd’s murder, she’s writing something close to narrative nonfiction. Do the shifting tones work for you? (VOX)
  3. Have you read any of the books recommended at the end? What did you think? (VOX)
  4. What would be on your personal ghostbusting playlist? (VOX)
  5.  How are all the sentences in the book related? Tookie’s prison sentence, the delicious sentences within the books that Tookie recommends, and the book called The Sentence and the (nearly deadly) sentence within it which sent Tookie into a kaleidoscopic tailspin. How are these various sentences related? How do they drive the narrative? (Libromaniacs)
  6. Dissatisfaction is a positively voracious reader. After reading Deacon King Kong, he tells Tookie that he’s been transformed. Tookie ruminates, “That he could change because of a book brightened me up. It was the same with a lot of people who called to buy books.” Have you ever had that moment of transformation from reading a book…or experienced the glow from having recommended a transformative book? (Libromaniacs)
  7. What are your desert island books? Might a dictionary make the list (now)?





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Sept 2024 - Circe by Madeline Miller

September 2024

Discussion -  Wed., Sept. 18, 1pm, and NEW!!! an encore discussion at 4:30pm

Come to either or both!

"An epic spanning thousands of years that's also a keep-you-up-all-night page turner." - Ann Patchett

Circe: A Novel

by Madeline Miller (2020)

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child--not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power--the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and Icarus, Medea, and wily Odysseus.

With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language, and page-turning suspense, Circe is a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love, and loss, and a celebration of indomitable strength.

Copies of the book are available at the library and on Libby as audiobook (get on the Libby wait list asap) [note that the audiobook on Hoopla is in Spanish]. If you wish to purchase a copy, mention our book group at Gibson's or Main Street Bookends and they will kindly offer a discount.

Resources:  

The author's website has a lot of great resources, including a character list, background information, and a reader's guide: https://madelinemiller.com/circe/

Background on the character Circe throughout literature: www.greekmythology.com/Other_Gods/Circe/circe.html

Some fun reading aides, like an interactive map of Odysseus's journey and a pronunciation guide, are on this UPenn site: www2.classics.upenn.edu/myth/php/homer/index.php?page=odymap

Keep reading:

Circe features in Homer's Odyssey in Book X. You can read a translation by Samuel Butler online: www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1727/pg1727-images.html#chap10  or translated by Alexander Pope: www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3160/pg3160-images.html#chap10 The library has the Robert Fagles translation on our shelves as a book and as audiobook CDs.

Circe is also a minor character in the 3rd century BCE book, The Argonautica, by Apollonius Rhodiusin. This is the story many of us know as Jason and the Argonauts. You can read that online here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/830/830-h/830-h.htm#linknoteref-1404 (Book IV)

"Circe," a short story by Eudora Welty, (1955) is digitized here: http://ereserve.library.utah.edu/Annual/ENGL/5510/Coles/circe.pdf

If you liked Circe, try these other books based on characters of classical mythology or see the display in the fiction and nonfiction sections of the library: https://www.carnegielibrary.org/staff-picks/classic-myths-revisited-beyond-circe and www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/myth-retelling



 

 

 

 

 

 

 




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August 2024 - Project Hail Mary

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81zD9kaVW9L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg  

August 2024

Discussion -  Wed., August 21, 1pm

An irresistible interstellar adventure

Project Hail Mary

by Andy Weir (2021)

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.

Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

As his memories incrementally return, Grace realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone. Or does he?

Copies available at the library. Or, at Gibson's or Main Street Bookends, mention our group and they will kindly offer a discount.

Resources:  

PDF of resources from the publisher: https://penguinrandomhousesecondaryeducation.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/PHMKit.pdf

Learn more about the element xenon: https://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele054.html

NASA's Buoyancy Lab (p281) is real. Take a video tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWVcYIYCFK8

"Simplified" explanation of relativity and time dilation (I'm still confused): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuD34tEpRFw

Podcast interview with Andy Weir (spoilers for sure) https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/andy-weir-project-hail-mary



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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July 2024 - The Deepest Map (extra book discussion in the evening)

The Deepest Map: The High-Stakes Race to Chart the World's Oceans: Trethewey, Laura: 9780063099951: Amazon.com: Books

July 2024 - The Deepest Map

Discussion -  July 24, 5:30pm

"A riveting ocean of a book, packed with gripping adventures, high-stakes exploration and political intrigue. Trethewey leads us to the bottom of the sea and deftly shows why it all matters so much." — Helen Scales, author of The Brilliant Abyss

The Deepest Map: The High-Stakes Race to Chart the World's Oceans 

by Laura Trethewey (2023)

The dramatic story of the last mysterious place on earth—the world’s seafloor—and the deep-sea divers, ocean mappers, marine biologists, entrepreneurs, and adventurers involved in the historic push to chart it, as well as the opportunities, challenges, and perils this exploration holds now and for the future. 

Resources:

Mentioned in the book: 
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July 2024 - The Kamogawa Food Detectives

 

The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai: 9780593717714 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

July 2024 - The Kamogawa Food Detectives

“What’s the one dish you’d do anything to taste just one more time?.”

The Kamogawa Food Detectives

By Hisashi Kashiwai (2013)

translated by Jesse Kirkwood (2024)

Discussion -  July 17, 1pm

A father-daughter duo are ‘food detectives’. Through ingenious investigations, they recreate dishes from a person’s treasured memories – dishes that may well hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness. The restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to vanished moments, creating a present full of possibility. A bestseller in Japan, The Kamogawa Food Detectives is a celebration of good company and the power of a delicious meal.

Copies of the book are available at the library. It is also on Libby and other streaming services. 

At Gibson's or Main Street Bookends, mention our group and they will kindly offer a discount.

Resources:


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