Episode 10-12: A book with a song lyric as its title

Reading With Libraries season ten logo

Thank you for joining us again on our book group and Reader’s advisory podcast! 

We are here to talk about books and share library ideas!

This season we are exploring all new ideas for books and book suggestions, so you can expand your reading horizons, and share more information with your library community. We are looking at prompts from the 2023 PopSugar reading challenge this season. You can read along with their challenge, linked in our show notes, or just enjoy some different books. 

We aren’t going to sing about it this week, but we are going to celebrate this week’s books with song titles! Enjoy all of the books that always sound like they are going to be fun – but sometimes go in sad, scary directions. So this is a good week to try some new books of all genres!

Check out our show notes page for links to our beverages, our resources, and the books we share today.

Beverages:

This is, of course, a book group. And every book group needs to have beverages, so you really get the feel for your reading! 

This week we are drawing our beverage inspiration from the article 5 Cocktails Inspired By Grammy-Nominated Songs.

This purple-hued beverage was inspired by Taylor Swift’s hit song “Blank Space.” To match the complex themes of the song, which include broken promises, jealousy, and passion, Charest “wanted a drink with a lot of depth, both in body and color.”

Ingredients:

2 oz. Rye Whiskey
3/4 oz. Honey
3/4 oz. Lemon Juice
2-3 Blackberries

Directions:
Muddle blackberries. Add all other ingredients and shake & strain into a double rocks glass filled with ice. Garnish with a blackberry.

Charest was inspired by the hit Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars song “Uptown Funk“ for this refreshing drink. The name is of course a reference to the catchy chorus, and Charest said he used ginger syrup to add a funky kick.

Ingredients:
1.5 oz. Gin
3/4 oz. Fresh Lemon Juice
1/2 oz. Ginger Syrup
1 oz. Apple Juice
Soda

Directions:
 Combine gin, lemon, ginger, and apple. Shake and strain into a Collins glass filled with ice. Top with Soda. Garnish with an apple slice.

Genre Discussion:

Music is important to people. It doesn’t matter whether you are wonderful at it all and make it part of everything you do, or it hardly makes a dent in your day; music is swirling all around you and is part of your memories and your life. Bringing in song titles to the world of the books gives an automatic hook to people who recognize it, encouraging us to connect and explore books. Anything that helps to give you some incentive to read more books, and all kinds of new books for you, is a good strategy!

Suggested Reading Resources:

Our Book Discussion

We have our beverages, we are familiar with this week’s genre, let’s get to the book discussion! We will give you a list of all the books we share today. In this week’s show notes, you can click on any title to get more information; the link will take you to one of Minnesota’s favorite independent bookstores: Drury Lane. Browse around while you are there, and maybe you will find something else you enjoy!  

Wish You Were Here, by Jodi Picoult

Diana O’Toole is perfectly on track. She will be married by thirty, done having kids by thirty-five, and move out to the New York City suburbs, all while climbing the professional ladder in the cutthroat art auction world. She’s an associate specialist at Sotheby’s now, but her boss has hinted at a promotion if she can close a deal with a high-profile client. She’s not engaged just yet, but she knows her boyfriend, Finn, a surgical resident, is about to propose on their romantic getaway to the Galápagos—days before her thirtieth birthday. Right on time.

But then a virus that felt worlds away has appeared in the city, and on the eve of their departure, Finn breaks the news: It’s all hands on deck at the hospital. He has to stay behind. You should still go, he assures her, since it would be a shame for all of their nonrefundable trip to go to waste. And so, reluctantly, she goes.

Almost immediately, Diana’s dream vacation goes awry. Her luggage is lost, the Wi-Fi is nearly nonexistent, and the hotel they’d booked is shut down due to the pandemic. In fact, the whole island is now under quarantine, and she is stranded until the borders reopen. Completely isolated, she must venture beyond her comfort zone. Slowly, she carves out a connection with a local family when a teenager with a secret opens up to Diana, despite her father’s suspicion of outsiders.

In the Galápagos Islands, where Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was formed, Diana finds herself examining her relationships, her choices, and herself—and wondering if when she goes home, she too will have evolved into someone completely different.

Heart-Shaped Box, by Joe Hill

Sooner or later, the dead catch up . . .

Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals, a used hangman’s noose, a snuff film. Many of these objects were gifts from the black-clad fans who made his metal band a legend and made him rich. But not all. When his personal assistant told him there was a ghost for sale on the Internet, Jude knew he had to have it for his private collection. He didn’t think twice.

He should have.

Jude has spent a lifetime evading ghosts—his abusive father; the bandmates he betrayed; Anna, the suicidal girl he loved and abandoned. But this spirit is different. This one means to chase him to the edge of sanity.

His new acquisition—delivered to his doorstep in a black heart-shaped box—is the restless soul of Anna’s vengeful stepdaddy. Craddock McDermott swore he would settle with Jude for ruining his daughter’s life. Soon, everywhere Jude turns, Craddock is there: behind the bedroom door; in Jude’s restored vintage Mustang; outside his window; on his widescreen TV. Waiting—with a gleaming razor blade on a chain dangling from one bony hand. If ever there was a case of buyer beware, this is it…

This Much Is True, by Miriam Margolyes

BAFTA-winning actor, voice of everything from Monkey to the Cadbury’s Caramel Rabbit, creator of a myriad of unforgettable characters from Lady Whiteadder to Professor Sprout, MIRIAM MARGOLYES, OBE, is the nation’s favourite (and naughtiest) treasure. Now, at the age of 80, she has finally decided to tell her extraordinary life story – and it’s well worth the wait.

Find out how being conceived in an air-raid gave her curly hair; what pranks led to her being known as the naughtiest girl Oxford High School ever had; how she ended up posing nude for Augustus John as a teenager; why Bob Monkhouse was the best (male) kiss she’s ever had; and what happened next after Warren Beatty asked ‘Do you fuck?’

From declaring her love to Vanessa Redgrave to being told to be quiet by the Queen, this book is packed with brilliant, hilarious stories. With a cast list stretching from Scorsese to Streisand, a cross-dressing Leonardo di Caprio to Isaiah Berlin, This Much Is True is as warm and honest, as full of life and surprises, as its inimitable author.

Take a Chance on Me, by Susan Donovan

They’ve Got Nothing In Common…

For animal behaviorist Emma Jenkins, romance has been at the bottom of her daily “to do” list since making it through a messy divorce. But everything changes the day six-feet-of-gorgeous Thomas Tobin walks into her office with a quivering Chinese Crested named Hairy, a canine that looks more like an underfed rodent than a dog. Sure Thomas is sending her mixed signals-but that charming smile just sent Emma’s dormant sex drive through the roof…

But Animal Attraction-

Thomas isn’t looking for a fling. In fact, he wants nothing to do with women. He just wants to know if Hairy witnessed his owner’s murder. But something tells him that asking Emma to help him with the case will spell nothing but trouble-trouble in the form of serious temptation.

And the Willingness To Take A Chance On Love

Thomas knows that relying on Emma’s expertise-and her soft touch with a weird dog that has somehow become his-may be a crazy way to track a killer. Especially when Emma’s down-home warmth makes him want to believe that anything is possible-even true love.

Every Breath You Take: A True Story of Obsession, Revenge, and Murder, Ann Rule

In perhaps the first true-crime book written at the victim’s request, Ann Rule untangles a web of lies and brutality that culminated in the murder of Sheila Blackthorne Bellush—a woman Rule never met, but whose shocking story she now chronicles with compassion, exacting detail, and unvarnished candor.

Although happily ensconced in a loving second marriage, and a new family of quadruplets, Sheila never truly escaped the vicious enslavement of her ex-husband, multi-millionaire Allen Blackthorne, a handsome charmer— and a violent, controlling sociopath who subjected Sheila to unthinkable abuse in their marriage, and terrorized her for a decade after their divorce. When Sheila was slain in her home, in the presence of her four toddlers, authorities raced to link the crime to Blackthorne, the man who vowed to monitor Sheila’s every move in his obsessive quest for power and revenge. 

Don’t You Forget About Me, by Mhairi McFarlane

You always remember your first love… don’t you?

If there’s anything worse than being fired from the lousiest restaurant in town, it’s coming home early to find your boyfriend in bed with someone else. Reeling from the humiliation of a double dumping in one day, Georgina takes the next job that comes her way—bartender in a newly opened pub. There’s only one problem: it’s run by the guy she fell in love with years ago. And—make that two problems—he doesn’t remember her. At all. But she has fabulous friends and her signature hot pink fur coat… what more could a girl really need?

Lucas McCarthy has not only grown into a broodingly handsome man, but he’s also turned into an actual grown-up, with a thriving business and a dog along the way. Crossing paths with him again throws Georgina’s rocky present into sharp relief—and brings a secret from her past bubbling to the surface. Only she knows what happened twelve years ago, and why she’s allowed the memories to chase her ever since. But maybe it’s not too late for the truth… or a second chance with the one that got away?

Breakfast at Tiffany’s, by Truman Capote

It’s New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail hour till breakfast at Tiffany’s… And nice girls don’t, except, of course, Holly Golightly. Pursued by Mafia gangsters and playboy millionaires, Holly is a fragile eyeful of tawny hair and turned-up nose, a heart-breaker, a perplexer, a traveler, a tease. She is irrepressibly ‘top banana in the shock department’, and one of the shining flowers of American fiction.

Conclusion:

Thank you so much for joining us on Reading With Libraries! Join us next Thursday with another topic or genre and many more books to share and discuss. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don’t miss a single episode! 

And if you want to hear more about the work we do in libraries or expand your library skills, check out our podcast Linking Our Libraries! Right now that is dropping short episodes with a few book suggestions; so subscribe to get that every Tuesday.

Bring your book ideas, bring your beverages, and join us back here on Thursday!