Welcome to Browsing Books!
This season we are suggesting books you might enjoy for our Goodreads group: Armchair Travel to Minnesota State Parks. We give you a prompt connected to each state park, and you find a book to fulfill the challenge. You can use one of our suggestions, and you should feel free to read any book!
Hayes Lake State Park was established in 1967. This park offers swimming and fishing opportunities, as well as wildlife viewing of animals including moose, lynx, porcupines, and loons! The Friends of Hayes Lake State Park are actively seeking new members! Celebrate this support organization by reading a book about friends.
We give you links to each of these books on our show notes page, taking you to Amazon.com. If you click on any of them, and buy anything at all – including a nice book – Amazon will send us a small percent of the profits they made on these sales. Thank you for supporting CMLE!
We Used to be Friends by Amy Spalding
Told in dual timelines—half of the chapters moving forward in time and half moving backward—We Used to Be Friends explores the most traumatic breakup of all: that of childhood besties. At the start of their senior year in high school, James (a girl with a boy’s name) and Kat are inseparable, but by graduation, they’re no longer friends. James prepares to head off to college as she reflects on the dissolution of her friendship with Kat while, in alternating chapters, Kat thinks about being newly in love with her first girlfriend and having a future that feels wide open. Over the course of senior year, Kat wants nothing more than James to continue to be her steady rock, as James worries that everything she believes about love and her future is a lie when her high-school sweetheart parents announce they’re getting a divorce. Funny, honest, and full of heart, We Used to Be Friends tells of the pains of growing up and growing apart.
Ladybug Girl and the Best Ever Playdate by David Soman illus. By Jacky Davis
Lulu is excited about her playdate with Finny—and especially excited about Finny’s Rolly-Roo. In fact, Lulu loves the toy so much that she . . . kind of forgets to play with Finny. So when the girls accidentally break the Rolly-Roo, will Lulu realize her mistake? In this compassionate and charming story about the value of a great friend, Lulu and Finny repair the broken toy, and soon forget all about it, blasting off on new imaginative adventures together as Ladybug Girl and Grasshopper Girl.
A Possibility of Whales by Karen Rivers
The paparazzi are stalking Nat and her movie-star father. And it’s all her ex–best friend Solly’s fault . . . sort of. But Nat doesn’t want to think about that. Nat prefers to think of the possibilities ahead of her: the possibility that she’ll see whales on the beach near her new home, that Harry—who she just met—will be her new best friend, that she and her dad won’t have to move again again.
Most of all, Nat dreams of the possibility that her faraway mother misses and loves her—and is waiting for Nat to find her. Then, just as Nat is settling in to her new home, unexpected events, including a chance encounter with a whale, send her on a journey of self-discovery that will change her life—and quite possibly her father’s, Harry’s, and Solly’s too—forever.
Mornings with Rosemary by Libby Page
Rosemary Peterson has lived in Brixton, London, all her life, but everything is changing.
The library where she used to work has closed. The family grocery store has become a trendy bar. And now the lido, an outdoor pool where she’s swum daily since its opening, is threatened with closure by a local housing developer. It was at the lido that Rosemary escaped the devastation of World War II; here she fell in love with her husband, George; here she found community during her marriage and since George’s death.
Twentysomething Kate Matthews has moved to Brixton and feels desperately alone. A once-promising writer, she now covers forgettable stories for her local paper. That is, until she’s assigned to write about the lido’s closing. Soon Kate’s portrait of the pool focuses on a singular woman: Rosemary. And as Rosemary slowly opens up to Kate, both women are nourished and transformed in ways they never thought possible.
My Soul Looks Back by Jessica B. Harris
In this captivating new memoir, award-winning writer Jessica B. Harris recalls a lost era—the vibrant New York City of her youth, where her social circle included Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and other members of the Black intelligentsia.
In the Technicolor glow of the early seventies, Jessica B. Harris debated, celebrated, and danced her way from the jazz clubs of the Manhattan’s West Side to the restaurants of the Village, living out her buoyant youth alongside the great minds of the day—luminaries like Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison. My Soul Looks Back is her paean to that fascinating social circle and the depth of their shared commitment to activism, intellectual engagement, and each other.
Harris paints evocative portraits of her illustrious friends: Baldwin as he read aloud an early draft of If Beale Street Could Talk, Angelou cooking in her California kitchen, and Morrison relaxing at Baldwin’s house in Provence. Harris describes her role as theater critic for the New York Amsterdam News and editor at then burgeoning Essence magazine; star-studded parties in the South of France; drinks at Mikell’s, a hip West Side club; and the simple joy these extraordinary people took in each other’s company.
The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
Once a week, an eclectic group of women comes together at a New York City yarn shop to work on their latest projects – and share the stories of their lives…
At the center of Walker and Daughter is the shop’s owner, Georgia, who is overwhelmed with juggling the store and single-handedly raising her teenage daughter. Happy to escape the demands of her life, she looks forward to her Friday Night Knitting Club, where she and her friends – Anita, Peri, Darwin, Lucie, and K.C. – exchange knitting tips, jokes, and their deepest secrets. But when the man who once broke Georgia’s heart suddenly shows up, demanding a role in their daughter’s life, her world is shattered.
Luckily, Georgia’s friends are there for encouragement, sharing their own tales of intimacy, heartbreak, and miracle making. And when the unthinkable happens, these women will discover that what they’ve created isn’t just a knitting club; it’s a sisterhood.
CONCLUSION:
Thanks for joining us! We’ll be back next week with a look at the next park and the next book prompt!