Category Archives: Books

Books

Book Suggestion Series: Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling

We love to read books, and to talk about books. Check out our entire series here! Need more book chatting and suggestions in your life? Listen to our Books and Beverages podcast!

Audiobooks are fantastic for lots of reasons, but it’s especially nice when the author/narrator sounds like one of your best friends telling funny stories. That’s exactly what it feels like listening to Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling, read by the author. I enjoyed reading her first book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? but listening to this book was definitely a good decision. If you need a book to help you relax throughout all the stress of the holidays and want one that will make you laugh out loud, this audiobook is for you!

“Mindy turns the anxieties, the glamour, and the celebrations of her second coming-of-age into a laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays that anyone who’s ever been at a turning point in their life or career can relate to. And those who’ve never been at a turning point can skip to the parts where she talks about meeting Bradley Cooper. “

Books

Episode 106: Occupational fiction

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Welcome, everyone, to Books and Beverages! This week we are discussing Occupational Fiction! What is this genre? It is all about people and the jobs they have – with a story unfolding around it.

Get all the info, and our beverages, on our full information page!

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, and we support all types of libraries. This is our book group podcast, where we discuss different genres of books each week, while we all sit in our comfy chairs and drink our beverages. And you are, of course, an important part of this book group. So if you do not already have a nice beverage please go get one, so you can join the experience.

There are no right or wrong books to read and chat about for our book group – we are just here to explore all kinds of books. We love books, and want to talk about them – and we want you to share what you are reading. All of us will take away at least a title or two that we want to read at the end of our time together!

Our guest host this week is Maria Burnham, Technology Integration Coach from the Sauk Rapids/Rice High School. She is also a member of our CMLE Board, and was our very first podcast guest on Linking Our Libraries Episode Five: Digitization Projects.

This is a huge category! Books that look at different kinds of jobs people do are always fun to read; you can either dream about a fun job you don’t have, or be thankful you are not in the awful job from the book. Some of the most popular types of books in this genre are law books, medical books, or books about people in the publishing industry (not surprisingly). If you have read a John Grisham book, or enjoyed the medical anthropology of Temperance Brennen, or had a fictional romance with a baseball player, then you too have enjoyed some occupational fiction! To really be occupational fiction, the book needs to really focus on the job, and the main character who is doing that job.

What are a few jobs you might find in fiction? We link to a very long Wikipedia article with a comprehensive list; and here are a few:

Books

Book Suggestion Series: The Vampire’s Mail Order Bride (Nocturne Falls, #1)

We love to read books, and to talk about books. Check out our entire series here! Need more book chatting and suggestions in your life? Listen to our Books and Beverages podcast!

Some days I really enjoy reading a nice, fluffy romance book – and this series has a bunch of them! This is a paranormal series, with each book looking at a different character. In this book, the series is introduced, and we learn about the founding of the town and the family who got it all started. You learn about the town, and all the fun things available in this community. And you get to have an adventure that (spoiler alert!) turns out okay in the end, because it’s fun, romance, cozy mystery and that is how they work. If you need a fun series to try during the holidays, check out this series – complete with an assortment of holiday-themed books!

The Vampire’s Mail Order Bride, by  Kristen Painter “Welcome to Nocturne Falls, the town where Halloween is celebrated 365 days a year. The tourists think it’s all a show: the vampires, the werewolves, the witches, the occasional gargoyle flying through the sky. But the supernaturals populating the town know better. Living in Nocturne Falls means being yourself. Fangs, fur, and all.

After seeing her maybe-mobster boss murder a guy, Delaney James assumes a new identity and pretends to be a mail order bride. She finds her groom-to-be living in a town that celebrates Halloween every day. Weird. But not as weird as what she doesn’t know. Her groom-to-be is a 400-year-old vampire. Hugh Ellingham has only agreed to the arranged set up to make his overbearing grandmother happy. In thirty days, whatever bridezilla shows up at his door will be escorted right back out. His past means love is no longer an option. Not if the woman’s going to have a future. Except he never counted on Delaney and falling in love for real. Too bad both of them are keeping some mighty big secrets…”

Books

CMLE Reads Across MN: We’ll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down

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Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, and it also has many interesting books. In this series, we are sharing some of the books we like from Minnesota, or Minnesota authors.

We are mapping our literary journey around Minnesota, so you can see all the interesting places where our books are set. Follow our progress on our Google Map, accessible by clicking that link or searching for the title CMLE Reads Across Minnesota!

This week’s book was suggested by CMLE member Violet Fox. Do you have a good Minnesota book to suggest? Tell us about it! We love Minnesota books.

We’ll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down: Memoir of a Gravedigger’s Daughter, by Rachael Hanel “Rachael Hanel’s name was inscribed on a gravestone when she was eleven years old. Yet this wasn’t at all unusual in her world: her father was a gravedigger in the small Minnesota town of Waseca, and death was her family’s business. Her parents were forty-two years old and in good health when they erected their gravestone—Rachael’s name was simply a branch on the sprawling family tree etched on the back of the stone. As she puts it: I grew up in cemeteries.

And you don’t grow up in cemeteries—surrounded by headstones and stories, questions, curiosity—without becoming an adept and sensitive observer of death and loss as experienced by the people in this small town. For Rachael Hanel, wandering among tombstones, reading the names, and wondering about the townsfolk and their lives, death was, in many ways, beautiful and mysterious. Death and mourning: these she understood. But when Rachael’s father—Digger O’Dell—passes away suddenly when she is fifteen, she and her family are abruptly and harshly transformed from bystanders to participants. And for the first time, Rachael realizes that death and grief are very different.”

Books, Services

Minnesota Reads and Writes

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For writers interested in easy-to-use, free resources for publishing and sharing e-books, and for readers interested in reading e-books by local writers, your Minnesota libraries bring you MN Writes MN Reads.

Are you writing a book for Nanowrimo? Or, would you like to write something??

You can follow the directions on this website! Here are a few quick notes:

  • Upload your ebook using SELF-e for inclusion in Indie Minnesota, a statewide collection promoting local authors.
  • After a book is uploaded, it is reviewed to ensure that it is technically sound and does not infringe on copyrights.
  • This initial review takes a few days. After that, the book will appear in Indie Minnesota.
  • Fiction books in English will be reviewed by reviewers at Library Journal. The best reviewed books are included in a special curated collection, SELF-e Select, that is available to readers across the country.
  • The review process for SELF-e Select takes one to two months. Authors are notified by Library Journal/SELF-e if their book is selected for this collection.

Then: Whamoo! (It’s publishing term of art. Well – it should be!) You are not only a published author, but your book is available to library patrons across the state!

Share this with your patrons, and let’s see some great Minnesota books shared!