Reading With Libraries: podcast book group, with new genres, books, and beverages each week
So, yeah – we are big fans of podcasts! They can be such a good way to share ideas with your community.
Each week we share a podcast about books and/or libraries, so you can
join us in expanding podcast community and admiring the work others
are doing to share cool info!
“Currently Reading is a podcast dedicated to the love of books and reading. Two bookish friends discuss what’s on their nightstands, in their earbuds, and on their Kindles right now, in addition to books they’ve loved forever, and a variety of other readerly topics.”
And you will want to read their Bookish Q&A! Such great questions, and fun answers! “What was the first novel you read? What’s your worst bookish habit? What’s your favorite book of all time?”
Each week we assemble a collection – a bouquet, if you will – of books you can read for yourself, or use to build into a display in your library. As always, the books we link to have info from Amazon.com. If you click a link and then buy anything at all from Amazon, we get a small percent of their profits from your sale. Yay!!! Thanks!!! We really appreciate the assistance! 💕😊
This week we are looking at books with stamps! Stamps on the cover, stamps in the text – if you are a philatelist, or even an aspiring one – this week is for you!!
Use these book ideas to add to your own TBR list, or build a cool display in your own library!
“Arch-swindler Moist von Lipwig never believed his crimes were hanging offenses, until he found himself with a noose around his neck, dropping through a trap door, and falling into…a government job? Getting the moribund Postal Service up and running again, however, may be an impossible task. Worse, the new Postmaster could swear the mail is talking to him. Worst of all, it means taking on the gargantuan, money-hungry Grand Trunk clacks communication monopoly and its bloodthirsty piratical head, Mr. Reacher Gilt. “
” Jenny Offill’s heroine, referred to in these pages as simply “the wife,” once exchanged love letters with her husband postmarked Dept. of Speculation, their code name for all the uncertainty that inheres in life and in the strangely fluid confines of a long relationship. As they confront an array of common catastrophes—a colicky baby, a faltering marriage, stalled ambitions—the wife analyzes her predicament, invoking everything from Keats and Kafka to the thought experiments of the Stoics to the lessons of doomed Russian cosmonauts. She muses on the consuming, capacious experience of maternal love, and the near total destruction of the self that ensues from it as she confronts the friction between domestic life and the seductions and demands of art. “
” It all started with a mysterious and seemingly innocent postcard, but from that point nothing was to remain the same in the life of Griffin Moss, a quiet, solitary artist living in London. His logical, methodical world was suddenly turned upside down by a strangely exotic woman living on a tropical island thousands of miles away. Who is Sabine? How can she “see” what Griffin is painting when they have never met? Is she a long-lost twin? A clairvoyant? Or a malevolent angel? Are we witnessing the flowering of a magical relationship or a descent into madness?
This stunning visual novel unfolds in a series of postcards and letters, all brilliantly illustrated with whimsical designs, bizarre creatures, and darkly imagined landscapes. Inside the book, Griffin and Sabine’s letters are to be found nestling in their envelopes, permitting the reader to examine the intimate correspondence of these inexplicably linked strangers. This truly innovative novel combines a strangely fascinating story with lush artwork in an altogether original format. “
“When her ex-lover, wealthy real-estate tycoon Pierce Inverarity dies and designates her the co-executor of his estate, California housewife Oedipa Mass is thrust into a paranoid mystery of metaphors, symbols, and the United States Postal Service. Traveling across Southern California, she meets some extremely interesting characters, and attains a not-inconsiderable amount of self-knowledge.”
“Ginny Blackstone never thought she’d spend her summer vacation
backpacking across Europe. But that was before she received the first
little blue envelope from Aunt Peg.
This letter was different from Peg’s usual letters for two reasons:
1. Peg had been dead for three months.
2. The letter included $1000 cash for a passport and a plane ticket.
Armed
with instructions for how to retrieve twelve other letters Peg
wrote—twelve letters that tell Ginny where she needs to go and what she
needs to do when she gets there—Ginny quickly finds herself swept away
in her first real adventure. Traveling from London to Edinburgh to
Amsterdam and beyond, Ginny begins to uncover stories from her aunt’s
past and discover who Peg really was. But the most surprising thing
Ginny learns isn’t about Peg . . . it’s about herself.
Everything about Ginny will change this summer, and it’s all because of the 13 little blue envelopes.”
“Language is humanity’s most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What’s more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time.”
Subscribe to our newsletter, our social media, and our podcasts to stay up to date on all kinds of great stuff! We serve 300+ libraries of all types, and are always ready to talk about libraries and books.
We are big fans of VR! Starting this year we have several VR/AR kits
we are loaning to our school libraries, complete with lesson plans they
can use to connect classes with all kinds of great resources.
Sure, it’s fun to play with these. But virtual and augmented reality is playing an increasingly important role in a lot of other areas. We are going to look at a different use each week, so you can work with your community members to help them learn about the great things possible for them today, and tomorrow.
Everyone should be thinking about retirement, and how you are going to get there without a transition into living in a cardboard box. (It’s cold here; that’s a bad outcome!) But it can be tough to really visualize the outcomes of the choices you make.
And we have an article here about Fidelity Investments corporation’s use of VR to help their customers to see and make good choices for themselves in planning for their own retirement!
“Picture this: You are in the country, on a trip through a pleasantly green, rolling landscape dotted with trees. It has a slightly dreamlike quality.
But
this is no dream. It’s a visualization of your financial life, in which
you work to save for a retirement you hope will come one day. And there
are decisions to be made.
Suddenly,
you’re stopped: You’re about to receive a tax refund, and a choice
emerges: Save the money, or spend it? If you spend it, how will you feel
when there’s a market surge, and you miss the gain? Do you regret not
investing it instead?
This environment, part of an experiential virtual reality tool, is the latest twist on the traditional retirement calculator. Created by Fidelity Investments, it’s intended to replicate the feeling of market losses — and gains — without any real-life consequences. It comes at a moment when investment companies are paying greater attention to online tools while developing new ways to present retirement concepts visually and provoke more interest in financial planning.”
Welcome back to the show. We are so glad you are here, joining us for the book group discussion!
This week we look at not only a genre, but a whole aspect of the publishing industry: Zines!
Check out our full show notes page here! Get links to all kinds of resources for finding zines and zine material, get links to the beverages we shared, and to some of the books we shared.
Who is joining us this week? Our returning Guest Host is Violet Fox, who works with OCLC on their Dewey Team, helping to improve cataloging standards for libraries. Listen to episode 501 of our sister podcast, Linking Our Libraries, to hear Violet talk about Cataloging: Basics and Ethics !
We usually stop there with information about our Guest Host, but Violet has a lot of interesting qualifications to chat with us about zines. She has been a part of a group of librarians from across the U.S. and Canada to organize the Zine Pavilion. It’s on the exhibit hall floor during the ALA Annual conference. She has helped to organize the 2018 Zine Librarians unConference, a gathering for library workers and zinesters to explore the intersection of zines and libraries/archives. And she helped organize the Chicago Zine Fest from 2014-2017, and is a co-organizer of the Twin Cities Zine Fest.
She also helps to maintain ZineLibraries.info, a clearinghouse of information about how zines can be used within libraries and archives.
Become a full book group member on Patreon! Click here to be part of the “inner circle” of this book group, and get access to behind-the-scenes info and photos. Support levels start at $1/month – and you get a postcard from Official Office Dog Lady Grey! More swag is available at higher levels of support; check it all out today.
We love doing this, but podcasts aren’t free to create; so thank you so much to our book group members who have joined us. We love having you as part of the team.
Partnering with libraries for visioning, advocating, and educating
