Episode 10-06: A book with a color in the title

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Welcome to Reading With Libraries!

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. 

This week our books all have a color in the title! Sometimes the colors are relevant to the storyline, and sometimes they are just fun things to enjoy. Feel free to wear your favorite colored items while we all enjoy this week’s books.

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’s beverages come from the article 20 Colorful Cocktail Recipes For Everyone’s Favorite Shade

Yellow Cocktail: Bon Dimanche

  • 2 1/2 part elit Vodka
  • 1/2 part Ginger Syrup
  • 1/2 part Yellow Chartreuse
  • 1/2 part fresh lemon
  • 1 dash celery bitters
  • 1 drop Allspice Dram

Shake well and fine strain into a coup. Garnish with a lemon peel.

Blue Cocktail: Five Golden Rings

  • 2 oz. tequila
  • ¾ oz. Blue Curacao
  • ¾ oz. spiced pineapple syrup
  • ¾ oz. lemon juice
  • Campari (to sink)

Shake all ingredients except Campari and pour into a coupe. Add Campari that will sink to the bottom to add flavor and color. Garnish with edible gold stars. Serve up.

Genre Discussion:

This one has been a prompt in prior years for the Pop Sugar challenge, and apparently was enough of a favorite to be repeated. This is one of those sorta-genres, where you have a lot of latitude in the books you read. And, you can explore so many genres that it can be an adventure in new reading for you! These flexible prompts give you the chance to explore some books that you never knew about before this prompt came into your life. And when you are recommending books to your patrons, colors can be a hook for them into all kinds of new stories and things they might enjoy.

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. You can click on any of these links to go to Amazon.com for more information.  

The Black Book of Colors, by Menena Cottin

Living with the use of one’s eyes can make imagining blindness difficult, but this innovative title invites readers to imagine living without sight through remarkable illustrations done with raised lines and descriptions of colors based on imagery. Braille letters accompany the illustrations and a full Braille alphabet offers sighted readers help reading along with their fingers. This extraordinary title gives young readers the ability to experience the world in a new way.

The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne: The Outlaws, Book 1

Scarlett McCain is a shoot-first ask-questions-later kind of outlaw. She scrapes by on bank heists, her wits – and never looking back.

She’s on the run from her latest crime when she comes across Albert Browne. He is the sole survivor of a horrific accident, and against her better judgement, Scarlett agrees to guide him to safety.

This is a mistake. Soon there are men with dogs and guns and explosives hot on their heels. Scarlett’s used to being chased by the law, but this is extreme. It was only a little bank she’d robbed….

As they flee together across the wilds, fighting off monstrous beasts, and dodging their pursuers, Scarlett comes to realize that Albert Browne is hiding a terrible secret. And that he may be the most dangerous threat of all.

In this fast-paced, quick-witted whirlwind of a story, Jonathan Stroud introduces two unlikely allies – the outlaws Scarlett and Browne – who are about to become the most notorious renegades in all that’s left of Britain.

Emerald Blaze, by Ilona Andrews

As Prime magic users, Catalina Baylor and her sisters have extraordinary powers—powers their ruthless grandmother would love to control. Catalina can earn her family some protection working as deputy to the Warden of Texas, overseeing breaches of magic law in the state, but that has risks as well. When House Baylor is under attack and monsters haunt her every step, Catalina is forced to rely on handsome, dangerous Alessandro Sagredo, the Prime who crushed her heart. 

The nightmare that Alessandro has fought since childhood has come roaring back to life, but now Catalina is under threat. Not even his lifelong quest for revenge will stop him from keeping her safe, even if every battle could be his last. Because Catalina won’t rest until she stops the use of the illicit, power-granting serum that’s tearing their world apart.

Blackwater By Jeannette Arroyo And Ren Graham

Riverdale meets Stranger Things in this debut queer YA graphic novel, developed from a hit webcomic. Set in the haunted town of Blackwater, Maine, two boys fall for each other as they dig for clues to a paranormal mystery.

Tony Price is a popular high school track star and occasional delinquent aching for his dad’s attention and approval. Eli Hirsch is a quiet boy with a chronic autoimmune disorder that has ravaged his health and social life. What happens when these two become unlikely friends (and a whole lot more . . .) in the spooky town of Blackwater, Maine? Werewolf curses, unsavory interactions with the quarterback of the football team, a ghostly fisherman haunting the harbor, and tons of high school drama.

Blue Is the Warmest Color, by Julie Maroh

When her openly gay best friend takes her out on the town, Clementine wanders into a lesbian bar where she encounters Emma: a punkish, confident girl with blue hair. Their attraction is instant, and Clementine finds herself in a relationship that will test her friends, parents, and her own ideas about herself and her identity.

In this tender, bittersweet, full-color graphic novel, a young woman discovers herself and the elusive magic of love when she meets a confident blue-haired girl named Emma: a lesbian love story for the ages that bristles with the energy of youth and rebellion and the eternal light of desire.

The Man in the Brown Suit, by Agatha Christie

Newly-orphaned Anne Beddingfield is a lovely English girl hoping for a bit of adventure in London. But she struggles upon more than she bargained for! Anne is on the platform at Hyde Park Corner tube station when a man falls onto the live track, dying instantly. A doctor examines the man, pronounces him dead, and leaves, dropping a note on his way. Anne picks up the note, which reads “17.1 22 Kilmorden Castle”. The next day the newspapers declare that a gorgeous ballet dancer has been discovered dead there brutally strangled. A tremendous fortune in diamonds has disappeared. And now, aboard the extravagance liner Kilmorden Castle, spooky strangers loot her cabin and try to choke her. What are they looking for? Why should they want her dead? Lovely Anne is the last person on earth suited to solve this mystery… and the only one who can! Anne’s journey to untwist the mystery takes her as far afield as Africa and the strain mounts with every step… And Anne finds herself toiling to unmask a faceless assassin known only as ‘The Colonel.’ “A Colourful Murder Mystery”

Blue Bloods, by Melissa de la Cruz

Within New York City’s most elite families, there lurks a secret society of celebrated Americans. They are the powerful and the wealthy―and, they are not human. They are the Blue Bloods.

Schuyler Van Alen has never fit in at Duchesne, her prestigious New York City private school. She prefers baggy, vintage clothes instead of the Prada and pearls worn by her classmates, and she lives with her reclusive grandmother in a dilapidated mansion. Schuyler is a loner―and happy that way.

But when she turns fifteen, something starts happening to Schuyler. Her veins are starting to turn blue, and she’s craving raw meat. The death of a popular girl from Duchesne is surrounded by a mystery that haunts her. And strangest of all, Jack Force, the most popular boy in school, is showing a sudden interest in her. Soon, her world is thrust into an intricate maze of secret societies and bitter intrigue. Schuyler wants to find out the secrets the Blue Bloods are keeping. But is she herself in danger?

The Red Pyramid: The Kane Chronicles, Book 1 , Rick Riordan

Ideal for middle grade listeners, but older listeners will enjoy it, too.

Soon to be adapted into a movie for Netflix, with Rick attached as producer.

Since their mother’s death, Carter and Sadie have become near strangers. While Sadie has lived with her grandparents in London, her brother has traveled the world with their father, the brilliant Egyptologist, Dr. Julius Kane. One night, Dr. Kane brings the siblings together for a “research experiment” at the British Museum, where he hopes to set things right for his family. Instead, he unleashes the Egyptian god Set, who banishes him to oblivion and forces the children to flee for their lives. Soon, Sadie and Carter discover that the gods of Egypt are waking, and the worst of them—Set—has his sights on the Kanes. To stop him, the siblings embark on a dangerous journey across the globe—a quest that brings them ever closer to the truth about their family, and their links to a secret order that has existed since the time of the pharaohs.

The Silver Box: An Enchantment Lake Mystery, by Margi Preus

When she wakes in her aunts’ cold cabin on the shore of Enchantment Lake, Francie remembers: everything about her life has changed. Or is about to. Or just might. Everything depends on the small, engraved silver box that she now possesses—if only she can follow its cryptic clues to the whereabouts of her missing mother and understand, finally, just maybe, the truth about who she really is. 

Francie, it turns out, has a lot to learn, and this time the lessons could be deadly. Her search for answers takes her and her best friends Raven and Jay as far afield as an abandoned ranch in Arizona and as close to home as a sketchy plant collector’s conservatory and a musty old museum where shadows lurk around every display case. At the heart of it all is a crime that touches her own adopted North Woods: thieves dig up fragile lady’s slippers, peel bark from birches, strip moss off trees, cut down entire forests of saplings to sell for home décor. But Francie is up against no ordinary plant theft. One ominous clue after another reveal that she possesses something so rare and so valuable that some people are willing to do anything to get it. When Francie’s investigation leads her into the treacherously cold and snowy North Woods, she finds out  that she too is being pursued.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, by Haruki Murakami 

Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school. By chance all of their names contained a colour. The two boys were called Akamatsu, meaning ‘red pine’, and Oumi, ‘blue sea’, while the girls’ names were Shirane, ‘white root’, and Kurono, ‘black field’. Tazaki was the only last name with no colour in it.

One day Tsukuru Tazaki’s friends announced that they didn’t want to see him, or talk to him, ever again.

Since that day Tsukuru has been floating through life, unable to form intimate connections with anyone. But then he meets Sara, who tells him that the time has come to find out what happened all those years ago.

The Mystery of the Blue Train, by Agatha Christie

When the luxurious Blue Train arrives at Nice, a guard attempts to wake serene Ruth Kettering from her slumbers. But she will never wake again—for a heavy blow has killed her, disfiguring her features almost beyond recognition. What is more, her precious rubies are missing.

The prime suspect is Ruth’s estranged husband, Derek. Yet Hercule Poirot is not convinced, so he stages an eerie reenactment of the journey, complete with the murderer on board. . . .

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!