Episode 415: Minnesota

Welcome, everyone, to our final episode of Season Four of Reading With Libraries! It has been so great to read with you for these fifteen weeks – we just can’t bear for our book fun to end. So while we are on hiatus you will get a Book Bite each week. This is a quickie five-minute sharing of a book by one of our Guests. We have been producing these for a while now, so you can browse our entire archive on our website.

This week we are discussing a favorite topic: Minnesota books! We will look at book set in Minnesota, and books by Minnesota authors. This is always our season finale topic, because we know there are 10,000 lakes here and at least as many good stories!

Who is joining us today? We are welcoming a new Guest Host to be our Minnesota book expert: Wendy Sykes, from the Great River Public Library system!

Beverages

We have guests, we have our genre. We just need our beverages. Fortunately, we all came prepared with something to sip while we talk about our books. Each week we like to connect the theme of our books with our beverages. Obviously, feel free to sip along with us with any beverage that is right for you. Just join us in celebrating books, and discussing books!

This week we are admiring a very traditional Minnesota beverage: local beers. You can admire the entire range of beer choices at the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild website (linked on our show notes!)

From the newest brewery in St Cloud – Pantown Brewing Company, named after our sadly long-gone Pan Motor Car Company: 1917 American IPA ​

  • Named from the year the Pan Motor Company was founded. This beer is made with light malts and American hops, the light malts let the generous amount of American hops shine through so you can taste the juicy, fruity hops. Near the end of fermentation a heaping helping of more American hops is added for dry hopping giving the beer the classic aroma that is associated with American IPAs. If you’re an IPA lover, you’re sure to love this brew.

From the Fair State Brewing Cooperative:

  • We started a brewery because we love great beer. We made it a cooperative because we believe that when people come together, amazing things can happen. We share stories, come up with new ideas, and start to see the world a little differently. At Fair State Co-op, we’re brewing community.
  • Double BBRR Fruited Sour If we’ve learned anything from craft beer, it’s that more is more. In recognition of this truth, this bottle contains a fully unreasonable amount of Blueberries, Blackberries, and Raspberries, along with some sour beer.

From The Lab Taproom

  • The Lab offers a range of beverage choices including beer, hard soda and seltzers, as well as non-alcoholic drinks such as tea, sparkling water, protein and energy drinks, children’s beverages and more.
  • The Lab’s self-serve pouring wall allows guests to select and pour their own beer and the amount they desire. On-staff “walltenders” will guide guests and help educate consumers on the on-tap beverages that will include beer, hard sodas, kombuchas and more.
  • Red IPA 0101 (Nitro) IPA – Red
  • 6% ABV
  • Pours redish with a slight haze. Malt and slight pine aroma. Nitrogen softens the sharpness, still bitter with a bit more malt than a typical IPA.

Genre Suggestions

We have a huge diversity of cultures and languages in Minnesota. There are a lot of Scandinavian descendants, as well as German descendants. And we have several Indian tribes across the state including Chippewa, Ojibwe, Lower Sioux, and Ojibwa or Anishinaabe. We have many groups of cultures who have moved here in the last fifty years, including strong populations of Vietnamese, Hmong, and Somali people.

We live in big cities, and small rural areas. We have deciduous trees and forests filled with pine trees. We root for the Vikings and the Wild. We have a pretty impressive great lake: Lake Superior; and to back that up we are known as the Land of 10,000 Lakes – but that doesn’t cover our whole range of lakes. We have waterfalls and historic sites. In short, we are a land filled with a diverse set of people and natural settings – and the literature of Minnesota is likewise exciting and diverse, and is filled with different kinds of settings, people, and genres!

We love Minnesota books, and collect all kinds of books across our website.  Browse around to find any number of books by our own Minnesota authors, and set in our lovely state!

We also have a collection of links to all kinds of other Minnesota books. Check our website for details.

Our Book Discussion

Now we are a little more familiar with this week’s genre, and we have enjoyed some of our special beverages, let’s get to the book discussion!

Murder Book, by Frank F. Weber @FrankWebAuthor

What I Leave Behind, by Alison McGhee @alisonmcghee

Sadiq and the Desert Star, by Siman Nuurali

The Life We Bury, by Allen Eskens @aeskens

Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories, by Kelly Barnhill @kellybarnhill

Ice Cold Heart, by P.J. Tracy

The Lager Queen of Minnesota, by J. Ryan Stradal @jryanstradal

Conclusion

Thank you so much for joining us for this discussion! This is our final show of Season Four – but we aren’t leaving you! There will be a quick Book Bite in your feed every Tuesday while we are gone.

And, Season Six of our library skills podcast, Linking Our Libraries, starts next Thursday. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app, or just listen on our website – as you can with all our podcasts.

We look forward to talking about books with you again soon!