Episode 602: Beach Reads

episode 602: Beach reads

Hi everyone! Welcome back to your book group podcast, Reading With Libraries! We are here to talk about books, to enjoy some beverages, and to have this time together. Thanks for joining us!

It’s hard to be an expert on ALL of the great books out there! So we pick a new genre each week to chat about and hopefully provide you with some insight into what may be an unfamiliar area for you!

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, and we are here to support all of our 300 member libraries. They all like books, we like to share books with our patrons, and we know you like books too. So let’s jump in here and discuss some books in today’s genre!

And our Guest Host is new to this podcast, though she has been with us on one of our other podcasts. Stephanie Todd works at the St Cloud Technical and Community College library. Welcome to the book group!

Beverages:

Each week we like to connect the theme of our books with our beverages, and we each came prepared with our own drink to enjoy while we talk about our books. You are an important part of this book group, so if you don’t have a beverage go ahead and get one now. Each of our beverages will have a recipe or a link on our episode page, so you can try them yourself!

This week’s beverages are going to be pretty familiar to you, so enjoy them along with us.

Pina Colada

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cup ice
  • 1/2 cup diced pineapple, frozen
  • 2 ounces pineapple juice
  • 2 ounces Coco Lopez coconut cream
  • 1 1/2 ounces white rum
  • 1 ounce dark rum
  • Pineapple slices

Put the ice, frozen pineapple, juice, coconut cream, and the white and dark rums into a blender. Blend until smooth and frosty. Pour the drink into 2 glasses and garnish the rim with pineapple slices.

Mai Tai

  • 1 (1.5 fluid ounce) jigger spiced rum
  • ½ (1.5 fluid ounce) jigger coconut-flavored rum
  • 1 teaspoon grenadine syrup
  • 3 fluid ounces pineapple juice
  • 2 fluid ounces orange juice
  • 1 cup ice cubes

In a cocktail mixer full of ice, combine the spiced rum, coconut rum, grenadine, pineapple juice and orange juice. Shake vigorously and strain into glass full of ice.

Tequila Sunrise

  • 1 1/2 ounces tequila
  • 3/4 cup orange juice 
  • 3/4 ounce grenadine syrup 
  • Orange slice, for garnish 
  • High-quality maraschino cherry, such as Luxardo, for garnish 

In a highball glass filled with ice, pour in the tequila and orange juice. Slowly pour the grenadine into the glass over the back of a spoon or by drizzling it down the side of the glass, allowing it to settle at the bottom. Garnish with an orange slice and maraschino cherry.

Genre Discussion:

This week we are discussing the genre of Beach Reads!

So, what is a beach read anyway? Are they only frivolous, and only for women? No and no!

A beach read is anything that is fun, anything that you are enjoying, anything that you would throw into a bag to take to the beach with you. It might be something that comes out in the summer, or just something that makes you think about summer.  It can be goofy fiction, it can be scary horror, it can be a book analyzing the mitochondria of algae. It only matters that it is something that you want to read, and something you have been looking forward to reading. 

The website Electric Lit asked several authors what they thought would constitute a beach read, and their answers were pretty much all over the place. Here are a few:

  • Edan Lepucki: “For publishers “beach read” is a quick way of saying, “You’re going on vacation so here is a novel that will offer you what you most want from vacation: pleasure.””
  • Courtney Maum “It connotes something delightful and relatively risk-free, but that doesn’t mean that it is “easy.” Let’s do away with this word, “easy,” and try instead “a gracious read.””
  • Alana Massey “The heat of the sun and the rhythm of waves is conducive to letting your guard down, making you receptive to new ideas presented in nonfiction or self-help books or inclined to empathy for characters you might otherwise despise. You should take a beach read’s message home with you, like a tan and sea-salted wavy hair. “
  • Gabe Habash “All of which is to say that I think a “beach read,” if it means anything, is a book that you really want to read that you now have the time and mental energy to read.”

It’s really cold here right now, and we have months of cold weather ahead of us still. So grabbing a beach read right now might be the best thing you can do for yourself!

Here are a few additional resources for you, to help you find the best beach books for yourself or for your patrons:

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!

You can click on any of these links to go to Amazon.com for more information about the books we shared this week. If you buy anything while you are there, Amazon will give us a small percent of their profits from your purchase. Thanks in advance for helping to support the mission of CMLE – we appreciate it!

Conclusion:

Thank you so much for joining us on Reading With Libraries!

Join us next Thursday with another genre, more guest hosts for our book group, and 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!

Bring your book ideas, bring your beverages, and join us back here on Thursday!