Episode 813: A book about found family

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Welcome to Reading With Libraries!

Thank you for joining us on the eighth season of our book group and Reader’s advisory podcast! 

Our organization is the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, and we work with all types of libraries. Schools, public, academic, history centers, and more! We are here to support you and to bring you new knowledge to inform your library work. 

This season we continue to explore a wide variety of book genres and topics so you can expand your reading horizons and share more information with your library community.
And we’re adding an additional element this season: many of our topics are coming from the 2022 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge. We link to their challenge on our shownotes page. 

Pop Sugar says the goal of the challenge is to “is just to have fun, diversify your reading, and accomplish whatever goals you have set for yourself. There are no “rules”!”
So we’re incorporating some of their prompts into this season’s podcast topics. If you are participating in their challenge – great! And if you just want to get some fresh book ideas to share with your patrons/students/community, fantastic! You are in the right place! 

This week we are looking at books about found family!

Beverages:

Each week we like to connect the theme of our books with our beverages! So today we have drink recipes made from just a few ingredients, maybe ones you have laying around the house already? …found ingredients, found family! We link to all the recipes on our shownotes page! And grab a beverage for yourself, so we can enjoy the full book group experience together.

Green Ghost

This tasty drink highlights the Chartreuse and will impress anyone who likes a pretty drink because unlike many pretty drinks, this one has flavor to match its beauty.

2 ounces gin

1/2 ounce Green Chartreuse

1/2 ounce fresh lime juice, from 1 lime

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add gin, Chartreuse, and lime juice. Shake until well chilled, about 15 seconds. Strain into cocktail glass and serve.

Gold Rush Cocktail

The cocktail blends bourbon, lemon juice, and honey syrup for a whiskey-laced spin on the Bee’s Knees. I like a high-proof bourbon for this: Old Grand Dad Bonded is a good choice.

Note: To make honey syrup, combine 1 cup water with 1 cup honey in a small saucepan and heat over medium heat, stirring constantly, until honey is dissolved. Cool before using. The syrup will keep in a sealed container in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.

2 ounces bourbon

3/4 ounce freshly squeezed juice from 1 lemon

3/4 ounce honey syrup

Combine all ingredients in an ice-filled shaker. Shake until well chilled, about 10 seconds. Strain into an ice-filled double old fashioned glass.

Genre Discussion:

This article from San Diego Writers gives us all the details on why the found family trope is so popular and to read: 

“Found Family is exactly what it sounds like: a group of (mostly) unrelated people form their own family based on shared experiences and understanding of each other rather than the blood ties that would dictate a biological family.

Once you start looking for it, this trope comes up all the time in TV shows, books, and graphic novels. Firefly (Joss Whedon’s TV space western), The Mysterious Benedict Society (Trenton Lee Stewart’s middle grade mystery), Six of Crows (Leigh Bardugo’s fantasy heist), and The Walking Dead (Robert Kirkman and Tony Mooore’s hit graphic novel and TV series) are all prime examples of Found Families.

From a character development perspective, Found Families give creators the opportunity to throw together a collection of wildly different people and explore their definitions of family and connection. Why have they created a chosen family over their family of origin? Is this character generally pretty trusting or are they more slow to warm? These questions pull for the juicy internal conflicts and growth that we all love to see. 


Characters and their relationships with each other are at the core of compelling stories. When you create a Found Family, you challenge yourself to discover all the different types of conflicts, bonding moments, and overall growth your character is capable of as they form connections to others.

Families are something that every audience can relate to, at least on a conceptual level. Whether you grew up in a traditional family setting or an unconventional one, everybody has feelings they attach to the idea of what family looks like. Positive, negative, complicated, present, absent, nonexistent, etc. For some, family is something to be cherished. For others, it’s something that can be a triggering topic or a reminder of past abuse. This trope reminds us that there is more to close connections than biological ties, and that it’s okay if your family is made up of people who you choose as opposed to the group you were born into. 

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. 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! 

Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone
A wildly successful innovator to rival Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, Vivian Liao is prone to radical thinking, quick decision-making, and reckless action. On the eve of her greatest achievement, she seeks to outrun people who are trying to steal her success. 

In the chilly darkness of a Boston server farm, she sets her ultimate plan into motion. A terrifying instant later, she is catapulted through space and time to a far future where she confronts a destiny stranger and more deadly than she could ever imagine. The end of time is ruled by an ancient, powerful Empress who blesses or blasts entire planets with a single thought. Rebellion is literally impossible to consider – until Vivian Liao arrives. Trapped between the Pride – a ravening horde of sentient machines – and a fanatical sect of warrior monks who call themselves the Mirrorfaith, Viv must rally a strange group of allies to confront the Empress and find a way back to the world and life she left behind.

Leviathan Wakes, by James S. A. Corey

Humanity has colonized the solar system – Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond – but the stars are still out of our reach.

Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for – and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.

Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to the Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.

Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations – and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the Universe.

Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft
The Tower of Babel is the greatest marvel in the world. Immense as a mountain, the ancient Tower holds unnumbered ringdoms, warring and peaceful, stacked one on the other like the layers of a cake. It is a world of geniuses and tyrants, of luxury and menace, of unusual animals and mysterious machines. Soon after arriving for his honeymoon at the Tower, the mild-mannered headmaster of a small village school, Thomas Senlin, gets separated from his wife, Marya, in the overwhelming swarm of tourists, residents, and miscreants.  Senlin is determined to find Marya, but to do so he’ll have to navigate madhouses, ballrooms, and burlesque theaters. He must survive betrayal, assassins, and the illusions of the Tower. But if he hopes to find his wife, he will have to do more than just endure. This quiet man of letters must become a man of action. 

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss

Mary Jekyll, alone and penniless following her parents’ death, is curious about the secrets of her father’s mysterious past. One clue in particular hints that Edward Hyde, her father’s former friend and a murderer, may be nearby, and there is a reward for information leading to his capture…a reward that would solve all of her immediate financial woes.

But her hunt leads her to Hyde’s daughter, Diana, a feral child left to be raised by nuns. With the assistance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Mary continues her search for the elusive Hyde, and soon befriends more women, all of whom have been created through terrifying experimentation: Beatrice Rappaccini, Catherin Moreau, and Justine Frankenstein.

When their investigations lead them to the discovery of a secret society of immoral and power-crazed scientists, the horrors of their past return. Now it is up to the monsters to finally triumph over the monstrous.

The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis
Westworld meets The Handmaid’s Tale in this stunning fantasy adventure from debut author Charlotte Nicole Davis. The country of Arketta calls them Good Luck Girls – they know their luck is anything but. Sold to a “welcome house” as children and branded with cursed markings. Trapped in a life they would never have chosen.

When Clementine accidentally murders a man, the girls risk a dangerous escape and harrowing journey to find freedom, justice, and revenge in a country that wants them to have none of those things. Pursued by Arketta’s most vicious and powerful forces, both human and inhuman, their only hope lies in a bedtime story passed from one Good Luck Girl to another, a story that only the youngest or most desperate would ever believe. It’s going to take more than luck for them all to survive. 

The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich

In this stunning and timely novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman’s relentless errors.

Louise Erdrich’s latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store’s most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls’ Day, but she simply won’t leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

The Sentence begins on All Souls’ Day 2019 and ends on All Souls’ Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley
For readers of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, an enchanting, bestselling novel that sweeps readers into a magical Victorian London inhabited by a clockwork octopus and a mysterious watchmaker who is not at all what he first appears. 1883. Thaniel Steepleton returns home to his tiny London apartment to find a gold pocket watch on his pillow. Six months later, the mysterious timepiece saves his life, drawing him away from a blast that destroys Scotland Yard. At last, he goes in search of its maker, Keita Mori, a kind, lonely immigrant from Japan. Although Mori seems harmless, a chain of unexplainable events soon suggests he must be hiding something. When Grace Carrow, an Oxford physicist, unwittingly interferes, Thaniel is torn between opposing loyalties. The Watchmaker of Filigree Street is a sweeping, atmospheric narrative that takes the reader on an unexpected journey through Victorian London, Japan as its civil war crumbles long-standing traditions, and beyond. Blending historical events with dazzling flights of fancy, it opens doors to a strange and magical past.

A Bad Day for Sunshine, by Darynda Jones 

Sheriff Sunshine Vicram finds her cup o’ joe more than half full when the small village of Del Sol, New Mexico, becomes the center of national attention for a kidnapper on the loose.

Del Sol, New Mexico is known for three things: its fry-an-egg-on-the-cement summers, strong cups of coffee―and, now, a nationwide manhunt? Del Sol native Sunshine Vicram has returned to town as the elected sheriff―thanks to her adorably meddlesome parents who nominated her―and she expects her biggest crime wave to involve an elderly flasher named Doug. But a teenage girl is missing, a kidnapper is on the loose, and all of this is reminding Sunshine why she left Del Sol in the first place. Add to that the trouble at her daughter’s new school, plus a kidnapped prized rooster named Puff Daddy, and, well, the forecast looks anything but sunny.

But even clouds have their silver linings. This one’s got Levi, Sunshine’s sexy, almost-old-flame, and a fiery-hot US Marshal. With temperatures rising everywhere she turns, Del Sol’s normally cool-minded sheriff is finding herself knee-deep in drama and danger. Can Sunshine face the call of duty―and find the kidnapper who’s terrorizing her beloved hometown―without falling head over high heels in love…or worse?

 

These Rebel Waves by Sarah Raasch
Adeluna is a soldier. Five years ago, she helped the magic-rich island of Grace Loray overthrow its oppressor, Agrid, a country ruled by religion.

But adjusting to postwar life has not been easy. When an Argridian delegate vanishes during peace talks with Grace Loray’s new Council, Argrid demands brutal justice—but Lu suspects something dangerous is at work. Devereux is a pirate. As one of the stream raiders who run rampant on Grace Loray, he scavenges the island’s magic plants and sells them on the black market. But after Argrid accuses raiders of the diplomat’s abduction, Vex becomes a target. An expert navigator, he agrees to help Lu find the Argridian—but the truth they uncover could be deadlier than any war. Benat is a heretic. The crown prince of Argrid, he harbors a secret obsession with Grace Loray’s forbidden magic. When Ben’s father, the king, gives him the shocking task of reversing Argrid’s fear of magic, Ben has to decide if one prince can change a devout country—or if he’s building his own pyre. As conspiracies arise, Lu, Vex, and Ben will have to decide who they really are . . . and what they are willing to become for peace.

Robert B. Parker’s Stone’s Throw, by Mike Lupica

The town of Paradise receives a tragic shock when the mayor is discovered dead, his body lying in a shallow grave on a property on the lake. It’s ostensibly suicide, but Jesse has his doubts…especially because the piece of land where the man was found is the subject of a contentious and dodgy land deal.

Two powerful moguls are fighting over the right to buy and develop the prime piece of real estate, and one of them has brought in a hired gun, an old adversary of Jesse’s: Wilson Cromartie, a.k.a. Crow. Meanwhile, the town council is debating if they want to sacrifice Paradise’s stately character for the economic boost of a glitzy new development. Tempers are running hot, and as the deaths begin to mount, it’s increasingly clear that the mayor may have standing in the wrong person’s way.

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!

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