Episode 814 A book set in the 1980s

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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. We are having fun with pop culture references in our genres, and looking at some different sources for book ideas. This week we are looking at the prompt from the 2022 PopSugar reading challenge: A book set in the 1980s

Beverages:

This is, of course, a book group. And every book group needs to have beverages, so you really have something tasty to fully enjoy your reading! 

The 80s were a fun time for beverages – everything very sugary, very alcoholic, or both – and probably neon colored. If it had alcohol, it probably also had a suggestive name. You may remember such regular classics as Jolt Cola, New Coke, taking the Pepsi Challenge, the Ghostbusters-themed Ecto Cooler, and of course: Bartles & Jaymes Wine Coolers. We’re going to include an honorary beverage as part of the 80s: Crystal Pepsi was released in 1992, but had an 80s vibe. Pepsi is celebrating this year by reissuing it for the 30th anniversary. 

We are enjoying cocktails from the Liquor.com website, where you can find all these recipes and so many more!

B-52

“The drink’s origin is not completely clear, but rather than being named for the 1950s-built B-52 bomber, it is believed to have originated by a bartender and fan of the iconic band The B-52s.”

Ingredients

  • 1/3 ounce coffee liqueur
  • 1/3 ounce Baileys Irish cream liqueur
  • 1/3 ounce Grand Marnier liqueur

Steps

  1. Pour the coffee liqueur into a shot glass.
  2. Slowly layer the Baileys on top of the coffee liqueur and the Grand Marnier on top of the Baileys.

Flaming Dr. Pepper

“Like many popular cocktails, the Flaming Dr. Pepper shot has competing origin stories. The Ptarmigan Club in Bryan, Texas (located near Texas A&M University), and the Gold Mine Saloon in New Orleans both claim to have invented it in the 1980s. It’s difficult to imagine such a unique drink appearing around the same time, in two different places, but so it goes sometimes with cocktail lore.”

Ingredients

  • 8 ounces beer
  • 3/4 ounce amaretto
  • 1/4 ounce overproof rum

Steps

  1. Fill a pint glass halfway with beer.
  2. Add the amaretto to a shot glass and top with the rum.
  3. Set the rum on fire and very carefully drop the shot glass into the beer.

Genre Discussion:

The 1980s were an exciting time: lots of flamboyance, lots of bright colors. We were deep in the Cold War, convinced we were going to have nuclear war at any moment. The movies The Day After, War Games, and Red Dawn really drove that message home. Fashion included big shoulders, big patterns, neon colors, and Swatch watches. If you watch the movie Heathers, you’ve got the idea. History.com reminds us “Often remembered for its materialism and consumerism, the decade also saw the rise of the “yuppie,” an explosion of blockbuster movies and the emergence of cable networks like MTV, which introduced the music video and launched the careers of many iconic artists.” VCRs were new, computers were just moving into people’s houses, and cable TV was really taking off.  All of this new and exciting stuff lends itself to some really fun books set during this time! Grab your cassettes and Walkman, let’s go to the mall and check out B. Dalton books and Walden bookstore, where they keep all the best 1980s books.

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! 

Orkney Twilight (Sam Coyle Trilogy Book 1), by Clare Carson

All families have secrets.

But some have more secrets than others.

Jim is a brilliant raconteur whose stories get taller with each glass of whisky. His daughter Sam thinks it’s time she found out the truth about her dad.

On holiday in Orkney, Sam spies on Jim as he travels across the island. What has he hidden in the abandoned watchtower? Who is he meeting in the stone circle at dusk? And why is he suddenly obsessed with Norse myths?

As Sam is drawn into Jim’s shadowy world, she begins to realise that pursuing the truth is not as simple as it seems…

Set against the harsh beauty of the remote Scottish islands of Orkney, inspired by the author’s own childhood, this is a gripping first novel from an astonishing new talent.

Malibu Rising, by Julia Whelan 

Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of 24 hours, the family drama that ensues will change their lives will change forever.

Malibu: August 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together, the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over – especially as the offspring of the legendary singer Mick Riva.

The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud – because it is long past time for him to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.

Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.

And Kit has a couple secrets of her own – including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.

By midnight, the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come rising to the surface.

Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them…and what they will leave behind.

Soulless Creatures, by Marceline Ghanime

You’re not supposed to fall in love with the damned.

Lucy doesn’t live a happy life. Between school, her loneliness, and her abusive father, it’s a struggle to keep her head above water.

It should’ve been a fresh start when Lucy moves to a new school. While it’s fresh, it’s far from normal – especially when Drake, a sinister yet irresistible guy, keeps getting in her way. Soon after, eerie deaths begin to occur around the town and no one can explain them. They aren’t regular murders and there is no evidence. Lucy begins to be suspicious of the red-haired boy at her new school.

Is Drake just a beautiful, vulnerable guy with captivating eyes and a horrible past? Or could he be something more? Could the burning animosity in his eyes be lethal?

My Best Friend’s Exorcism, by Grady Hendrix

A heartwarming story of friendship and demonic possession.

The year is 1988. High school sophomores Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since the fourth grade. But after an evening of skinny-dipping goes disastrously wrong, Gretchen begins to act…different. She’s moody. She’s irritable. And bizarre incidents keep happening whenever she’s nearby.

Abby’s investigation leads her to some startling discoveries – and by the time their story reaches its terrifying conclusion, the fate of Abby and Gretchen will be determined by a single question: Is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?

Like an unholy hybrid of Beaches and The Exorcist, My Best Friend’s Exorcism blends teen angst, adolescent drama, unspeakable horrors, and a mix of ’80s pop songs into a pulse-pounding supernatural thriller.

Bog Child, by Siobhan Dowd

The Prettiest Star, by Carter Sickels

Small-town Appalachia doesn’t have a lot going for it, but it’s where Brian is from, where his family is, and where he’s chosen to return to die.

At 18, Brian, like so many other promising young gay men, arrived in New York City without much more than a love for the freedom and release from his past that it promised. But within six short years, AIDS would claim his lover, his friends, and his future. With nothing left in New York but memories of death, Brian decides to write his mother a letter asking to come back to the place, and family, he was once so desperate to escape.

Set in 1986, a year after Rock Hudson’s death shifted the public consciousness of the epidemic and brought the news of AIDS into living rooms and kitchens across America, The Prettiest Star is part Dog Years by Mark Doty and part Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt. But it is also an urgent story now: It a novel about the politics and fragility of the body; it is a novel about sex and shame. And it is a novel that speaks to the question of what home and family means when we try to forge a life for ourselves in a world that can be harsh and unpredictable.

Screaming Divas, by Suzanne Kamata

As seen on MTV.comALA Rainbow List

At sixteen, Trudy Baxter is tired of her debutante mom, her deadbeat dad, and her standing reservation at the juvenile detention center. Changing her name to Trudy Sin, she cranks up her major chops as a singer and starts a band, gathering around other girls ill at ease in their own lives. Cassie Haywood, would-have-been beauty queen, was scarred in an accident in which her alcoholic mom was killed. But she can still sing and play her guitar, even though she seeks way too much relief from the pain in her body and her heart through drugs, and way too much relief from loneliness through casual sex. Still, it’s Cassie who hears former child prodigy Harumi Yokoyama playing in a punk band at a party, and enlists her, outraging Harumi’s overbearing first-generation Japanese parents. The fourth member is Esther Shealy, who joins as a drummer in order to be close to Cassie–the long-time object of her unrequited love–and Harumi, her estranged childhood friend. Together, they are Screaming Divas, and they’re quickly swept up as a local sensation. Then, just as they are about to achieve their rock-girl dreams, a tragedy strikes.

Flesh and Bone and Water, by Luiza Sauma                    

André is a listless Brazilian teenager and the son of a successful plastic surgeon who lives a life of wealth and privilege, shuttling between the hot sands of Ipanema beach and his family’s luxurious penthouse apartment. In 1985, when he is just 16, André’s mother is killed in a car accident. Clouded with grief, André, his younger brother, Thiago, and his father travel with their domestic help to Belem, a jungle city on the mouth of the Amazon, where the intense heat of the rainforest serves only to heighten their volatile emotions. After they arrive back in Rio, André’s father loses himself in his work while André spends his evenings in the family apartment with Luana, the beautiful daughter of the family’s maid.

Three decades later, and now a successful surgeon himself, André is a middle-aged father, living in London, and recently separated from his British wife. He drinks too much wine and is plagued by recurring dreams. One day he receives an unexpected letter from Luana, which begins to reveal the other side of their story, a story André has long repressed.

In deeply affecting prose, debut novelist Luiza Sauma transports listeners to a dramatic place where natural wonder and human desire collide. Cutting across race and class, time and place, from London to Rio to the dense humidity of the Amazon, Flesh and Bone and Water straddles two worlds with haunting meditations on race, sex, and power in a deftly plotted coming-of-age story about the nature of identity, the vicissitudes of memory, and how both can bend to protect us from the truth.

Tell the Wolves I’m Home, by 

1987. The only person who has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus is her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can be herself only in Finn’s company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June’s world is turned upside down.

But Finn’s death brings a surprise acquaintance into June’s life. At the funeral, June notices a strange man lingering just beyond the crowd. A few days later, she receives a package in the mail containing a beautiful teapot she recognizes from Finn’s apartment, and a note from Toby, the stranger, asking for an opportunity to meet. As the two begin to spend time together, June realizes she’s not the only one who misses Finn, and that this unexpected friend just might be the one she needs the most.

Tuesday Nights in 1980, by Molly Prentiss 

Welcome to SoHo at the onset of the eighties: a gritty, not-yet-gentrified playground for artists and writers looking to make it in the big city. Among them: James Bennett, a synesthetic art critic for the New York Times whose unlikely condition enables him to describe art in profound, magical ways, and Raul Engales, an exiled Argentinian painter running from his past and the Dirty War that has enveloped his country. As the two men ascend in the downtown arts scene, dual tragedies strike, and each is faced with a loss that acutely affects his relationship to life and to art. It is not until they are inadvertently brought together by Lucy Olliason—a small town beauty and Raul’s muse—and a young orphan boy sent mysteriously from Buenos Aires, that James and Raul are able to rediscover some semblance of what they’ve lost.

As inventive as Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From The Goon Squad and as sweeping as Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings, Tuesday Nights in 1980 boldly renders a complex moment when the meaning and nature of art is being all but upended, and New York City as a whole is reinventing itself. In risk-taking prose that is as powerful as it is playful, Molly Prentiss deftly explores the need for beauty, community, creation, and love in an ever-changing urban landscape.

Silver Sparrow, by Tayari Jones

Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, Silver Sparrow revolves around James Witherspoon’s two families – the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode when secrets are revealed and illusions shattered. As Jones explores the backstories of her rich yet flawed characters – the father, the two mothers, the grandmother, and the uncle – she also reveals the joy, as well as the destruction, they brought to one another’s lives. At the heart of it all are the two lives at stake, and like the best writers – think Toni Morrison with The Bluest Eye – Jones portrays the fragility of these young girls with raw authenticity as they seek love, demand attention, and try to imagine themselves as women, just not as their mothers.

Eleanor & Park, by Rainbow Rowell

Bono met his wife in high school, Park says.

So did Jerry Lee Lewis, Eleanor answers.

I’m not kidding, he says.

You should be, she says, we’re 16.

What about Romeo and Juliet?

Shallow, confused, then dead.

I love you, Park says.

Wherefore art thou, Eleanor answers.

I’m not kidding, he says.

You should be.

Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits – smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you’ll remember your own first love – and just how hard it pulled you under.

Conclusion:

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

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