Episode 907: A book set during a holiday

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Welcome to Reading With Libraries!

Thank you for joining us again on 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 looking at the prompt from the 2022 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 will be a fun one, because it’s always good to have opportunities to celebrate!  And of course the best way to celebrate is with cool people around. So we invited the coolest person we know: Ariel Kirst, our official Podcast Correspondent, from the Great River Regional Library System!

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 we are celebrating holidays, and tomorrow – October 21 – is Global Champagne Day, so today we are going to celebrate with some champagne beverages! You can find all these recipes on the Delish website.

Lemosas

Ingredients

For the syrup                

1 c. sugar

1 c. water

2 c. blueberries

Zest of 1 lemon

For the mimosas                

2 c. lemonade

1 bottle champagne (or prosecco)

Fresh blueberries, for garnish

Directions           

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, combine sugar and water and stir until sugar has dissolved. Add blueberries and lemon zest and bring mixture to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer mixture until blueberries have burst, about 5 minutes.

Remove from heat and let cool 10 minutes, then strain mixture into a clean jar. Let cool completely.

Pour about a tablespoon of blueberry syrup into the bottom of champagne flutes, then pour over 1/4 cup lemonade. Top off each flute with champagne.

Strawberry Shortcake Mimosas

Ingredients

10 strawberries

1/2 c. finely crushed Nilla wafers

2/3 c. strawberry ice cream

10 oz.vanilla vodka

1 bottle Champagne or Prosecco

Whipped cream                       

Directions   

Run a sliced strawberry around the rim of Champagne flutes. Dip each rim in Nilla crumbs.

Into each flute, drop 1 tablespoon strawberry ice cream, then add 1 ounce vodka and top with Prosecco.

Top with whipped cream, a sprinkle of Nilla crumbs, and a strawberry for garnish. Serve.

Mimosa Margaritas

Ingredients

2 c. orange juice

1/2 c. tequila

 1/4 c. lime juice

Lime wedge, for rimming glasses

Coarse salt, for rimming glasses

1 bottle champagne or prosecco

Orange and lime slices for serving

Directions       

In a pitcher, combine orange juice, tequila, and lime juice and stir to combine.

Rim glass rims with lime and dip in salt. Pour in orange juice mixture and top off with champagne.

Add sliced oranges and limes to glasses and serve.

Genre Discussion:

We are in favor of holidays, and celebration, and taking some time out of your regular schedule to honor and enjoy yourself. It’s been a tough few years with the pandemic and assorted other issues in society. It is always good to take a little time away from all of that, to do nothing more than to enjoy yourself. And if you want to celebrate all the time, we will be sharing an assortment of holiday books so you can take a break any time and celebrate with your books! It’s okay to take some time today to enjoy a holiday, so choose one and choose a book to get you there.

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! 

Every Day Is a Holiday, by George Mahood

George Mahood had a nice, easy, comfortable life. He had a job, a house, a wife and kids. But something was missing. He was stuck in a routine of working, changing nappies and cleaning up cat sick. He felt like he was missing out on a lot of what the world had to offer.

He then discovered that it was Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day. The day after that was National Curmudgeon Day, and the day after that was Inane Answering Machine Message Day. In fact, the calendar is FULL of these quirky, weird and wonderful events. He realised that somebody somewhere had created these holidays, believing that they were important enough to warrant their own official day. Surely he should therefore be more appreciative of their existence? So he decided to try and celebrate them all. As you do. He hoped that at the end of the challenge he would be transformed into a happier, more intelligent and more content person.

Follow George on his hilarious, life changing adventure as he tries to balance his normal life with a wealth of new experiences, people, facts and ridiculous situations. It’s a rip-roaring, life-affirming, roller-coaster of a ride, where every day is a holiday.

Eat the Year: 366 Fun and Fabulous Food Holidays to Celebrate Every Day, by Steff Deschenes

Everyone loves food.

But did you know that every day is a national food or drink holiday? It’s true! There’s National Bloody Mary Day, National Cheese Lover’s Day, and even National Blueberry Pancake Day — just to name a few.

Based on the popular blog Almanac of Eats, Eat the Year is a tribute to food-lovers everywhere that introduces a national food or drink holiday for every day of the year. From National Martini Day to National Chip and Dip Day, this book includes tasty recipes, food history, and a variety of food holidays that are as diverse as they are delicious!

Halloween

The Bakeshop at Pumpkin and Spice (Moonbright, Maine), by Donna Kauffman, Kate Angell, and Allyson Charles 

Every autumn, Moonbright, Maine, is the picture of charm with its piles of crisp leaves, flickering jack-o’-lanterns … and a touch of the sweetest kind of enchantment.

Witches, goblins, the occasional ghost—they’re all sure to be spotted at the annual Halloween parade, where adults and children alike dress in costume to celebrate Moonbright’s favorite holiday. And no place has more seasonal spirit than Bellaluna’s Bakeshop, a family business steeped in traditional recipes, welcoming warmth—and, legend has it, truly spellbinding, heart-melting treats …

Between good-natured Halloween tricks, frothy pumpkin lattes, and some very special baked goods, for three Moonbright residents looking for love—whether they know it or not—the spookiest thing will be how magical romance can suddenly be …

Veterans Day Nov 11

Americas White Table, by Margot Theis Raven

The White Table is set in many mess halls as a symbol for and remembrance to service members fallen, missing, or held captive in the line of duty. Solitary and solemn, it is the table where no one will ever sit. As a special gift to her Uncle John, Katie and her sisters are asked to help set the white table for dinner. As their mother explains the significance of each item placed on the table Katie comes to understand and appreciate the depth of sacrifice that her uncle, and each member of the Armed Forces and their families, may be called to give. It was just a little white table… but it felt as big as America when we helped Mama put each item on it and she told us why it was so important. “We use a Small Table, girls,” she explained first, “to show one soldier’s lonely battle against many. We cover it with a White Cloth to honor a soldier’s pure heart when he answers his country’s call to duty.” “We place a Lemon Slice and Grains of Salt on a plate to show a captive soldier’s bitter fate and the tears of families waiting for loved ones to return,” she continued.“We push an Empty Chair to the table for the missing soldiers who are not here…”  

Turtle Adoption Day Nov 27

Endangered Species (Anna Pigeon #5), by Nevada Barr

In the midst of a dangerously dry season, national park ranger Anna Pigeon has been posted to Cumberland Island off the Georgia coast for a monotonous, twenty-one day fire watch. But her boredom is short-lived, for this remote and marshy place is breeding ground for more than just the imperiled Loggerhead turtle; it also spawns eccentricity and secrets, greed, suspicion. . .and murder.A small plane crashes into the palmetto thickets nearby. Anna and her crew arrive in time to control the blaze, but too late to save the pilot and his passenger, Cumberland’s sole law enforcement ranger. When the cause of the “accident” is determined to be sabotage, Anna becomes entangled in an investigation that threatens to upset the very delicate balance of this fragile ecological preserve. For she is precariously close to exposing dark, clandestine crimes both old and new that someone has worked very diligently to conceal. . .and which make Anna Pigeon the most endangered creature on the island.

Winter Solstice 

Black Sun (Book 1 of 2: Between Earth And Sky ), by Rebecca Roanhorse

A god will return

When the earth and sky converge

Under the black sun

In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial even proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.

Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.

Crafted with unforgettable characters, Rebecca Roanhorse has created a “brilliant world that shows the full panoply of human grace and depravity” (Ken Liu, award-winning author of The Grace of Kings). This epic adventure explores the decadence of power amidst the weight of history and the struggle of individuals swimming against the confines of society and their broken pasts in this “absolutely tremendous” (S.A. Chakraborty, nationally bestselling author of The City of Brass) and most original series debut of the decade.

Christmas

In a Holidaze, by Christina Lauren

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…but not for Maelyn Jones. She’s living with her parents, hates her going-nowhere job, and has just made a romantic error of epic proportions.

But perhaps worst of all, this is the last Christmas Mae will be at her favorite place in the world—the snowy Utah cabin where she and her family have spent every holiday since she was born, along with two other beloved families. Mentally melting down as she drives away from the cabin for the final time, Mae throws out what she thinks is a simple plea to the universe: Please. Show me what will make me happy.

The next thing she knows, tires screech and metal collides, everything goes black. But when Mae gasps awake…she’s on an airplane bound for Utah, where she begins the same holiday all over again. With one hilarious disaster after another sending her back to the plane, Mae must figure out how to break free of the strange time loop—and finally get her true love under the mistletoe.

New Year’s Eve

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, by Kathleen Rooney

In my reckless and undiscouraged youth,” Lillian Boxfish writes, “I worked in a walnut-paneled office thirteen floors above West Thirty-Fifth Street…”

She took 1930s New York by storm, working her way up writing copy for R.H. Macy’s to become the highest paid advertising woman in the country. It was a job that, she says, “in some ways saved my life, and in other ways ruined it.”

Now it’s the last night of 1984 and Lillian, 85 years old but just as sharp and savvy as ever, is on her way to a party. It’s chilly enough out for her mink coat and Manhattan is grittier now―her son keeps warning her about a subway vigilante on the prowl―but the quick-tongued poetess has never been one to scare easily. On a walk that takes her over 10 miles around the city, she meets bartenders, bodega clerks, security guards, criminals, children, parents, and parents-to-be, while reviewing a life of excitement and adversity, passion and heartbreak, illuminating all the ways New York has changed―and has not.

Lillian figures she might as well take her time. For now, after all, the night is still young.

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!