Episode 912: A book featuring a party

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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, though not without some challenges along the way! Let’s read books featuring a party. Grab a nice outfit, and let’s get started! 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’s beverages come from the website A Couple Cooks, from the article 15 Party Drinks for a Crowd. “These party drinks are easy to whip up for a crowd! They’re are fun and festive, served in pitchers, punch bowls, or from a blender.”

Easy Party Punch

  • Cranberry 100% juice blend: This blend of juices is available at most grocery stores, and typically blends grape, apple, and pear juice with cranberry juice. Make sure to look for “100% juice” or “no sugar added” on the label.
  • Or, 100% pomegranate juice: Pomegranate juice is another great option: it’s sweeter than cranberry juice so you’ll have a sweeter end result.
  • Pineapple juice: Adds just the right tropical flair! Pineapple is great for punch recipes.
  • Ginger ale: Ginger ale adds just the right carbonation! It’s sweeter than ginger beer, which would also work but results in a spicier ginger flavor.

Want to make an alcoholic party punch? Rum works best here, though bourbon is another good option. Here are a few methods for making this drink alcoholic or customizable:

  • Add the rum to the punch bowl. Add 1 750 ml bottle rum directly to the punch bowl.
  • Spike the drinks after ladling out. This is great for if you’re serving a crowd with kids and adults! Simply ladle out about 1 cup rum and spike with about 2 ounces rum.

The Chi Chi drink is a spin on the Piña Colada with vodka that’s just as tasty as the classic!

The Chi Chi was invented by Donn Beach at his Hollywood restaurant called Don the Beachcomber, sometime after the original caught on. (Donn was also inventor of the Zombie and other Tiki cocktails). It was first made with macadamia nut liqueur and called the Macadamia Nut Chi Chi, but over time the fancy liqueur was dropped in favor of this simpler version. The ingredients for the Chi Chi drink are:

  • Frozen pineapple
  • Ice
  • Vodka
  • Cream of coconut
  • Pineapple juice

All you’ve got to do? Throw it all in a blender and blend it up! The flavor comes out smooth and tropical: just sweet enough and balanced between pineapple and coconut.The beachy Chi Chi drink is often served with a drink umbrella, just like a Piña Colada. Here are a few things you can use for the garnish:

  • Cocktail cherry: everything is better with a cherry on top!
  • Pineapple slice or ring: You can even use a chunk of frozen pineapple
  • Drink umbrella: Go fancy and add a drink umbrella!

Genre Discussion:

Books about parties should be fun! Maybe some drinking, maybe some dancing, maybe some good conversation. But this is fiction, and we wouldn’t have a story if everything went well, and everyone was happy. So in this genre, the surface may be pretty and may promise fun for all – but know that there will be some drama, some chaos, and some general mayhem in some of these journeys to the party. Not everyone will be alive at the end, but it will all be worth talking about. And, gossip for days afterward is the sign of a good party anyway.

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! 

Castle Hangnail, by Ursula Vernon

When Molly shows up on Castle Hangnail’s doorstep to fill the vacancy for a wicked witch, the castle’s minions are understandably dubious. After all, she is 12 years old, barely five feet tall, and quite polite. (The minions are used to tall, demanding evil sorceresses with razor-sharp cheekbones.) But the castle desperately needs a master or else the Board of Magic will decommission it, leaving all the minions without the home they love. So when Molly assures them that she is quite wicked indeed (so wicked! Really wicked!) and begins completing the tasks required by the Board of Magic for approval, everyone feels hopeful. Unfortunately it turns out that Molly has quite a few secrets, including the biggest one of all: that she isn’t who she says she is.

Olive’s Pirate Party, by Roberta Baker

Olive Elizabeth Julia Jerome worries that having her seventh-birthday pirate party at her Aunt Tiffany’s house will be a disappointment, in a spirited story that celebrates kids’ special relationships with elderly relatives.

Real Life, by Brandon Taylor

Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends—some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But over the course of a late-summer weekend, a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with an ostensibly straight, white classmate, conspire to fracture his defenses while exposing long-hidden currents of hostility and desire within their community. 

The Wedding Party (The Wedding Date #3) by Jasmine Guillory

Maddie and Theo have two things in common:

1. Alexa is their best friend

2. They hate each other

After an “oops, we made a mistake” night together, neither one can stop thinking about the other. With Alexa’s wedding rapidly approaching, Maddie and Theo both share bridal party responsibilities that require more interaction with each other than they’re comfortable with. Underneath the sharp barbs they toss at each other is a simmering attraction that won’t fade. It builds until they find themselves sneaking off together to release some tension when Alexa isn’t looking, agreeing they would end it once the wedding is over. When it’s suddenly pushed up and they only have a few months left of secret rendezvouses, they find themselves regretting that the end is near. Two people this different can’t possibly have a connection other than the purely physical, right?

But as with any engagement with a nemesis, there are unspoken rules that must be abided by. First and foremost, don’t fall in love.

Xander’s Panda Party, by Linda Sue Park

Xander Panda wants to throw a party, but a panda party would have only one guest—himself. So, he decides to invite all the bears. But Koala protests. She’s not a bear—she’s a marsupial! Does that mean she can’t come? Xander rethinks his decision to invite only bears, and “Calling all bears” evolves into “Calling all creatures.” The Newbery Medal author Linda Sue Park introduces animal taxonomy in a wonderfully engaging way, and the celebrated artist Matt Phelan’s charming ink and watercolor paintings are the icing on the cake.     

The Rules of Attraction, by Bret Easton Ellis

Set at a small, affluent liberal-arts college in New England at the height of the Reagan 80s, The Rules of Attraction is a startlingly funny, kaleidoscopic novel about three students with no plans for the future–or even the present–who become entangled in a curious romantic triangle. Bret Easton Ellis trains his incisive gaze on the kids at self-consciously bohemian Camden College and treats their sexual posturings and agonies with a mixture of acrid hilarity and compassion while exposing the moral vacuum at the center of their lives.

Lauren changes boyfriends every time she changes majors and still pines for Victor who split for Europe months ago and she might or might not be writing anonymous love letter to ambivalent, hard-drinking Sean, a hopeless romantic who only has eyes for Lauren, even if he ends up in bed with half the campus, and Paul, Lauren’s ex, forthrightly bisexual and whose passion masks a shrewd pragmatism. They waste time getting wasted, race from Thirsty Thursday Happy Hours to Dressed To Get Screwed parties to drinks at The Edge of the World or The Graveyard. The Rules of Attraction is a poignant, hilarious take on the death of romance.

A Separation, by Katie Kitamura

this is her story. About the end of her marriage. About what happened when Christopher went missing and she went to find him. These are her secrets, this is what happened…

A young woman has agreed with her faithless husband: it’s time for them to separate. For the moment it’s a private matter, a secret between the two of them. As she begins her new life, she gets word that Christopher has gone missing in a remote region in the rugged south of Greece; she reluctantly agrees to go look for him, still keeping their split to herself. In her heart, she’s not even sure if she wants to find him. As her search comes to a shocking breaking point, she discovers she understands less than she thought she did about her relationship and the man she used to love. 

A searing, suspenseful story of intimacy and infidelity, A Separation lays bare what divides us from the inner lives of others. With exquisitely cool precision, Katie Kitamura propels us into the experience of a woman on edge, with a fiercely mesmerizing story to tell.

    [small dinner event with the wife and her husband’s mistress]

The After Party, by Anton DiSclafani

Joan Fortier is the epitome of Texas glamour and the center of the 1950s Houston social scene. Tall, blonde, beautiful, and strong, she dominates the room and the gossip columns. Every man wants her; every woman wants to be her. Devoted to Joan since childhood, Cece Buchanan is either her chaperone or her partner in crime, depending on whom you ask. But when Joan’s radical behavior escalates the summer they are twenty-five, Cece considers it her responsibility to bring her back to the fold, ultimately forcing one provocative choice to appear the only one there is. 

A thrilling glimpse into the sphere of the rich and beautiful at a memorable moment in history, The After Party unfurls a story of friendship as obsessive, euphoric, consuming, and complicated as any romance.

If You Give a Pig a Party, by Laura Numeroff 

If you give a pig a party,she’s going to ask for some balloons. When you give her the balloons, she’ll want to decorate the house. When she’s finished, she’ll put on her favorite dress. Then she’ll call all her friends — Mouse, Moose, and more. The little pig from If You Give a Pig a Pancake is back, and this time she wants to throw a great big party! Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond have created another winning story for this beloved character in the tradition of the best-selling If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

The Hula Hoopin’ Queen, by Thelma Lynne Godin

Kameeka is confident that today she will finally beat her rival, Jamara, and become the Hula-Hoopin’ Queen of 139th Street. But then Mama reminds her that today is their neighbor Miz Adeline’s birthday, and Kameeka has a ton of chores to do to get ready for the party they are hosting.

Kameeka’s disappointed to be stuck at home and can only think about the hoopin’ competition. Distracted, Kameeka accidentally ruins Miz Adeline’s birthday cake, and has to confess to her that there won’t be a cake for her special day. But then Miz Adeline’s confesses something too: she’s also got the itch-the hula-hoopin’ itch! Her fingers start snappin’. Her hips start swingin’. Soon everyone’s hips are swinging as the party spills out onto the street. The whole neighborhood’s got the itch-the hula-hoopin’ itch!

A spunky African American girl has a hula-hooping competition with her friends in Harlem, and soon everyone in the neighborhood-young and old alike-joins in on the fun. With vibrant illustrations by Vanessa Brantley-Newton, The Hula-Hoopin’ Queen is a charming celebration of family and community ties. Set in Harlem, this intergenerational story shows the importance of staying young at heart.

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!