Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, and it also has many interesting books. In this series, we are sharing some of the books we like from Minnesota, or Minnesota authors.

We are mapping our literary journey around Minnesota, so you can see all the interesting places where our books are set. Follow our progress on our Google Map, accessible by clicking that link or searching for the title CMLE Reads Across Minnesota!

This is a guest post from CMLE member Violet Fox. Want to write a book review for us? Let us know!

The Bitter Season, by Tami Hoag

Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, and it also has many interesting books. In this series, we are sharing some of the books we like from Minnesota, or Minnesota authors.

We are mapping our literary journey around Minnesota, so you can see all the interesting places where our books are set. Follow our progress on our Google Map, accessible by clicking that link or searching for the title CMLE Reads Across Minnesota!

It is always fun to read a book by a Minnesota author, that is set in Minnesota! This is the most recent book in the series set in Minneapolis, a crime drama series with the accompanying general ideas.

From Amazon: “As the bitter weather of late fall descends on Minneapolis, Detective Nikki Liska is restless, already bored with her new assignment to the cold case squad. She misses the rush of pulling an all-nighter and the sense of urgency of hunting a killer on the loose. Most of all she misses her old partner, Sam Kovac. Kovac is having an even harder time adjusting to Liska’s absence but is distracted from his troubles by an especially brutal double homicide: a prominent university professor and his wife, bludgeoned and hacked to death in their home with a ceremonial Japanese samurai sword. Liska’s case—the unsolved murder of a decorated sex crimes detective—is less of a distraction: Twenty-five years later, there is little hope for finding the killer who got away.

Meanwhile, Minneapolis resident Evi Burke has a life she only dreamed of as a kid in and out of foster care: a beautiful home, a loving family, a fulfilling job. But a danger from her past is stalking her idyllic present, bent on destroying the perfect life she was never meant to have.

As the trails of two crimes a quarter of a century apart twist and cross, Kovac and Liska race to find answers before a killer strikes again.”

Slider, by Pete Hautman

Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, and it also has many interesting books. In this series, we are sharing some of the books we like from Minnesota, or Minnesota authors.

We are mapping our literary journey around Minnesota, so you can see all the interesting places where our books are set. Follow our progress on our Google Map, accessible by clicking that link or searching for the title CMLE Reads Across Minnesota! (We added this one in the author’s home town of St. Louis Park.)

This sounds like such a good middle grade book! The overall story is fairly light: there is an eating contest, and David is primed and ready. But there are enough elements of the hard parts of a kid’s life that the story both really rings true, and gives David a chance to triumph over adversity – something good for everyone to aspire toward!

From Amazon:

“David can eat an entire sixteen-inch pepperoni pizza in four minutes and thirty-six seconds. Not bad. But he knows he can do better. In fact, he’ll have to do better: he’s going to compete in the Super Pigorino Bowl, the world’s greatest pizza-eating contest, and he has to win it, because he borrowed his mom’s credit card and accidentally spent $2,000 on it. So he really needs that prize money. Like, yesterday. As if training to be a competitive eater weren’t enough, he’s also got to keep an eye on his little brother, Mal (who, if the family believed in labels, would be labeled autistic, but they don’t, so they just label him Mal). And don’t even get started on the new weirdness going on between his two best friends, Cyn and HeyMan. Master talent Pete Hautman has cooked up a rich narrative shot through with equal parts humor and tenderness, and the result is a middle-grade novel too delicious to put down.”

Cleonardo, The Little Inventor, by Mary GrandPré

This week we look at a beautiful picture book! Minnesota is filled with books and stories of all sorts, and for all ages. (Yes, we are a pretty lucky state!!)

Try this book to enjoy a cute story about a father and daughter, who work together to create pretty excellent inventions!

From Amazon:

“Cleonardo’s father is an inventor. So was her grandfather, her great-grandfather, and all the great-greats before them. Cleo wants to be an inventor too. She tries to help her father in his workshop, but he never uses her great ideas. Can Cleo invent something big and important and perfect all by herself?

This imaginative story of a father and his daughter brings the magic of creativity to little inventors everywhere.”

Sugarhouse: Turning the Neighborhood Crack House into Our Home Sweet Home, by Matthew Batt

Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, and it also has many interesting books. In this series, we are sharing some of the books we like from Minnesota, or Minnesota authors.

We are mapping our literary journey around Minnesota, so you can see all the interesting places where our books are set. Follow our progress on our Google Map, accessible by clicking that link or searching for the title CMLE Reads Across Minnesota!

This week we look at a book not set in Minnesota, or that even mentions Minnesota. We do want to recognize all Minnesota authors, and Matthew Batt @MattCBatt is in St. Paul. And this is a fun book about home renovation! As a former Cheesehead myself, it was also nice to read about his visits home to Milwaukee.

As someone who also bought the neighborhood crack house, and spent time fixing things up (horrifying, terrible things), I really enjoyed reading this book! The overpowering smells, the always-weirdly-damp carpet – I fondly remember it all. He doesn’t mention having to clean cigarette burns from the bathtub, or scrubbing down the walls because they are too covered in cigarette smoke (or whatever) to paint. But I assume that happened to him and his wife just as it did with us – you can’t discuss everything in one book. Oh the fun of knowing you are unlikely to make anything worse with your DIY home improvement! It really does take the pressure off.

From Amazon:

“An improbably funny account of how the purchase and restoration of a disaster of a fixer-upper saves a young marriage

When a season of ludicrous loss tests the mettle of their marriage, Matthew Batt and his wife decide not to call it quits. They set their sights instead on the purchase of a dilapidated house in the Sugarhouse section of Salt Lake City. With no homesteading experience and a full-blown quarter-life crisis on their hands, these perpetual grad students/waiters/nonprofiteers decide to seek salvation through renovation, and do all they can to turn a former crack house into a home. Dizzy with despair, doubt, and the side effects of using the rough equivalent of napalm to detoxify their house, they enter into full-fledged adulthood with power tools in hand.

Heartfelt and joyous, Sugarhouse is the story of how one couple conquers adversity and creates an addition to their family, as well as their home.”