by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian
Our Friends of the Litchfield Public Library group is always
looking for ways to help the library.
Recently they received a donation from Joe and Nancy Paddock of ten
copies of Nancy’s Minnesota Book Award-winning memoir. The Friends purchased a tote to put them in
and gifted the set to the library. Our
library system cataloged it as a book club kit, and it’s now available for
anyone in the system to borrow for use with their book club or other
group. You can find it by searching
“Book Club in a Bag: A Song at Twilight of Alzheimer’s and Love.”
You can find all of the book club kits in Pioneerland
Library System by searching “Book Club in a Bag” as a title. They really aren’t in bags; they come in
plastic tubs.
One of the newest book club kits is “Girl, Wash Your Face:
Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are So You Can Become Who You Were Meant
to Be” by Rachel Hollis. This was, and
continues to be, one of the most popular books of the past year. Litchfield Library has owned a print copy of
this book since last April, and it has yet to make it to the shelf; it has been
checked out to people on the waiting list this entire time. We also got an audiobook copy in November. The twelve-copy kit belongs to the Dawson
library, but you can request that it be sent here if you’d like to use it for
your book club or group of friends.
On Tuesday, March 5, Hutchinson author and historian Mary
Krugerud will be giving a presentation at the Litchfield Library about her new
book, “The Girl in Building C: The True Story of a Teenage Tuberculosis
Patient.” Join her in the meeting room
at 6:30 to learn about the history of tuberculosis, its treatment, and Minnesota
sanatoriums. Minnesota Historical Society
Press recently published this collection of Marilyn Barnes’ letters to her
family from the Ah-gwah-ching State Sanatorium in Walker, Minnesota in the
‘40s. Litchfield Library has a copy of
this book, but Dawson Library has a ten-copy book club kit available to order.
My adult book club is currently reading “The Underground
Railroad” by Colson Whitehead, using the twelve-copy book club kit from
Montevideo Library. This book won both
the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
It’s an imaginative take on the actual history of slaves escaping the
South. If you’d like to join us, you can
check out a copy at the library’s front desk and come to the meeting at noon on
Tuesday, March 12.
Another new book club in a bag is “Killers of the Flower
Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI” by David Grann. We read this interesting true crime book in
the adult book club last year. This tub
contains ten copies of the book, and it’s housed at the Montevideo library.
Benson has an eight-copy book club kit of “Sister Secrets: A
Brother’s Reveal” by Matthew Valan. I
wasn’t familiar with this title, which was published by North Dakota University
Press in 2018. The author is a minister
who lives on his farm near Moorhead, and he delves into his family history with
this story of his two sisters who were diagnosed too late with bipolar
disorder.
If you have a book club that you can trust with copies that
are checked out to you, a kit is a great option for getting many copies at
once. There are 71 different book club
kits in Pioneerland with more added all the time.
