Library column for April 17, 2019
by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian
At the end of March, we wrapped up the adult winter reading
program. Ninety people signed up to
participate this year, and as a result we have a whole basket of book reviews
the participants turned in to earn their prizes. It’s always fun to find out who the most
popular authors were among our local readers.
One of the most popular was William Kent Krueger and his
Cork O’Connor mystery series.
Participants turned in eight reviews of seven of his books; two people
reviewed the newest,
Desolation Mountain.
On the review forms, we ask people to rate the book on a scale of five
stars.
Two different people (based on
the handwriting) wrote in additional stars beyond the five because they loved
the books so much!
The readers enjoyed
the realness of the characters, the Minnesota setting, and the themes of the
books.
The Dassel Library is bringing Kent Krueger to the Dassel
History Center for an event on Tuesday, April 30, at 7 p.m.
He’s a wonderful speaker.
All are welcome to attend this event that’s funded
with money from Minnesota’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
The author with the most reviews this year was J.D.
Robb.
Readers turned in nine reviews of
seven of her books.
All of the books
were from the popular
In Death series somehow, featuring police officer Eve
Dallas.
The odd one of the bunch was the
short story collection
Unquiet, which contains an
In Death story, among
others by different authors.
Two people
reviewed that collection, and neither liked it as well as readers liked the
novels in Robb’s own series; those got five out of five stars.
James Patterson’s books are popular every year in the
reading program.
This year we’ve got
eight reviews of seven different books.
Two
people reviewed
Along Came a Spider, the first in the Alex Cross mystery/thriller
series featuring forensic psychologist Dr. Cross.
One of them loved it and the other hated
it.
The Patterson reviews are mixed
overall, mostly landing somewhere in the middle of the road.
Minnesotans love John Sandford and his novels, which he
likes to set in Minnesota, his former home.
Local readers turned in five reviews of four of his books, and they
rated them quite highly.
The repeat was
Holy Ghost, the newest in the Virgil Flowers series.
Did you know that Sandford’s real name is
John Camp and that he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for a series of articles he
wrote about the farm crisis for the Pioneer Press?
Our local readers turned in five reviews of Kristin Hannah
books, two about the same book,
The Great Alone.
The library’s adult book club read this book
for our meeting this month, and our members generally enjoyed it.
The reviews for the winter reading program
gave it four and five stars, saying this story about a family moving to Alaska
had lots of excitement.
Overall, our winter reading participants read a vast variety
of books. While there were other
repeated authors, such as Debbie Macomber, Nora Roberts, and Jodi Picoult, most
of the hundreds of book reviews were for unique authors and books. People who use the Litchfield Library don’t
all read the same thing. As they taught
me in library school, every person has his or her preferred book, and every
book its reader.
