Conspiracy! A book event with Dean Urdahl

Minnesota representative and author Dean Urdahl presents

Thursday, December 20th

6 -7 p.m.

Litchfield Public Library meeting room

Rep. Urdahl will talk about all of his books, with particular emphasis on his latest, Conspiracy! Who Really Killed Lincoln? A Novel.  He will have books available for purchase and signing.

Pick up a Christmas present for the history buff on your list!

Wine, Cheese, & Chocolate

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian


Have you marked your calendar for the Litchfield Library Foundation’s wine, cheese, and chocolate event on Thursday, October 25th? Tickets are available now from library board members, at the library and from me, and at the liquor store. The Foundation is asking for a donation of $20 per ticket, which benefits the library.

The Foundation was established in 2003 to secure and manage funds in perpetuity to enhance the needs of our library. The funds are all from private contributions, and they are invested with the oversight of the library board. Earnings are to be used for land acquisition for expansion, building expansion, major capital improvements, major technology needs, or other unforeseen extraordinary needs.

The wine, cheese, and chocolate tasting will be held at the Litchfield VFW on Highway 12 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. on October 25th. If you attend, you’ll have the opportunity to taste a variety of wines paired with a variety of cheeses and chocolates. My husband and I will be going, which should be a good opportunity for us to find different wines we enjoy. We’ve been trying a few things, but we only like moscato so far. I suppose that could mean that we’re not really wine drinkers or that we need some guidance. So if you’re not a connoisseur of wine and you feel intimidated about coming to try them, know that you’ll be in good company. We’ll just try to be adventurous and have a good time.

In the meantime, here are some books you can find in our library on wine, cheese, and chocolate:

Wine Made Easy: A Complete Guide to Understanding and Enjoying Wine is edited by Susy Atkins. It covers how to taste wine, different types of wine and how to read the labels, the health aspects of wine, and wine and food pairings.

The Joy of Cheesemaking: The Ultimate Guide to Understanding, Making, and Eating Fine Cheese by Jody Farnham is a book from 2011 that does get into the process of making cheese at home. But it also covers things like putting together a cheese board and pairing wine and beer with different types of cheese.

Mastering Cheese: Lessons for Connoisseurship from a Maitre Fromager by Max McCalman is a guide to understanding cheese and what makes certain cheeses great.

Real Chocolate: Sweet and Savory Recipes for Nature’s Purest Form of Bliss by Chantal Coady is a cookbook of unusual recipes using what the author calls “real chocolate”, not the overly sweetened chocolate with additives that most of us eat.

The Healing Powers of Chocolate by Cal Orey covers the health benefits of, again, natural chocolate. It also includes Mediterranean-style chocolate recipes and beauty treatments made with chocolate.

I hope you’ll decide to join us to sample some interesting types of wine, cheese, and chocolate in October. It should be a fun event, and you’ll be helping the library at the same time.

Find an event you'd enjoy at the library

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

As spring continues on, our library events do, too. If you’re a reader, a gamer, or a knitter, mark your calendar for our ongoing groups and one-time special events.

We’re hosting a reception to congratulate Nancy Paddock on her Minnesota Book Award win. Join us in the meeting room on Saturday, April 28, from 2-3 p.m. Nancy will speak for part of the time and will otherwise be available to talk with people. We’ll serve refreshments. This is a big deal in the world of books in Minnesota, so we need to celebrate.

4-H at the Library meets after school on Thursday, April 26. It’s open to kids in kindergarten through fifth grade. Darcy from the Meeker County Extension Service always has a variety of fun and educational activities for the kids to do, and it’s free to attend. Through the school year, we host this on the fourth Thursday of every month. We’ll have it a couple of times this summer, too; watch for our summer schedule to find out when.

I’m going to reduce game night to one Monday a month plus some Saturday events. Look for our choose-a-game night, with a selection of chess sets, board games, and card games, on the first Monday of the month from 6:30 – 8 p.m. This means no game night on April 30th; come on May 7th.

We’ve had an enthusiastic response to our Dungeons & Dragons nights with requests for more time to play, so we had a Saturday afternoon event on April 21. We’ll do it again on Saturday, May 19, from noon to 4 p.m. If you enjoy making up stories along the lines of Lord of the Rings and the Drizzt Do’Urden books, or if you like to play World of Warcraft, you might find it fun. It’s very social but much more slow-moving than a video game, and you have to use your imagination.

Knitting club is still meeting on the first and third Thursdays of the month from 4:30-5:30. Their next meeting is May 3rd.

The next meeting of the after-school book club is Thursday, May 10th. They’re reading Mary Poppins this month. This group is for 3rd through 5th graders.

Story times will continue through May 11th. At that time we’ll have a break of a few weeks while Jan hosts elementary school class visits and we get ready for the summer reading program. We are getting all set for summer already.

One last note about something that isn’t an event: I have a survey running through April 30th on how ebooks are affecting the use of print books. If you’re an ebook reader, whether you check them out or buy them, I’d love it if you took the survey. You can follow the hyperlink at the beginning of this paragraph to the online survey or you can pick up a paper copy at our front desk. Thank you to all of you who have taken the time to take the survey.