April Book Club Pick Available in Ebook

Litchfield Library's adult book club is reading O Pioneers! by Willa Cather for April. It just so happens that the title is available for unlimited checkouts through our Overdrive ebook service! Search for it on Libby or the Overdrive app or find it here: https://pioneerland.overdrive.com/media/784733. 

The meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, April 14, and we'll try to offer it virtually on that day on Facebook Live, Zoom, or both.

All I Want for Christmas is... a romantic novel

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

It’s the Christmas season, and for some people that means it’s time to get in the spirit by reading Christmas books.  Some Christmas novels are family stories, cozy mysteries, or inspirational novels, but quite a few are romances.   Find comfort and joy with these new holiday romances available at the Litchfield library.

 “Royal Holiday” is the fourth in Jasmine Guillory’s very popular “Wedding Date” series of romances.  Middle-aged American Vivian accompanies her professional stylist daughter on a work trip to an English royal wedding.  She meets the very proper Malcolm, longtime private secretary to the Queen, and they begin a romance after a kiss under the mistletoe.  Some reviewers have commented on how enjoyable it is to find a rom-com featuring people over fifty.

“The Christmas Keeper” is the second in the “Happily Ever After” series by Jenn McKinlay, but the two books are only loosely connected.  “Booklist” magazine describes the novel as a combination of small town charm, “sassy humor,” spicy romance, and Christmas cheer.  The premise of the story is that a rancher falls in love at first sight, but the woman he wants to marry is preoccupied with getting revenge on a former boss. He enlists the staff of the local bookstore and the spirit of Christmas to win her over.

“Coming Home for Christmas” is family story by RaeAnne Thayne, set in her fictional town of Haven Point.  Elizabeth, a married mother of two, was deep in postpartum depression and grief from the death of her parents when she left her family.  A car accident damaged her memory and prevented her from returning to them for years.  When her husband finds her and brings her home for Christmas, they find a second chance at love and family.

Author Emily March also sets her stories in a fictional small town, Eternity Springs.  Recently, Litchfield Library has gotten “The Christmas Wishing Tree,” the eighteenth in that series, in large print.  International adventurer Devin is visiting his hometown for Christmas when he gets a misdialed call from a little boy who thinks he is talking to Santa.  The little boy’s guardian Jenna thinks that the peaceful town of Eternity Springs sounds like the perfect place to hide from a threat in their lives.  When she meets Devin, he suggests a way to face the danger they’re under and make the little boy’s wish come true.

Charlotte Hubbard is an author of historical romances and Amish novels.  The library has recently added the large print of her novel, “A Simple Christmas” from the “Simple Gifts” series.  The Simple Gifts craft shop is preparing for Christmas amid financial troubles.  Horse trainer Marcus left his Amish life years ago but has returned to seek some help from his family.  Rosalyn is the last unmarried daughter of the craft shop’s owner, and when Marcus walks into the shop, sparks fly.

Wanda Brunstetter is a popular Christian fiction author.  Her novel “A Christmas Prayer” tells a story of a group of pioneers who set out too late to complete their travels west before the snow falls.  Christmas finds them taking shelter in a small cabin in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Cynthia is traveling with her mother and the man she has promised to marry, a loveless arrangement meant to provide for the women.  But the snowstorm allows the entire traveling party to get to know each other better, offering Cynthia new romantic prospects and a chance to reconsider her plans.

Clearly these are all lightweight escapism in book form, but sometimes we need that during the holidays. Pioneerland libraries will be closed on Tuesday, December 24, and Wednesday, December 25, for Christmas.  The libraries will close at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, December 31, and will be closed on Wednesday, January 1, for New Year’s.  All other days the library will be open regular hours.  Merry Christmas!

Treat Yourself to a Scary Book

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Halloween is almost here, so it’s time for some scary books.  This could mean mysteries, crime thrillers, ghost stories, vampire novels, or anything spooky or frightening.

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have a new book out that’s pretty scary.  Old Bones features a young archaeologist who is asked to lead a team in search of the supposed “Lost Camp” of the Donner Party, the notorious pioneers who descended to cannibalism when trapped in the mountains.  As the members of the expedition excavate the site, they discover even more shocking details, and they find their own lives at risk.  Characters Nora Kelly and Corrie Swanson spin off of a previous Preston and Child book series in this start of a new series.

For some Victorian crime atmosphere (think gas lamps and fog), you can pick up Mycroft and Sherlock: The Empty Birdcage by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with Anna Waterhouse.  Set before Sherlock Holmes meets Dr. Watson, this mystery finds Sherlock helping his brother investigate a serial killer who has killed a distant relative of Queen Victoria.  This is the third in the Mycroft series by NBA star Abdul-Jabbar, all of which have gotten good reviews.

Zombies are good Halloween subject matter.  The new novel Last Ones Left Alive by Sarah Davis-Goff features a post-apocalyptic Ireland overrun by zombies called the skrake. A young woman named Orpen has been raised on a small, safe island off of the coast, living only with her mother and her mother’s partner.  She wishes to go to the mainland and meet other survivors despite the risk of the skrake, and when disaster strikes her island, she has no choice but to cross the water and prepare to fight for her life.

If serial killers are more your thing, look for The Chestnut Man by Soren Sveistrup, a Danish television and film writer.  It’s Scandinavian noir, along the lines of Steig Larsson and Jo Nesbo.  A psychopath is leaving a doll fashioned from chestnuts at the scene of each murder, and a pair of detectives must put aside their differences to find the murderer.  Netflix is developing the novel into an original series.

Minnesota mystery author Ellen Hart writes the long-running Jane Lawless series.  Installment #26 is the newest book: Twisted at the Root.  A widower’s family contacts Jane for help proving he was wrongly accused of murdering his husband, and Jane finds that her missing brother was involved in the trial.  Reviewers have praised the fully-realized characters and the ramped-up creepiness of the plot. 

Have you tried an escape room?  The novel The Escape Room by Megan Goldin takes the idea to a terrifying level.  Four Wall Street financiers are ordered to participate in a corporate team-building exercise in an escape room that turns out to be a tense game of survival. Kirkus Reviews says, “Cancel all your plans and call in sick; once you start reading, you’ll be caught in your own escape room.”

Dean Koontz is well-known for creepy books.  His newest novel is The Night Window, the last in his Jane Hawk series.  Jane is a rogue FBI agent with a mission to take down the powerful people trying to control America through an army of mind-altered people.  Reviewers say this is best book in the series, carefully plotted and entertaining.

If you like a book that will scare you one way or another, the Litchfield Library offers plenty of choices. Happy Halloween!

Crazy About Audiobooks

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Audiobooks are the fastest-growing reading format in the U.S.  According to the Audio Publishers Association’s 2019 survey, 50% of Americans age twelve and older have listened to an audiobook, the highest percentage ever.  Our e-book supplier, Overdrive, is also seeing substantial growth in downloadable audiobook checkouts nationwide.  Checkouts have increased an average of 32% a year since 2012.

The most common location to listen to audiobooks is in the car, but listening at home is almost as popular.  More than half of all audiobook listeners say they’re finding time in their lives to add audiobook listening to the time they spend reading print books, making it possible for them to finish more books.  The typical audiobook listener is between the ages of 18 and 45 and a fan of podcasts.

 

Pioneerland Library System offers downloadable audiobooks for checkout through our Overdrive service.  There are currently 1,484 downloadable audiobooks in our collection.  These can be accessed through the Pioneerland website on a computer or through the Overdrive or Libby app on a phone or tablet.  They are free to check out with a Pioneerland library card, and they never incur late fees.

One of our newest downloadable audios is The Chain by Adrian McKinty.  This New York Times bestseller is a psychological thriller with a chilling premise: a stranger has kidnapped your child in order to get their own abducted child back.  To get yours back alive, you must pay a ransom – and kidnap someone else’s child. 

Another new offering in Pioneerland’s downloadable audios is The Gone Dead by Chanelle Benz.  The Tonight Show featured this book among the finalists in its summer reads contest.  A young woman returns to her childhood home in the Mississippi Delta for the first time since her father’s death when she was four years old.  She finds the isolated shack she inherited unsettling to visit, and she begins to unravel the mystery of her father’s accident.

We also have audiobooks on CD at the Litchfield Library and all of the libraries in the system.  The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo is one of our newest additions.  This bestseller was one of Reese Witherspoon’s book club selections.  Young dressmaker and dancehall girl Ji Lin accidentally finds a severed finger that’s being sought by an 11-year-old houseboy to bury with his master’s body, leading them onto dangerous crisscrossing paths.  Every reviewer commented on the way the author vividly created 1930s colonial Malaysia. 

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams isn’t a new book; it was published in 1979.  The library recently added the audiobook version on CD, read by Stephen Fry.  This wacky story of an ordinary British man who is rescued from the destruction of Earth by his undercover alien friend is a classic the family can enjoy together – at least teenagers and older. 

Other new audiobooks on CD at the Litchfield Library include 21 Lessons for the 21^st Century by Yuval Noah Harari, Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear, Inspired by Rachel Held Evans, and Plum Rains by Andromeda Romano-Lax.  Pick one up, or download one, and maybe you’ll become an audiobook fan, too.

Books to read on the patio - or in the A/C

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

I just saw an online post that said “August is the Sunday of summer.”  I agree.  I love summer and summer break from school, and I dread the arrival of fall – even though September is actually wonderful.  I always find that the key to dealing with late summer is to throw myself into enjoying it.  If you’re someone whose idea of fun is digging into a good book while sitting outside – or if you’d rather escape the heat by reading one in the air conditioning – pick up one of these absorbing new novels at the Litchfield library.

Keeping Lucy by T. Greenwood is the story of a mother in the late 1960s.  Ginny’s husband and his powerful family convince her to send their newborn daughter Lucy to live at an institution because she has Down Syndrome, and to grieve her as though she were dead.  But two years later, Ginny’s best friend sees an investigative story showing that the institution is a terrible place, and the two of them head out to get the little girl.  Based on real events, this is a story of how far a mother would go to protect her child. 

Ruth Ware has become a popular author with books such as The Woman in Cabin 10 and The Death of Mrs. Westaway.  Her newest is The Turn of the Key.  It’s a Gothic thriller featuring the modern technology of a smart house that malfunctions in terrifying ways.  The protagonist takes a nanny job with amazing pay on a Scottish estate with seemingly perfect children, but the novel is told from prison where she awaits trial for a murder she says she didn’t commit.  Ware’s style is sometimes compared to Agatha Christie.

A Dangerous Man is the latest in the Elvis Cole and Joe Pike series by Robert Crais.  Joe Pike catches two men who abduct a young bank teller when Joe happens to be at the bank on everyday business.  But after the men post bail, they’re murdered and the young woman disappears.  Joe reaches out to his friend Elvis Cole to help him solve the mystery, which turns out to be much more complicated than it first appears.  Reviewers say this is a particularly strong entry in the series.

Labyrinth is the 23^rd book in Catherine Coulter’s FBI Thrillers series.  Agents Savich and Sherlock get involved in a strange case when Sherlock’s car is struck by another vehicle at an intersection, followed by a body hitting her windshield.  When she wakes up in the hospital after the accident, she learns that the man ran away and no one knows who he is.  DNA evidence points to a missing CIA analyst.  Meanwhile Savich is called in on a case involving a kidnapped woman who identifies a small town sheriff’s nephew as her captor, before the sheriff arrests both her and her rescuer.  Coulter is known for novels with many twists and plenty of suspense.

Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson is a dark and funny thriller about secrets from the past.  A new woman joins a book club and starts a game of “never have I ever,” encouraging the other women to share naughty secrets over wine.  But the main character has a wonderful family life to protect and a past to hide, which the mysterious new woman somehow knows about. 

Other new additions at the library include The New Girl by Daniel Silva (a spy thriller), Wherever She Goes by Kelly Armstrong (a psychological thriller), Backlash by Brad Thor (a political thriller), FKA USA by Reed King (a dystopian novel), and Aunt Dimity and the Heart of Gold by Nancy Atherton (a cozy mystery).  Find something to read that suits your preferences while you enjoy the rest of summer or wait eagerly for fall.

Read About Intriguing People in This Spring's Books

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Spring is here, at least officially.  We may not have flowers and warm temperatures for a while yet, so there’s plenty of time to keep reading before we have too many outside activities.  The Litchfield Library is getting a number of new books that are generating buzz this spring.

Bestselling author Harlan Coben has a new book, Run Away, that just came out this past week. It’s a parent’s nightmare: a daughter who becomes addicted to drugs with an abusive boyfriend and leaves her family.  In order to save her, the parent follows her into the dangerous world she lives in.  Reviews say it’s an exciting thriller you’ll want to read in one sitting.

The Silent Patient is in demand in our library system, and everywhere else, right now.  This psychological thriller is about a famous artist who murders her fashion photographer husband and then refuses to speak another word.  A criminal psychologist becomes obsessed with the notorious case and begins to treat her.  Brad Pitt has purchased the film rights to this first novel by Alex Michaelides.

Lisa See’s new book, The Island of Sea Women, covers the history of a unique place, the Korean island of Jeju.  Women there have been the primary breadwinners for centuries, even now diving into the sea to gather shellfish without oxygen masks.  This novel centers on two friends who begin diving together as children, and it follows them through Japanese colonialism in the ‘30s and ‘40s, World War II, and the Korean War, bringing them to the current era of cell phones and wet suits.  If you enjoy novels about history and female friendship, this is for you.

Written as though it’s a celebrity memoir, the novel Daisy Jones and The Six is the story of a wildly-successful band in the ‘70s.  Author Taylor Jenkins Reid captures the sex, drugs, and rock and roll of the era through Daisy’s rise to superstardom when she joins the band The Six.  Reviewers have said that the characters feel so real that they want to find their albums.

British author Helen Oyeyemi has won awards for her inventive novels and short stories.  Her latest is called Gingerbread, and it builds on the special place gingerbread has in fairy tales.  A mother and daughter live in a London apartment with talking plants, and the mother’s mysterious friend Gretel loves the family’s famous gingerbread, a recipe passed down through the generations.

Figuring is a nonfiction book about the interconnected lives of a number of prominent people over four centuries, beginning with astronomer Johannes Kepler and ending with biologist and author Rachel Carson.  Writer Maria Popova examines the lives of these artists, writers, and scientists, most of them women and many of them LGBT, who have made important public contributions while going through struggles in their private relationships. 

The Altruists by Andrew Ridker is a funny novel about a dysfunctional family.  A Missouri professor invites his estranged adult children home in a supposed attempt at reconciliation.  His late wife had kept her small fortune a secret and left it directly to their children.  People Magazine recently named it their book of the week, saying “it’s a relatable, unforgettable view of regular people making mistakes and somehow finding their way back to each other.”

The world is full of interesting books.  Settle in with one while the cold weather lasts.

Hygge at the Library

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

As we wind up the month of January, some of us are starting to get tired of winter.  But if you subscribe to the Scandinavian idea of hygge, the key is to embrace winter instead of wishing it away.  Winter has its own beauty and blessings.

In that spirit, the library will be having two Hygge Saturdays in February.  On February 2 and February 16, the first and third Saturdays of the month, we’ll set up the library meeting room with board games, puzzles, coloring sheets, free books, crocheting supplies, and a hot chocolate bar.  Drop in for some low-key, cozy fun between 1 and 3 p.m. 

The Friends of the Library always has a cart of free books next to the lobby, except when it’s a book sale weekend.  If you want to find some free books to keep, or to just not have to return by a deadline, come in to browse those anytime.  These books are things that don’t sell on the book sale, but they’re still often popular when they’re on that cart -- plus that inventory turns over frequently, so you may see entirely different things by the time you visit again. A few of our patrons like to stock up from that cart in case they get snowed in and need more books to read.

If you’re looking for a book to check out to read on a winter day, of course we have many more of those.  Here are a few of our newest additions:

The Flimflam Affair is the latest Carpenter and Quincannon mystery from Bill Pronzini.  Sabina Carpenter and John Quincannon run a detective service in San Francisco at the turn of the last century.  In this installment, a medium and his assistant are swindling grieving people out of their money, and the detectives must find a way to reveal them as thieves.  Meanwhile, they’re solving a murder, a theft from a burglarproof safe, and a mystery involving a gang of counterfeiters that includes a man who’s supposed to be dead.

Pictures of Longing: Photography and the Norwegian-American Migration is a new release from University of Minnesota Press.  It was written by Sigrid Lien, a professor of art history and photography studies at the University of Bergen, Norway, and translated into English by Barbara Sjoholm.  In the 1800s and early 1900s, more than 750,000 Norwegians emigrated to America, a large percentage of Norway’s population.  The immigrants sent thousands of “America-photographs” home.  The author examines a selection of these photos and explains to the reader how to interpret them, telling stories about immigrants and photographers as she goes.  Not surprisingly, many of the photos in the book are from Minnesota and North Dakota.

The Litchfield Women’s Community Club has given the library a donation for large print books from time to time, either in memory or in honor of one of their members.  We have two new large print books from their recent donations:  Freedom’s Light by Colleen Coble and Night of Miracles by Elizabeth Berg.  

Freedom’s Light is an inspirational novel about a young widow who is tending a pair of lighthouses in Massachusetts during the Revolutionary War.  Night of Miracles is a small-town story about an older woman who is inspired to begin teaching baking classes and who looks out for people around her who need some help; it has a theme of coming together to harness the power of community. 

Come to one of our programs for some comfortable time of connecting with others (part of the definition of hygge), or check out some books to take to your own cozy home.  Either way, I hope the library helps you enjoy the rest of your winter.

Adult Winter Reading starts today!

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Now that it’s January and the holidays are done, Pioneerland libraries are launching this year’s adult winter reading program, Winter Reads.  It’s an easy way to set yourself a goal to read several books before the winter is over and earn prizes for doing it.

Litchfield Library’s program begins today and ends March 30.  When you sign up, you get a book bag, a bookmark, a few book review forms, and a punch card.  Each time you turn in a brief review of a book you read, we’ll mark your card.  When you turn in three reviews, you can choose a prize: a mug, a large candy bar, an ice scraper, a stocking cap, or lip balm.  When you turn in three more, you’ll be entered in a drawing for gift certificates to local businesses, sponsored by the Friends of the Litchfield Library. 

The program works in a similar way for the libraries in Grove City, Cosmos, and Dassel, but the prizes will work slightly differently.

It’s all very easy, with no one holding your feet to the fire to complete the program, so sign up to join in this winter’s challenge.  You can read any book you want, whether it’s checked out from the library or something you own, as long as you read it after you sign up for the program.  You can read fiction or nonfiction.  You can even listen to it in audiobook form or read it as an e-book.

Need some ideas about what to read?  Here are a few new titles available at the Litchfield Library.

Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World is a nonfiction thriller by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope, Pulitzer Prize-finalist Wall Street Journal reporters.  This bestseller covers a decade of massive international fraud by a Malaysian graduate of the Wharton School of Business, a real-life Gatsby.

Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey is a biography by Mark Dery.  Gorey was an eccentric writer, illustrator, and artist who lived from 1925 to 2000.  You may have seen his Gothic pen-and-ink drawings in books such as The House with a Clock in Its Walls or The War of the Worlds, or his animated introduction to the PBS Mystery series in the ‘80s.

Evening in Paradise is a critically-acclaimed collection of short stories by Lucia Berlin.  Her short story collection, A Manual for Cleaning Women, was published posthumously in 2015 to great praise, with her style being described as “gritty glamour.”  The New York Times said, “Lucia Berlin spent her career in obscurity.  Now, she is being hailed as a literary genius.”

The Calculating Stars is a science fiction novel by Mary Robinette Kowal, the first in the Lady Astronaut series.  It imagines an alternate history, with a huge meteorite obliterating much of the east coast in 1952.  With human extinction looming, an international coalition is racing to colonize the moon.  A former WASP pilot and mathematician is working on the project as a calculator, but she has dreams of becoming the first female astronaut. 

Take the opportunity of these cold, dark winter days to enjoy a book or two.  Winter is a great time to read.

Grownups, Find Some Christmas Cheer at the Library

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield Head Librarian

It’s the holiday season!  Pioneerland libraries will be closed on Monday, December 24, and Tuesday, December 25, for Christmas.  The following week, we will be closing at 5 p.m. on Monday, December 31, and we will be closed on Tuesday, January 1, for New Year’s.  Otherwise the hours will be normal all of the other days.

Christmas books, movies, and music are always in demand this time of year.  We’ve got some new additions for grownups available.

12 Days at Bleakly Manor is an inspirational mystery that we just got in large print.  Author Michelle Griep launched a series called “Once Upon a Dickens Christmas” with this novel.  Set in England in 1851, this story is set up when guests receive mysterious invitations to spend Christmas at a manor home and are promised a substantial sum of money if they stay the entire twelve days.  A formerly engaged couple finds they are both among the guests.

Deck the Hounds is the latest Andy Carpenter novel by David Rosenfelt, but apparently it can be enjoyed even if you haven’t read any of the others.  Criminal defense lawyer Andy gives a homeless man with a dog some money, then later learns that the dog is quarantined for biting someone who attacked them.  Andy and his wife give them a place to stay at Christmas, and Andy’s legal services come in handy when the homeless vet is accused of a crime.  This sweet Christmas mystery is recommended for animal lovers. 

Yet another cozy Christmas mystery, Lark! The Herald AngelsSing is part of the Meg Langslow series by Donna Andrews.  Meg discovers a live baby in the manger while directing a nativity pageant.  A note suggests that the baby’s father is Meg’s brother, and Meg sets out to find out who the baby’s parents actually are.  Along with the mystery aspect of the story, this is a funny and heartwarming novel.

Some of our other new Christmas novels include Six Cats a Slayin’ by Miranda James, Christmas on the Island by Jenny Colgan, The Christmas Star by Donna VanLiere, and A True Cowboy Christmas by Caitlin Crews.

Don’t forget the Christmas DVDs:  Christmas in the Air is a Hallmark Christmas movie that has just been added to our collection.  Those seem to be more popular all the time!  Catherine Bell stars as a professional organizer who is hired by a frazzled widower with two young children.  He’s a toy inventor who has twelve days to get his life and business in order before pitching his new products.  It sounds like it has exactly the kind of opposites-attract, gentle romance you expect from a Hallmark Christmas movie.

Do you remember Pat Boone’s holiday specials on TV in the ‘70s?  Two of them have just been released on the DVD Pat Boone and Family: Christmas and Thanksgiving Specials.  You get the whole Boone family, plus Dinah Shore, Rosemary Clooney, Tom Bosley, and other stars from years ago.  Now, if they would just release the John Denver and the Muppets Christmas special from the ‘70s, I’d be really happy.

Whether it’s a music CD, a movie, or a book for kids or adults, our library has a huge number of holiday items available to check out.  Pick up a cookbook of party recipes for New Year’s Eve while you’re here, too!  Have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Reading about Laura Ingalls Wilder

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Minnesotans love Laura Ingalls Wilder.  She was a Minnesotan for part of her childhood, so On the Banks of Plum Creek is set here.  Personally, I love the window into history that Laura’s well-written children’s books give us. 

 Pioneerland libraries are bringing in a Laura Ingalls Wilder interactive history performer between late October and Thanksgiving.  Historian Melanie Stringer acts the part of Laura in the mid-1890s, when she, Almanzo, and their young daughter Rose had settled on Rocky Ridge Farm in Missouri.  Stringer has studied Wilder extensively, and she travels the country presenting Laura as she might have been after she had lived through the events in her books but before she became a writer.

The programs in Meeker County are happening in early November.  Our first “Meet Laura Ingalls Wilder” program will be in the community room behind the Grove City Library on Friday, November 2, at 6:00 p.m.  The event at the Litchfield Library will be on Wednesday, November 7, at 6:00 p.m.  Cosmos Library hosts its program in the community room next to the library on Thursday, November 8, at 10:00 a.m.  And Dassel Library’s program will be held upstairs at the Dassel History Center and Ergot Museum at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, November 10.  All are free to attend, funded with assistance from the Clean Water, Land, & Legacy Amendment, and there’s no need to sign up.

So what can you check out at the library if you want to learn more about Laura before or after the events?  We have many things to choose from.  We have the Little House series itself in the children’s department, including some in audiobook format – good for a family road trip.

The library has the recent adult novel Caroline: Little House, Revisited by Sarah Miller.  This popular book imagines the story of the Ingalls family from the perspective of Ma Ingalls.  If you’ve ever thought about what Caroline must have gone through every time Charles decided to move the family, this may be a book you’d enjoy.

The recent non-fiction book for adults, The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Frontier Landscapes That Inspired the Little House Books, takes a nature-focused approach to understanding the series.  Author Marta McDowell deeply researched the locations featured in the novels, and she details the landscapes, wild plants, and gardens from each place.  The book is full of illustrations and maps. 

Caroline Fraser won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Biography for her book Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  This comprehensive historical biography of Wilder is based on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records.  Fraser demonstrates that Wilder’s life was even more difficult than her books show, despite the hardships they describe.

I just finished reading Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography, the bestselling book that the South Dakota Historical Society published in 2014.  It was Wilder’s first crack at writing down her life story, and it demonstrated to me how good she was as a novelist.  As she revised the stories multiple times, Wilder fictionalized some characters and events, and she made her word choices more vivid, which made the novels suspenseful and moving.  This scholarly book also makes it clear that Laura wrote the books and had good instincts for them, and her daughter Rose did not.

If you are enthusiastic about Laura like I am, or if you just want to learn more about the realities of pioneer history, come to one of our programs.  If none of the dates in our county work for you, check out the whole Pioneerland schedule on our website, because Melanie will be performing in Hutchinson, Atwater, and in many other communities in the region. 

Chick Lit or Women's Fiction?

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Fiction written for and by women gets classified in interesting ways.  In the ‘90s, the term “chick lit” became popular, much like the movie term “chick flick.”  Books like Bridget Jones’s Diary defined the new genre, which was generally written for women and featured young adult female main characters in the present day, struggling with careers and relationships. 

After a while, people began to question the term: did it apply to every novel written by a woman with a female main character?  Did it apply if the focus of the novel was mainly about a woman’s relationships with other people? Or if it was about finding success in a career and romantic love? Or whether the book was produced mostly as lightweight entertainment?  I’ve noticed that the term has been used less and less in the past ten years.

There’s also the term “women’s fiction.”  This is a less flippant name, and it sometimes is used interchangeably with “chick lit,” but it tends to be a broader term meaning books written about women for an intended female audience, mostly by female authors.  The Women’s Fiction Writers Association defines women’s fiction as a story in which the plot is driven by the female main character’s emotional journey.  They say these are layered stories about one or several characters, often multiple generations; the adult character struggles with world issues, which results in emotional growth; and, while it can include romantic elements, the plot is not driven by romance. 

There are concerns about whether classifying a book as women’s fiction means that it’s taken less seriously, and whether most female-centered books get slotted into this category even though they may be high-quality literature that could appeal to men or women.  There’s no equivalent term for books geared to men.

Regardless of this debate, women’s fiction remains a name for a general style of books.  If you like to read about women “on the brink of life change and personal growth,” which is part of the Romance Writers of America’s definition of women’s fiction, the library has some new books that may appeal to you.

Jodi Picoult is always a popular author.  Her new book A Spark of Light just came out in early October.  The novel is set during a hostage crisis at a women’s reproductive health services clinic, and it works backward in time to show the events that brought each of the characters to that place.  The hostage negotiator arrives at the scene and discovers that his teenage daughter is inside.  An undercover protester finds herself held at gunpoint by a man who shares her views on abortion.  Picoult is known for writing about the human side of controversial topics. 

The Ensemble by Aja Gabel is the story of four young musicians who form a string quartet and, because of the friendship that develops, become a family.  They experience success and failure, as well as heartbreak, marriage, and parenthood.  Reviewers have praised the way the characters seem so real.

The Late Bloomers Club by Louise Miller sounds like a perfect gentle small town novel.  The owner of the Miss Guthrie Diner and her free-spirited filmmaker sister have been left a beautiful farmhouse and land by a beloved resident of the community, but they find out their benefactor was in the process of selling her land to a big-box store developer before she died.  The sisters weigh out what would be best for the town as their neighbors freely share their opinions on the matter.  And then one sister starts to fall for the store’s rep when he comes to town.

Fiction is good for helping us have compassion for others, and women’s fiction is especially concerned with that.  May we all find ways to imagine the challenges that other people face and do some growing of our own as we read good books.