What are you thankful for?

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

As we prepare to gather together next week for our holiday of thankfulness, what are you thankful for?  I’m thankful for my family, my home, and my work at the library, quite honestly.  Work is work, but I’m grateful to have the opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives through the wide variety of interesting things we do in library service.  And what a privilege to work in this beautiful Litchfield Library, making people happy with books and other library resources every day! 

Let me share with you a few of the new books that are about things you might be thankful for.

We can be thankful for children and family.  Mitch Albom’s new book Finding Chika: A Little Girl, an Earthquake, and the Making of a Family tells his personal story of a child he met in an orphanage he runs in Haiti.  Albom and his wife Janine did not have children of their own, and when 5-year old orphan Chika was diagnosed with a brain tumor, the couple took her back to the U.S. and around the world seeking a cure.  Through the short time they all spent together, Mitch and Janine learned about the joys of caring for a child even when her arrival in the family didn’t happen in the usual way. Reviewers describe it as tender, beautiful, and sad.

We can be thankful for people who came before us and made the world a better place.  Hope in the Struggle is a new memoir by Josie R. Johnson, published by University of Minnesota Press.  Johnson is a Minnesota teacher, activist, and public servant who first became involved in the civil rights movement in the 1940s as a teenager in Texas.  She co-chaired the Minnesota delegation to the March on Washington in 1963, and she was the first African-American to serve on the University of Minnesota’s Board of Regents in 1971.  Johnson’s memoir tells her life story, and it also addresses the issue of maintaining hope when it feels like it’s impossible to make a difference.

We might be thankful for education.  Another new book from University of Minnesota Press, Professor Berman: The Last Lecture of Minnesota’s Greatest Public Historian is actually a memoir rather than a lecture.  Jay Weiner put this book together using the writings and interviews of U of M professor Hy Berman, who was a regular on the Minnesota PBS show Almanac.  Berman knew Hubert Humphrey well, and that’s reflected in the book; other Minnesota politicians such as Rudy Perpich and Harold Stassen appear, as well.

Maybe you’re thankful for food and drink, which is of course a big part of Thanksgiving.  I can’t say that I’m personally at all thankful for beer, but if you are, perhaps you’d be interested in The Drink that Made Wisconsin Famous: Beer and Brewing in the Badger State by Doug Hoverson. This is a newly-published history, stretching from the pioneers in the mid-nineteenth century to current breweries and brewpubs in Wisconsin.

On the food front, we have the new cookbook Copycat Restaurant Favorites.  Published by Taste of Home Books, this one includes more than 100 recipes inspired by Olive Garden, Panera Bread, Pizza Hut, and many other popular chains.  We also have Sweet Nature: A Cook’s Guide to Using Honey and Maple Syrup by Beth Dooley and Mette Nielsen.  Dooley is an award-winning cookbook author who covers the Minnesota food scene for the Star Tribune, KARE 11, and MPR.

And of course, we can be thankful for books.  I know I am.  As Robert Louis Stevenson said, “Keep your eyes open to your mercies.  The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life.” Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

Cozy in the Kitchen

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

A cozy kitchen can be a good place to find comfort as the days get darker and colder.  You can visit the library for new cookbooks to try out as you warm up your kitchen this fall and winter.

Taste of Home is a popular magazine that publishes recipes submitted by home cooks.  The company, which is part of Reader’s Digest, also publishes cookbooks.  One of their latest is Taste of Home Kitchen Hacks: 100 Hints, Tricks & Timesavers – and the Recipes to Go withThem.  This sounds like a unique cookbook, focused on tricks to make things easier in the kitchen, like how to chop six hardboiled eggs at once or how to hull strawberries with no mess.  Recipes accompany the helpful hints.  I’m intrigued to look at this one.

Award-winning chef Sean Brock’s second cookbook South: Essential Recipes and New Explorations has been named a best cookbook of this fall by a number of media outlets.  Brock covers the core recipes of Southern cooking here, along with a look at the different regions within the South and their history and specialties. Look for fundamentals like grits and fried chicken, along with less familiar foods like eggplant purloo and rhubarb-tomato conserve, in this artfully photographed book.

The smell of bread baking makes a house feel warm and snug.  The new cookbook Living Bread: Tradition and Innovation in Artisan Bread Making might inspire you to try out some new bread baking techniques.  Author Daniel Leader founded the Bread Alone Bakery in the Catskills in 1983 with help from a French expert.  He produces organic, wood-fired, artisan bread on a large scale using environmentally friendly methods, and he has been influential in the artisanal bread world.  Using this cookbook, you can bake basic breads or more complicated things like sourdough and sprouted breads.

Gathering with friends and family is another way to raise your spirits this time of year.  Author Alison Roman says, “It’s not entertaining, it’s having people over.”  In her new cookbook Nothing Fancy: Unfussy Food for Having People Over, Roman presents an array of trendy gourmet recipes that she says are easy to make and crowd-pleasing.  I would say it’s all fancier than what most of us are used to, but the ingredients don’t look overly intimidating.

For another trendy cookbook with recipes that sound a little simpler, you can look for Antoni in the Kitchen.  Author Antoni Porowski is the food and wine expert on the popular Netflix show Queer Eye, and he specializes in teaching people how to become more confident with their cooking.   The cookbook includes sections on vegetables, pasta and rice, meat, and baked goods, as well as a chapter called “weeknight healthyish.” 

For a cookbook with more exotic ingredients, check out Sababa: Fresh, Sunny Flavors from My Israeli Kitchen by Adeena Sussman.  “Sababa” is Hebrew for “everything is awesome” (cue the catchy song from the Lego Movie). This cookbook takes a cheerful approach to sharing the foods Sussman has learned about since moving from America to Israel, especially things she finds in her local outdoor market. 

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, with all of the delicious food involved in that day. Oscar Wilde said, “After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relatives.”  Check out one of the vast numbers of cookbooks at the library and find some recipes for good dinners to make at your house.

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.

One Giant Leap for Mankind

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

On July 20^th, 1969, humans first set foot on the moon.  On this 50^th anniversary of Apollo 11, we celebrate the giant leap that Neil Armstrong helped to make with his one small step. 

Do you remember watching the moon landing on television?  I wasn’t born yet, so I should watch the library’s new DVD, Apollo 11.  It’s a documentary put together from a newly-discovered batch of 65mm raw footage and 11,000 hours of previously uncataloged audio recordings.  Whether you were glued to the live event back in 1969 or you want to see how amazing that occasion really was, this movie can help you find new wonder in this pivotal moment in history.

For a dramatized version of those events, pick up First Man, an award-winning biopic of Neil Armstrong.  Ryan Gosling plays the legendary astronaut in this movie based on the book of the same name by James R. Hansen, which the Litchfield library also has.  The movie and book show the victories and the tragedies of Armstrong’s life.

Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon is a recent book about one step in the Apollo program.  Author Robert Kurson shares the stories of astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders and their families as NASA raced to beat the Soviets to the moon without taking the time to be careful and methodical.  Litchfield Library has this book on audio, but it’s available to order in print from other libraries.

Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon is another take on that step of the space race.  Author Jeffrey Kluger co-wrote the book that the movie Apollo 13 was based on.  In Apollo 8, readers learn about the context of this risky but ultimately inspiring launch: three American astronauts burned to death in a spacecraft the year before, the Cold War intensifying, and a year filled with assassinations and war. 

Hidden Figures is both an award-winning movie and a popular nonfiction book about a group of gifted black female mathematicians who calculated trajectories and other essential numbers for planning space flight.  The book by Margot Lee Shetterly tells the story of four women in the West Computing group at Langley, who helped America get to space over the course of three decades of their careers; naturally it goes into more detail than the movie can. 

If you’re looking to share information about the moon landing with your children, pick up Moon Landings by Shoshana A. Weider or Apollo 11 Launches a New Era by Thomas K. Adamson, two recent nonfiction books in the Litchfield library collection.  The first is an easy reader about the Apollo missions to the moon.  The second is a part of the “Events That Changed America” series; it focuses on the Apollo 11 mission with a timeline and reflection on the significance of the moon landing.

If thinking about the moon landing has got you thinking about the night sky, check out the National Geographic Pocket Guide to the Night Sky of North America by Catherine Herbert Howell.  This manual is a short handbook on viewing the stars, the moon, the planets, comets, meteors, and asteroids, complete with charts.

There’s a plaque on the moon to commemorate that landing 50 years ago.  It says, among other things, “We came in peace for all mankind.”  May that landing inspire us still today. 

Ordinary and Extraordinary Heroes of World War II

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

With the recent 75^th anniversary of D-Day, the world has had a chance to honor the Allied troops who invaded Normandy in 1944 in the largest combined land, air, and naval operation in history.  It was remarkable to hear about the veterans in their nineties who commemorated the anniversary by once again parachuting into France as they had as young men.  The anniversary gives us an opportunity to remember the troops who gave their lives – over 4000 Allied troops on D-Day alone – and to learn more about all who did their part to fight tyranny in World War II.

World War II at Sea: A Global History is a definitive naval history of the war.  Author Craig L. Symonds wrote a narrative history of the engagements, the people, and the strategies, beginning with the London Conference of 1930 and ending with the surrender in Tokyo Bay in 1945.  It includes accounts of U-boat attacks, Dunkirk, Pearl Harbor, Midway, and Normandy.  Symonds explains with historical details that naval operations were key to the outcome of the war. 

If you like your history as historical fiction, you may enjoy The Paris Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal.  One of the most recent in the Maggie Hope mystery series, this one finds American-born British spy Maggie working in occupied Paris.  Another agent was gathering research for the impending invasion of Normandy when she was captured, and Maggie needs to locate that information for England while working to discover a traitor and find her missing sister. 

For some inspirational true stories, look for the brand-new book Invisible Heroes of World War II: Extraordinary Wartime Stories of Ordinary People by Jerry Borrowman.  These are not the stories of the generals and world leaders.  These are soldiers, ordinary citizens working with the resistance, journalists, combat engineers, code breakers, and factory workers. 

A biography of one of those unknown heroes is very popular right now.  A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II is a bestseller by Sonia Purnell.  Virginia Hall was a Baltimore socialite who loved studying languages and who lost her leg in a hunting accident.  She worked for the State Department in Europe and then joined Churchill’s spy organization SOE in occupied France.  While posing as a newspaper reporter, she was crucial to building the French resistance and building a network of spies. At one point, the Gestapo considered her the most dangerous of all Allied spies.  Reviewers say this biography is fast-paced and gripping.

Mistress of the Ritz by Melanie Benjamin is a novel based on the true story of another American woman who worked for the French Resistance.  Blanche Auzello was an American actress who married the French hotel manager who took over the Ritz in its glory days.  When the Nazis set up their headquarters in their Paris hotel in 1940, the Auzellos hosted them while secretly working against them.  In addition to the tension of that situation, the Auzellos’ marriage was in trouble throughout their years together.  Reviews say this novel is well-researched and written in a compelling way, with historical figures like Coco Chanel and Ernest Hemingway appearing as supporting characters.

When it comes to such a huge, worldwide conflict, there are endless stories to be told.  Look for the D-Day display at the Litchfield Library to find even more books about this pivotal time in history. 

Grace and inspiration in stressful times

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

How is your stress level?  According the American Psychological Association’s most recent annual survey on stress in America, the average adult is reporting they’re at a 4.9 on a scale of zero to ten.  Younger adults are reporting higher levels of stress than older adults.  Work and money are the top sources of stress in the U.S.  Health concerns and the current state of our nation are also major sources of stress for many. 

Many recent books tackle questions about how to manage stress and find connection, inspiration, and hope.  Litchfield Library has a number of them available to check out. 

Political stress is the subject of I Think You’re Wrong (But I’m Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations.  Authors Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth A. Silvers come from different sides of the aisle, and they talk about that on their podcast “Pantsuit Politics.”  In this book they share their principles and tools for having calm conversations that prioritize relationships and understanding over policy positions and arguments. 

If your high school senior or college kid is wrapping up a challenging year, you may want to look for The Stressed Years of Their Lives: Helping Your Kid Survive and Thrive During Their College Years by B. Janet Hibbs and Anthony Rostain.  This pair of child and adolescent mental health specialists offers advice on what’s normal in kids of that age and how to intervene when things aren’t going well, with the goal of a successful launch to college and independence. 

What would you tell your younger self if you could?  CBS This Morning cohost Gayle King has explored this idea in a popular segment on her program, called Note to Self.  Her new book by the same name is a compilation of the letters from the show, in which prominent people write advice and encouragement to their younger selves. The subtitle of the book is “Inspiring Words from Inspiring People.” 

Chrissy Metz is an Emmy-nominated actress known for the television series This Is Us and the new movie Breakthrough.  Her new book, This is Me: Loving the Person You Are Today, is a bestseller that combines a memoir of her life with specific lessons about things like facing fears and practicing gratitude.  Booklist magazine says, “This is more than a celebrity bio.  At its heart, it’s a how-to book.” 

Professional organizer Julie Morgenstern takes on time management in Time to Parent: Organizing Your Life to Bring Out the Best in Your Child and You.  Morgenstern creates a system for dividing parenting responsibilities into manageable tasks, and she shares tips for making the most of small chunks of time.  But beyond just creating structure, she advocates for truly paying attention to what you’re doing, whether that’s spending time with your child or spouse, working, or taking some time for yourself. 

Taking time for yourself may mean working on creative projects. Creative Quest is a new book by musician, producer, and professor Questlove, the bandleader for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.  This guide to living your best creative life pulls together the lessons Questlove has learned from other artists, stories about his life experiences, and advice on concrete steps like finding a mentor and a network. 

In the powerful children’s novel in verse Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo says, “The way I see it, hard times aren’t only about money, or drought, or dust.  Hard times are about losing spirit, and hope, and what happens when dreams dry up.”  We all need to find ways to feed our spirits and our hope.

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.

Let's Get Down to Business

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian

Business books are often on the bestseller lists, but oddly enough they aren’t very popular at the Litchfield Library.  I’ve always put those two pieces of information together and guessed that the people in our city who are the most interested in the latest business books are people who buy books instead of visiting the library. Nevertheless, we do offer books about business.  Some are like self-help books – encouragement and guidance for entrepreneurs and executives.  Some analyze industries or business history or economics.  Our library has several recent books that fall under the category of business.

Dare to Lead: Brave Work, Tough Conversations, Whole Hearts is Brene Brown’s newest.  Unlike her others, this one is a business book - more specifically, a book about leadership.  It’s a current bestseller.  Brown has worked with Facebook, Pixar, the Air Force, Google, and other large organizations when doing her research, and this book is the result of a seven-year study on leadership. Brown says that leadership isn’t about status and power; it’s about responsibility, courage, and developing the abilities of the people you manage. 

Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results is a new book by James Clear, an expert on habit formation.  This is another current bestseller.  Clear says that motivation isn’t the main factor in breaking bad habits or starting new ones; setting up an environment for success often matters more.  He addresses procrastination, motivation at work, and how to apply his ideas to business. 

Capitalism in America: A History is Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge’s new book on economics.   Greenspan is well known as the chair of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, and Wooldridge is a writer for The Economist as well as a historian.  The book examines the history of business and increasing prosperity in the United States.  The Financial Times describes the book as having three themes: productivity as the measure of economic progress, the pairing of creation and destruction as the sources of growth, and political reaction to creative destruction. 

Thank You for Shopping: The Golden Age of Minnesota Department Stores is a brand-new book from Minnesota Historical Society Press.  Author Kristal Leebrick delivers a nostalgic look back at the twentieth century glory days of stores like Dayton’s, Donaldson’s, Powers, and Young-Quinlan.  These stores were destinations: Dayton’s Christmas displays and flower shows and meals at Schuneman’s River Room were special occasions. The book is illustrated with vintage photos and ads, and it even includes recipes from the stores’ restaurants.  The Mill City Museum is running a companion exhibit of photos from mid-November through February.

The book Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Company that Addicted America is a critical examination of the corporate origins of the current opioid crisis.  Author and journalist Beth Macy investigated how the introduction of OxyContin in 1996 was handled irresponsibly by Purdue Pharma; the company aggressively promoted the drug to physicians through all-expenses-paid symposia and a large salesforce that individually targeted doctors who frequently prescribed opioids.  Macy then traces the spread of the addiction epidemic from the first dealer in a small Virginia town to the widespread problem we have today, crossing class and geographic lines. 

Other books we have that are currently on the New York Times business best sellers list are Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Bad Blood by John Carreyrou, Grit by Angela Duckworth, and Principles by Ray Dalio. 

The public library isn’t only about novels and children’s books, although we do have great collections of those.  When you want to read a business-related book, remember that the library carries those, too.