Linking Our Libraries

Book Bites are quick looks at a book from our Guest Host readers. Try a new book this week!

This week our Guest Host admires the book Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, by Gretchen McCulloch. @GretchenAMcC

"Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What's more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time."

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Book Bites are quick looks at a book from our Guest Host readers. Try a new book this week!

This week our Guest Host admires the books by author Michael Perry. His most popular book is Population: 485- Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time. "Welcome to New Auburn, Wisconsin, where the local vigilante is a farmer's wife armed with a pistol and a Bible, the most senior member of the volunteer fire department is a cross-eyed butcher with one kidney and two ex-wives (both of whom work at the only gas station in town), and the back roads are haunted by the ghosts of children and farmers. Against a backdrop of fires and tangled wrecks, bar fights and smelt feeds, Population: 485 is a comic and sometimes heartbreaking true tale leavened with quieter meditations on an overlooked America."

Subscribe to our newsletter, our social media, and our podcasts to stay up to date on all kinds of great stuff! We serve 300+ libraries of all types, and are always ready to talk about libraries and books.

Book Bites are quick looks at a book from our Guest Host readers. Try a new book this week!

This week our Guest Host is admiring the Dean Koontz series about Jane Hawk. The first book in the series is The Silent Corner.

"“I very much need to be dead.” These are the chilling words left behind by a man who had everything to live for—but took his own life. In the aftermath, his widow, Jane Hawk, does what all her grief, fear, and fury demand: find the truth, no matter what. People of talent and accomplishment, people admired and happy and sound of mind, have been committing suicide in surprising numbers. When Jane seeks to learn why, she becomes the most-wanted fugitive in America. Her powerful enemies are protecting a secret so important—so terrifying—that they will exterminate anyone in their way."

Subscribe to our newsletter, our social media, and our podcasts to stay up to date on all kinds of great stuff! We serve 300+ libraries of all types, and are always ready to talk about libraries and books.

Book Bites are quick looks at a book from our Guest Host readers. Try a new book this week!

This week's episode was recorded live on site at the Great River Library System's Comic Con event!

Today we admire the book The Silver Eyes (Five Nights At Freddy's #1), by Scott Cawthon. "Ten years after the horrific murders at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza that ripped their town apart, Charlie, whose father owned the restaurant, and her childhood friends reunite on the anniversary of the tragedy and find themselves at the old pizza place which had been locked up and abandoned for years. After they discover a way inside, they realize that things are not as they used to be. The four adult-sized animatronic mascots that once entertained patrons have changed. They now have a dark secret . . . and a murderous agenda."

Subscribe to our newsletter, our social media, and our podcasts to stay up to date on all kinds of great stuff! We serve 300+ libraries of all types, and are always ready to talk about libraries and books.

Welcome to Happiness in Libraries bonus episode! Each month we are looking at a few stories about happy things that happen in libraries, or happy things that libraries contribute to their communities.

You can get links to all of the stories we shared on our website.

And if you have happy library stories of your own, send them to us! We are at [email protected], and would like to hear from you.

Book Bites are quick looks at a book from our Guest Host readers. Try a new book this week!

This week's show was recorded live at the Great River Library System's Comic Con event. Clyde talks about his work with comics, and with his comic podcasting!

Subscribe to our newsletter, our social media, and our podcasts to stay up to date on all kinds of great stuff! We serve 300+ libraries of all types, and are always ready to talk about libraries and books.

Book Bites are quick looks at a book from our Guest Host readers. Try a new book this week!

Today’s book is Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. "Who is John Galt? When he says that he will stop the motor of the world, is he a destroyer or a liberator? Why does he have to fight his battles not against his enemies but against those who need him most? Why does he fight his hardest battle against the woman he loves?

You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the amazing men and women in this book. You will discover why a productive genius becomes a worthless playboy...why a great steel industrialist is working for his own destruction...why a composer gives up his career on the night of his triumph...why a beautiful woman who runs a transcontinental railroad falls in love with the man she has sworn to kill."

Subscribe to our newsletter, our social media, and our podcasts to stay up to date on all kinds of great stuff! We serve 300+ libraries of all types, and are always ready to talk about libraries and books.

Book Bites are quick looks at a book from our Guest Host readers. Try a new book this week!

Here is our newest book, recorded live at Great River library's Comic Con event: Crank, by Ellen Hopkins "Kristina Georgia Snow is the perfect daughter: gifted high-school junior, quiet, never any trouble. But on a trip to visit her absentee father, she meets a boy who introduces her to crank. At first she finds it freeing, but soon Kristina's personality disappears inside the drug. What began as a wild, ecstatic ride turns into a struggle through hell for her mind, her soul, and her life."

Subscribe to our newsletter, our social media, and our podcasts to stay up to date on all kinds of great stuff! We serve 300+ libraries of all types, and are always ready to talk about libraries and books.

Book Bites are quick looks at a book from our Guest Host readers. Try a new book this week!

Today’s book is The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

"Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach. Everybody who is anybody is seen at his glittering parties. Day and night his Long Island mansion buzzes with bright young things drinking, dancing, and debating his mysterious character. For Gatsby---young, handsome, and fabulously rich---always seems alone in the crowd, watching and waiting, though no one knows what for. Beneath the shimmering surface of his life he is hiding a secret: a silent longing that can never be fulfilled. And soon this destructive obsession will force his world to unravel."

Subscribe to our newsletter, our social media, and our podcasts to stay up to date on all kinds of great stuff! We serve 300+ libraries of all types, and are always ready to talk about libraries and books.

Welcome to Happiness in Libraries! Each month we are looking at a few stories about happy things that happen in libraries, or happy things that libraries contribute to their communities.

We are in the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange. We are a multitype library system, and that means we are here to help all 300+ of our members. They are school libraries, public, academic, and special libraries. So they all serve different communities, and overlapping groups of people.

Libraries are great organizations, and can be so important to the communities they serve. Those communities can be an entire city or town that a public library serves, the teachers and students in schools, the patients, nurses, and doctors in hospitals, or whoever else the library community is serving. 

In these little bonus podcasts, we want to highlight some of the interesting and positive things a few libraries are doing! If you have some great things to share, send them to us at [email protected]. 

Thanks so much for joining us this week. It’s so great to have this time to spend together to enjoy the work libraries are doing all over the place! We hope you are inspired to take a few moments today to enjoy your library, and the work going on around you.