❤️ Romance Book Fair, a cozy review and a new bookstore in Fairmont!
Book of the week
'Partita' by Barbara Kingsolver
When Barbara Kingsolver told her musician friends that she was trying to write about what it felt like to play music from the inside, they cheered her on.
Most writers, she told me in a recent interview, wrote about what it was like to experience it from the outside.
Kingsolver's central character, Livia, aspires to be a concert pianist and finds the language to describe what it is like to surrender to the wonder of making music.
“...the alto, tenor and bass lines would unfold themselves like a letter sent from the vibrations in my ears….”
The novel, “Partita,” is composed not unlike a cantata, as the plot swings between Livia’s sublime first love and the upheaval that will change her life.
— Kerri Miller, MPR News
Guess the writer answer: Pat Conroy
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🤔 What's the newsroom reading?
When a book compares itself to Gilmore Girls and invokes a Sheryl Crow song, I have high standards. "If It Makes You Happy" by Julie Olivia is a cozy fall romance set in 1997 Vermont. Michelle is a big city woman from Seattle who is now running her mother's small town bed and breakfast after her death. Cliff is the charming divorcee next door. The two must figure out what a second chance at love looks like.
Fall romances are my forte during the Halloween season. "If It Makes You Happy" placed me alongside pages with deep world building and fully fleshed characters. I sped through the book dreaming of crunchy leaves, apple fritters and '90s music.
Beyond romance, the book also covers topics like mother-daughter relationships, grief and masculinity.
The deadline to apply to be the next Minneapolis poet laureate has been extenced to Oct. 14. Applicants must be Hennepin County residents, but preference will be given to Minneapolis residents.
A new bookstore has opened in southwestern Minnesota! Evermore Books is located in Fairmont
and will be open Tuesdays through Fridays 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., Saturdays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays noon to 5 p.m.
While our local book news usually sticks to three entries, we would be remiss to not mention the news about Paperback Exchange. After a devastating flood two years ago,
the south Minneapolis bookstore has found a new home and plans to open by Independent Bookstore Day in April!
Are you a local author, bookstore or literary lover? Send your book news to sstroozas@mpr.org and we'll add it to the newsletter.
To mark the fall member drive, Kerri Miller dips back into three conversations she’s had this year with authors who write about nature — and thus, wrestle with how climate change is remaking our planet.
Kawai Strong Washburn's propulsive new novel “The Names of the New World” brings tornadoes to Minneapolis. That storm throws together three strangers whose lives will become entangled over the next 25 years.
In her new book, “Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made,” historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez reveals the often hidden world of white Christian women.
