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Winter Reads with Maddie in WY
37 Plays17 days ago
Recently read
- Maria: Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty
- Maddie: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Book Reccomendations:
- New book: You Like it Darker by Stephen King
- Backlist book: Animal Farm by George Orwell
- Local Author: Cowboys and East Indians: Stories by Nina McConigley
Book End: Cozy Winter Reads
- The Shining by Stephen King
- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
- Thank You For Listening by Julia Whelan
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Checkout Stack Podcast
00:00:19
Speaker
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Checkout Stack, where we talk books with a new librarian every episode. I am your host and the world's biggest library superfan, Maria Skogin, and I'm so excited to introduce our guest today, Maddie, from Natrona County Library in Wyoming. Maddie, thank you for being
Maddie's Journey and Library Insights
00:00:36
Speaker
here today. Can you introduce yourself to our guests and tell us a little about you and your library?
00:00:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's good to be here. So yeah, my name is Maddie, like you said. um i I work for a Naturna County Library here in Casper, Wyoming. And I am fairly new to library work, actually. I just started like 18 months ago. So it's a pretty new world to me.
00:01:00
Speaker
But libraries are not new to me. So I was a library kid. I've been going to the A library since I was, before I could walk. My mom was the mom, like hauling me into the library, you know, at like three. And then when we moved to Wyoming, when I was about 10, this library, the Naturna County Library became my home library. So this library is quite special to me and it feels pretty cool to like, that I get to work here now.
00:01:27
Speaker
And it's funny, i was I was just thinking the other day about when I graduated college, I did initially think about going to school for library science. And I ended up not making that choice, but it's just funny that, I don't know, 15-ish years later, now here I am yeah in the library where where it all started. So it feels pretty full circle.
Cultural and Outdoor Life in Casper
00:01:51
Speaker
I think that's one of the really great things about libraries. It's like most of the people who work in them just love libraries in general. And no matter how they got there, it's like a pretty unique job site that it's like everyone there is really into the concept of a library and loves reading. For sure. Yeah. Like everybody's really jazzed to be here. Like it feels like a lot of the time. So it it feels like a good place. Yeah.
00:02:17
Speaker
And then can you set the scene for us? Tell us a little bit about Casper, Wyoming. What kind of an area is it? So Casper is this little mountain town in the middle of the state. Essentially, we're pretty centrally located and Naturna County Library serves our whole county. So it's about 70,000 people. And, you know, Casper is most of that. A lot of the towns surrounding Casper are much, much smaller. And then we do also have a sister branch in Edgerton, which is a neighboring community.
00:02:47
Speaker
that is part of our system as well. And Casper is a metropolitan kind of for Wyoming. So it's like Casper and Cheyenne and maybe Jackson are like the big ones. And so we do serve a lot of um a lot of people here in town. And yeah, Casper is one of those places where it's like It's becoming more sort of culturally diverse and like there's more to do, especially more when than when I was a kid. And we're also sort of like an outdoor recreation place. So there's like a lot of stuff to do downtown, but also like a lot to do outdoors. So we kind of have that sort of diverse things to do for people here. Awesome. Yeah.
Book Reviews: Leigh Ann Moriarty and Barbara Kingsolver
00:03:29
Speaker
Well, let's go into our recent reads so I can kick us off first. I just yesterday finished Here One Moment by Leigh Ann Moriarty. For those who don't know, Leigh Ann Moriarty is a blockbuster author. She sells tons and tons of copies, New York Times bestseller, and it's pretty common that her books get turned into television series. So she's she's a pretty popular one.
00:03:56
Speaker
This novel takes place or the the concept is that there is a plane taking off in Australia. All of her books are set in Australia. And as they're in the air, a elderly woman walks down the aisle, points to each individual person and predicts the age and their cause of death. ah Yeah. He goes all the way through the plane and then sits back down and passes out.
00:04:23
Speaker
So obviously people are pretty startled by this, but a lot of people write it off. And then the rest of the book is following those people going about their lives. And of course, as the story progresses, you start to see ah deaths begin to happen, which is when it gets interesting because now people are questioning whether or not it's real and then making decisions about their life based on whether or not they believe it.
00:04:47
Speaker
I really like Leigh Ann Moriarty, but this one was not a home run for me. Every chapter switches between characters and it took a really long time to get to know an individual character enough to be invested in them. And I kind of felt like she maybe wrote this book for television.
00:05:05
Speaker
And so it would be more interesting watching it as TV, but in written form, the context switching was too much for me. um Every other chapter also goes back to the woman who made the predictions. And I felt like that was a lot of time with that character as opposed to the ones whose lives are being affected. So I didn't feel like that weighed very well.
00:05:26
Speaker
So yeah, overall, it wasn't a home run. If you're interested in reading Lianne Moriarty, I would recommend Nine Perfect Strangers or What Alice Forgot. But I will still read everything she writes. So that was mine. That's awesome. Yeah, I've never read Lianne Moriarty. So i'm I'm happy to know that that's not where I should start. But thank you for giving me context. Yeah. Yeah, like, and the premise sounds so good. And I'm not saying don't read it. But if it's your first Lianne Moriarty, start somewhere else.
00:05:55
Speaker
Right, right. Good to know. So my recent read was Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. And I probably, I think the only other thing by Kingsolver I've read was like in middle school, like the bean trees. I think a lot of people read that or at least an excerpt of that one. So it's been a really long time and I'm pretty unfamiliar with her other work.
00:06:21
Speaker
But I so the book is about a boy named Damon, but everybody calls him demon because he's he's kind of a troublemaker and they call him Copperhead because he has red hair and his dad also had red hair. So and they're also he's also sort of like not snake-like, but like unpredictable, like a snake. So that's where that name comes from. He's raised in Southern Appalachia in Lee County, Virginia, and it's essentially just about ah his life and from when he's like a little boy.
00:06:59
Speaker
and just sort of the but stuff he deals with. So his mom is a drug addict. The book talks a lot about addiction and just sort of the those issues in that part of the country with opiates and fentanyl and heroin and that kind of thing. And that it's set in like the late 90s, early 2000s when that stuff was really starting to become a problem. And it sort of gives you this sort of real, not real world, it is fictionalized, but this sort of context of the the damage that that this industry did to this region of the country. And as I was reading about the book, Barbara King Silver actually structured the book after David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, and Dickens
00:07:48
Speaker
famously wrote a lot about poverty and you know government's failure to protect children, in you know especially in 1800s England. and so She used that as a foundation for this story to talk about poverty here in America, to talk about addiction, to talk about the foster system and child protective services and how so often in this country that that fails children and they fall through the cracks and it's it's it's sort of this playing out of how that impacts this boy and it follows him from childhood to adulthood so it it just has a lot of like heartbreak and
00:08:29
Speaker
But there is hope in it, which I, it it's a quite long book and it's not like horrific, like sadness the whole way through. So that I did feel like there was some hope sprinkled in there's figures in Damon's life that are crucial to him becoming, you know, the adult that he becomes both for good and bad, for good and bad. And every time a character in this book would come through his life that, that you knew was going to be a good influence or someone who cared about him. like i just You just felt like so hopeful that this was going to go well and sometimes it did and sometimes it didn't. But I was so impressed with her writing. just i mean
00:09:15
Speaker
her writing is really just just high but also like so accessible and it didn't feel like a long book which sometimes when you're reading a really long book it can feel just like a labor but this didn't feel like that at all i i had a hard time putting it down and it really did speak to a lot of of things that that that our country is going through right now and just even that part of the country and i think it was It was really great. And I was happy that I read. And it's a departure for me genre wise too, which was interesting to just sort of try to, I'm trying to diversify what I read. So yeah, so that I felt like it was a good example of like contemporary literature, which isn't something that I i read a lot. So yeah, I really was great.
00:10:03
Speaker
I also read this one and I will say like don't let the David Copperfield reference scare you. um Like Maddie was saying, it is very accessible. ah You would not realize that it was based off of a Charles Dickens novel if someone hadn't told you that. so Yes, for sure. Yep. That was Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver.
Exploring Stephen King's Latest and Revisiting Classics
00:10:25
Speaker
ah Next up, we're going to go into our book recommendation portion of the show. So to kick us off, we are going to talk about a new book. This is something that's come out within the last year. Maddie, what do you have for us? So the new book I chose was You Like It Darker Stories by Stephen King. And this is Stephen King's newest release earlier this year. It's a collection of short stories.
00:10:51
Speaker
Some of which were unpubled previously unpublished, some were published elsewhere, and others were sort of locked away in his vault for many years, and he has sort of released them now. So this was a fun read for me. There were some, obviously it was short story collections, they're not all going to be winners, they're not all great, but there were some that really stood out. There was a couple that I that i really wanted to highlight, so Rattlesnakes,
00:11:20
Speaker
was one of them. one of the longer so Some of them are short stories and some of them are long enough to be novellas, so Rattlesnakes was one of those, which is actually a sequel to Kujo, which admittedly I've not read Kujo, but you didn't really have to know anything about Kujo to enjoy the story. um and Essentially it's about... I'm sorry. Sorry, I said it stands alone. It stands alone, yeah. and But it's about the the husband from Kujo and He's much, all of it's been like 30 or 40 years since that story. And he's he's moved, he's house sitting for someone in Florida. So he's away from home in a new community. And he starts talking to his neighbors and learns about a woman who walks around the neighborhood with an empty twin baby stroller. And she thinks there's kids in the in the stroller. And so she's a little like,
00:12:16
Speaker
There's issues. she's She's lost her twins and she kind of still acts like they're there. And so it's sort of like a sad, kind of a sad story. And you find out later that this isn't a spoiler because it's in the title, but that the boys were killed by rattlesnakes and there was like this rattlesnake problem on the on the island a long time ago.
00:12:37
Speaker
and It sort of shifts and becomes a ghost story because the main character starts seeing the boys and seeing sort of things that he can't explain and yeah so it it sort of becomes this.
00:12:53
Speaker
supernatural story about grief and you know he's also mourning his own family that were killed you know from the story of Kujo so he he can relate to this woman who's lost her children in sort of a horrific violent way. So I think something about Stephen King that I really admire is is how honestly he writes about grief and just things that happen to us in life that that you can't explain or that you can't rationalize. and He writes about these difficult things in life through a genre, which isn't always easy to do. and I think he always he does it really successfully in this story. and
00:13:36
Speaker
I like genre stuff, sort of horror thrillers that have something important to say as well. yeah And I found that this story was really, had a lot of good things to say, important things to say about grief. Yeah. That's a great point about Stephen King, that he doesn't, like he writes things that are horrible and scary, but he also writes about things that like really connect with people and are hard to talk about. So it's more than just a thriller. That's, I think that's a good observation. Yeah, for sure.
00:14:05
Speaker
And there was just a couple other ones in there. Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream is about a ah guy who um has a dream about a gas station near his home where he's sure he sees someone is buried there, a girl. And he sort of grapples with whether he should report this or not because no one knows where this girl was buried.
00:14:32
Speaker
how would he possibly know where this girl was buried if he didn't kill her himself? So he, you know, he he ends up reporting it and then this whole just rigmarole of law enforcement and they try to pin it on him and he has to try to figure out like, how do I prove that it that I didn't kill her? I have to find the guy who did. And so it kind of becomes this sort of murder mystery and this sort of cat and mouse game with the federal law enforcement. and I thought that was a really like engaging and just like scary and fast paced story, which was really great. So yeah, there was quite a few others that were really great. But as a whole, I thought the book was really strong, the collection was really strong. And I think for King fans, especially reading the acknowledgement at the end, and sort of gaining context about
00:15:20
Speaker
how some of these stories were really important to him or he's been trying to write them for 30 years and he finally figured it out or whatever. i like There's a lot of good like Easter eggs in there that if you're a King fan that are fun. so Super fun. Well, that was You Like It Darker by Stephen King. and Do you want to repeat the two short stories in particular you talked about? Yeah, it was Rattlesnakes and then Danny Coughlin's Bad Dreams. Awesome. Thank you.
00:15:48
Speaker
Next up, we're going to go into a backlist title. So the purpose of this recommendation is to give you something that you could potentially go check out today without having to wait for months and months and months for it to come in on the hold list. Maddie, what do you have for us in the backlist? So in the backlist, I chose Animal Farm by George Orwell, which sounds like something your English teacher assigned in middle school, which it probably was. I was going to say, they Yeah, exactly. And I revisited Animal Farm probably 20 years later, and then really recently a year ago. And I am always so... So i I've only read two by Orwell, 1984 in Animal Farm. And
00:16:35
Speaker
I'm always so just floored by how contemporary his books are, how contemporary they how can everybody feel, considering Animal Farm in particular was written like 80 years ago, or published 80 years ago.
00:16:47
Speaker
and Like Animal Farm, I listened to it this time, so it was an audiobook production. And it was just so phenomenal. If you haven't listened to Animal Farm, like listen to it, it's great. It's available on Libby. It should be any anyway at your library. So for if you don't know what Animal Farm is, it's it was what's called a beast fable.
00:17:10
Speaker
which is just you know a fable with animals as you know speaking and acting like people. It's about a farm and the animals on the farm and how they sort of overthrow the humans and run the farm themselves. It's an an allegory for the slow creep of authoritarianism. And George Orwell wrote this around the end of the Second World War and he was sort of making commentary on the rise of Stalinist communism in Russia, in the Soviet Union at the time. And he was famously just disgusted by Joseph Stalin and you know the stuff that was going on in the Soviet Union at the time. And so he wrote this book and initially it was like no one would publish it. It was very unpopular.
00:18:01
Speaker
um And then eventually he managed to get it published and it just exploded. I mean, but i think like especially once people sort of gained perspective after the world the Second World War ended, I think that's really when people started to to take to it more. The book is just, there's moments in this book that are so chilling to me.
00:18:24
Speaker
and prescient and I just think I even wrote a couple quotes that have just stuck with me for years since then and and more recently now that they're really familiar like really in recent memory. The big one that I think most people will know if you've read it is all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. Like it's just chilling like I just am floored to this day of how how much he was able to say illustrating it with animals and how how much you empathize with the animals and it's just really baffling and the last line in the book is the creatures outside looked from pig to man and from man to pig and from pig to man again but already it was impossible to say which was which.
00:19:17
Speaker
It's that is like I've read a lot of horror and that might be the most horrific ending to a story I've ever heard and just the idea that You know people in power even if they have good intentions in the beginning can be corrupted and can just control the people below as they perceive below them and it's such a It's such a great book. I just wish everyone would read it and just take it to heart. It doesn't feel like it was written 80 years ago, which I know a lot of people, when you think of the classics, you think, God, it's going to take me forever to get through it and it's going to be dense. And this book is just not like that. It's so accessible and the language is so contemporary feeling. and And I just think it's, it should be required reading for everyone, but it still manages to be like fun and engaging and terrifying.
00:20:10
Speaker
Is the audiobook a full cast recording or is it just one narrator? It's just one narrator. The one that I listened to was just one narrator, but he was exceptional and he just, you could tell the difference between every character and he was really great. Really, really great. Do you hear the animals coming through his voice at all? Yes. That's interesting. Big time. like he each character has their own nuance and their own like because you know they're like the pigs are like the the leaders and you can tell their pigs like he yeah he just evokes like each animal and each character with such precision it's great that's cool that's like a work of art all on its own yeah for sure that was animal farm by george orwell
00:21:00
Speaker
Next up, we want to highlight a local author to the community that our librarian is in. So
Local Literature and Minority Perspectives
00:21:05
Speaker
Maddie, you're in Natrona County in Wyoming. ah Is your author specific to the county or just in Wyoming? She actually grew up here in Casper, so specific to Natrona County. Yeah. Great. And what is the book? So the book is Cowboys and East Indians Stories by Nina McConoughly.
00:21:26
Speaker
So Nina is a local author and we've actually, this past year we we did a book club with her book and she drove up, she she lives in Colorado now, but she drove up for our book club and we got to, everyone got to speak to her and talk about the book with her, which was really, really great. That's really cool. Yeah, it was fun. and The book is a collection of short stories about growing up in Wyoming as a minority. And in her case, she is um of Indian descent. Her mother is Indian and her dad was white. The stories are fictional, fictionalized, but they're based in her experiences and also those of her family and friends. And there's just, the book is, it's very,
00:22:14
Speaker
accessible and I think has a lot of really interesting things to say about growing up, you know particularly in the Mountain West, when you don't look like people who live here generally. you know and If you're non-white, that can be difficult. and I think she she had a lot of really good and relatable stories you know from men working in the oil fields to you know um an Indian girl who grew up in Wyoming and is going to school in Laramie you know at the university but is trying to make friends with like the Indian exchange students. And there was just like a really great differences in the stories that she told. And you know some were quite sad and you know there was sort of this longing for, but particularly if they came here you know as adults,
00:23:08
Speaker
There's a longing for familiarity and just how different the cultures are and how those can clash and maybe how you you know don't feel like you belong and also people who were raised here.
00:23:22
Speaker
you know, and then go back to India in this case to see family and sort of feel out of place there. And there's sort of this, this sentiment throughout the book of like, I'm not Indian enough, but I'm not like white, you know, like Wyoming and enough, you know, to fit in. And so I think there's sort of that, she talks in each story, I feel like there's this sort of this theme of like the in between, and which I think is, is,
00:23:48
Speaker
is a really important, and like something that doesn't maybe get talked about enough is is sort of that feeling of of being caught in between two worlds. And she does such a wonderful job of weaving that into each story. and And those stories aren't connected, but there's sort of this overarching theme throughout, which I thought she did really, really well. And we're proud that she's but she is from here, so. Yeah, and I i feel like that's a very common like first generation American born like em parent urged your parents are immigrants feeling like I've read that across a lot of different stories of people whose families come from different places. Yeah, but that theme kind of runs through where it's like you don't like you're part of your home, your parents culture, but you're also not and you're part of American culture, but you're also a kind of not. Right. Yeah. So that's cool that you can kind of see it across all these different places.
00:24:42
Speaker
Yeah. So that was Cowboys and East Indians Stories by Nina McConaughey. Okay. Next, we're going to go into our bookend topic. So Maddie has chosen a topic for us and she's going to share three titles on it. Maddie, what is your topic? So my topic is cozy winter reads. hu So just things that, you know, books that you can read when it's dark and cold and you just want to be inside and you know
00:25:13
Speaker
okay co's good i I will preface by saying not all of these books are cozy particularly. Yes, no, you're 100% right. the first The first book that I chose was The Shining by Stephen King, which sounds not cozy at all. But to be honest, I actually do perceive the shining as cozy. Murder and scary things aside, like the idea of being like in a hotel or anywhere really, alone in the wintertime, sort of like encased in snow and like you can't leave and that's like one of the things I love about living in Wyoming or the Mountain West in general is just like
00:25:55
Speaker
There are times when it's so snowy you don't wanna go outside or you can't go outside in some cases. And you're just, you know, cuddled up at home and you sort of feel like you're in a cocoon. I don't know. It's a very cozy feeling even if the shining is horrifying and scary.
00:26:09
Speaker
Yes. I, as a Minnesotan and now a Montanan, I can relate to what you're saying. Like that does sound cozy to me, but I know a lot of people that, like that sounds horrible. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So I think it's definitely like you have to have grown up or live in a climate where that is the case and, and just like resign yourself to that being your situation. So yeah, like, so The Shining is not a new book. It's one of Stephen King's older ones.
00:26:38
Speaker
And it's about a family who moves to Colorado to take care of a hotel in Estes Park that is closing for the season. So in a lot of those ski towns, you know, they close up because it just gets too snowy for anybody to get there. And so he and his family move into Jack Torrance and his family move into the, the overlook for the winter.
00:27:04
Speaker
And to sort of be the caretakers, Jack, who is struggling with like alcoholism and abusing his family and that kind of thing, there's there's some precursors to things not going well before they even get to Estes Park. Yeah, his it the the book book is essentially about his like slow descent into madness. The hotel is sort of a character in and of itself and is sort of creating this atmosphere. And there's ghosts and there's scary things happening. and he's already struggling and then you add in the hotel causing chaos and he just slowly yeah just like descends into madness and is starting to scare his wife and child and you know he's supposed to be writing a book and he is not writing a book. he just like it's It gets real scary real fast. There's themes of domestic violence and alcoholism and like so yeah like substance abuse and also just like
00:28:01
Speaker
you know you just want like the wife to like just get out of there like the whole time you're just like rooting for her. And so I think it's it's one of those books that still holds up, man. like it's It's still terrifying to this day. so Yeah. And of course, the movie, if you finish the book, is and renowned. Yes. And the hotel is is based on a real place that you can go visit. It is, yeah. and Yeah, and famously, the Kubrick movie is very different from the book. So they're two very different experiences, which is fun. I actually visited the Stanley, which is the real hotel in Estes Park a couple of years ago. And it felt a little bit like a pilgrimage, which was fun. All right, the first book for our cozy winter reads was The Shining by Stephen King. What do we have next?
Cozy Reads and Adventurous Narratives
00:28:51
Speaker
The next one I picked was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline Langel.
00:28:55
Speaker
And I picked this one for this specific cozy winter read because I read Madeline Gold was like the first my introduction to science fiction when I was like 12 years old. And it she just changed my life. Like she is incredible. She's an incredible writer. But I remember reading and I've reread it since then, but I remember reading it for the first time and just feeling the The cozy like familial safety of the Murray's kitchen, it still to this day like warms my heart, like just how like close the family was and how like warm and inviting their kitchen felt, even just as a 12-year-old like reading the book.
00:29:40
Speaker
I actually don't know anything about a wrinkle in time. so Okay. So tell me more what the family, there's a family that has a cozy kitchen. Yeah. So a ring. So it's about a girl named Meg who she, her father is missing and he's been missing for years and they don't know where he is. And he was working on like this secret project. They're like physicists, her parents, and they were working on this like secret project and he went missing while working on the project and these,
00:30:09
Speaker
I guess you could call them witches, although they're not really witches. They're more like extraterrestrial beings sort of visit her and her her brothers. They end up going on this like space Odyssey to find her dad because they know where she, they know, they know where he is. So they have to travel through space to get to this planet where he's being held. um And so it's essentially about like Meg and her, her brother and her friend going on this adventure.
00:30:38
Speaker
to save her dad. And they end up on this planet where it's Earth-like, but it's like, it's it's like a, what is it? Like a hive of mind situation. So there's like a central thing that's controlling everyone. And so everyone is doing like the same things at the same time. It's very eerie. And um and a lot of the book is about Meg, you know, she's like 13. So she's,
00:31:07
Speaker
She's in that really awkward stage where she doesn't know who she is or what she's doing and she just feels out of sorts all the time and which is very relatable when you're a teenager. It's just sort of about her finding her courage and her bravery to do what she needs to do to save her dad, to just push against sort of the authorities that are stopping her at every turn, you know, to to bring her dad home.
00:31:35
Speaker
So it's a very like and adventurous. and And this book was written in the 60s. And having like a female protagonist in a sci-fi adventure like was not happening a lot. So it was like very like very progressive and like very you know new for its time. So it's it's just one of those books that just really like turned my world upside down as a kid.
00:31:57
Speaker
Yeah. Great. I love that these are more backlist picks. Um, so that one was a wrinkle in time by Madeline Langel. All right. Last up, what do we have? So the last one is called Thank You for Listening by Julia Whelan. Julia Whelan is actually an audiobook narrator. She narrates a lot of books. She's really wonderful. But she wrote a book. She's written several, but this one is the one I've read. And it's it's kind of like a rom-com. But it's about an audiobook narrator who falls in love with another audiobook narrator.
00:32:36
Speaker
sort of like sorting like baby yes yes and It's very much set in that world of actors who who've turned to to audiobook narrating. yeah It's sort of like a ah story of like mistaken identity. and it has these you know sort of this She has like this tragic backstory of why she ended up in audiobook narrating, which I won't spoil. but like It's very much more than like a romantic comedy, but it just sort of has the roots of that. And I love a romantic comedy that's, that's not.
00:33:12
Speaker
that doesn't, it doesn't hit as much of those like archetypes. Like it's a little more like off the wall, which is so much more fun to me. But I also like love the romantic part of it too, which is fun. And I i think like romantic comedies aren't necessarily like associated with winter, but I for some reason perceive them as something that I read in the winter because it just, I don't know.
00:33:34
Speaker
It's like love and romance. It's a romantic time. Yeah, exactly. It's like cuffing season or whatever they call it. So I always just think of romantic comedies like this, like thank you for listening as winter reads. Right. And yeah, it's just, it's a really sweet story. And if you're not familiar with the auto book narrating world, it just gives you like a cool, like a kind of a cool insight into that world, which is fun. Right. I really enjoyed that one. Books for bookish people.
00:34:01
Speaker
Yes. And she narrates her own book, which is- I was about to ask, did you listen to it? Do they even print it and why they did? Exactly. What's the point? Yes. but like Okay. Required for audio for this one then. Yeah. Yes. For sure. Okay. Fun. All right. That was Thank You for Listening by Julia Whelan. That was a great little winter sack. Thank you for that, Maddie. and that wraps up all of our book segments so now is the part of the show where we like to give some space to our librarian to plug anything for their library so do you have anything for us for the netrona county library in wyoming so i don't have anything specific that i want to plug but i do think
00:34:45
Speaker
Being a newer to the library world, I did feel really kind of blown away by the number of
Natrona County Library Services Overview
00:34:53
Speaker
services. And I know we talked a lot about books today and obviously books are a big part of libraries, like big part of libraries. But I think a lot of people don't know how much other stuff libraries offer. So services and classes and activities, all sorts of things that ah libraries offer that a lot of which were new to me and I'm sure might be new to to your listeners. So I just want to touch on like a few things that are specifically our library does that I think are just incredible. So we have a library of things, which is a literally a library of stuff that are not books that you can check out. So podcasting equipment, video equipment, sewing machines, like pretty much anything you can think of. Tennis rackets.
00:35:41
Speaker
which I think is so such a fun addition to just the services that libraries offer. We offer notary services for free. If you need something notarized, we'll do it for free. Obviously, adult and children classes, activities, we have a maker space where you know we have sewing machines and ah glow forges and cricket cutters and that kind of thing where you can make crafts and there are classes to teach you how to use those machines, which is really great. We have a lot of some digital access to things. you know We have Libby, which allows you access to ebooks, e-audio books with your library card, and it's all free. We recently got signed up with Canopy, which is streaming movies and TV shows for free with your library card, which is incredible. I've never even heard of that, Canopy? Yeah, Canopy with a K. And not all libraries have it, but your library might, and so it's worth looking into. And if they don't, you could maybe suggest
00:36:39
Speaker
maybe they could get signed up for it. Yeah, Canopy is great. And then like just like book clubs, like that we have book clubs here that we run. And then we also have book club kits that you can borrow that are literally just like a bag with, you know, six to 10 copies of the book, they come with discussion questions. So it's a really great like to start your own book club, you know, which is really awesome.
00:37:03
Speaker
And I just, there's so many great things in the library. You know, we offer passport services, especially in rural and like small communities. Like libraries pull a lot of weight and they do a lot of things in the community for people. And I just find that like so heartening and like encouraging. And I think in addition to the books, which I love so much, I think it's really awesome that that we do all this other stuff too, to help our community.
00:37:30
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and I love that because libraries are local, right? Like they can solve problems that are very specific to the community, like the passport services or like local election. Like how do you sign up to vote and register? yeah Yeah, I would strongly encourage anyone who's listening to just go read their library's website and find out any kind of programs or things that you probably didn't even know that they have because you're totally right. Like we talk about books because I'm a nerd and I love books, but libraries, I'm obsessed with libraries because they really are resources for communities that are very unique. So for sure I love that. Thank you for sharing all that.
00:38:13
Speaker
OK, well, this has been a wonderful episode. If you enjoyed listening, please give us a five-star review to help us grow our numbers. If you are a librarian and you're interested in being on the show, please reach out to me at the checkout stack at gmail dot.com. All righty, listeners, thank you for joining us today. Now go forth and use your public library.