The Hartland Public Library staff chat about their favorites – books, audiobooks, movies, and more that you can check out from the library.
Find a new author! Discover a new genre!
Find episodes here or on your favorite podcast app – iTunes, Spotify, Pocketcast, Amazon music, etc!
1. Click on the episode link below for a list of all the books we talked about in that episode.
2. Then Click on a title to request an item.
Episode 16 – April 2023 (click for the list of books)
In our 16th episode Nancy talks about Bravehearted, the Women of the American West by Katie Hickman (2022) and how our popular culture version of the West is very unlike the day to day real life experiences of women. Especially those women’s voices we don’t hear from – Black women, Indigenous women, and Chinese women. Nancy also takes a wild ride with The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise by Colleen Oakley (2023) and its two unlikely road buddies Louise, 81 and recovering from hip surgery and Tanner, 21 and recovering from a soccer injury and loss of a college athletic scholarship. Nancy’s third book is a small gem by Paul Harding, This Other Eden and she’d like to see it reach a wider audience.
Peggy starts with two non-fiction books to help you understand and be your best self. Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain, 2022 and The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance – What Women Should Know by Katty Kay & Claire Shipman, 2014. Peggy always has a new/old discovery from the Children’s Room and today she goes back over 100 years to discover, The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit, 1906.
Episode 15 – February 2023 (click for the list of books)
In this episode, we welcome special guest, Lyndsie Perkins, the Interim School Principal at Hartland Elementary School. Lyndsie has been reading audiobooks on her commute to school and her book is When the Adults Change Everything Changes: Seismic Shifts in School Behavior by Paul Dix (2017) and how she is sharing those ideas with staff at the elementary school. Liz shared her new favorite Hartland Library Book Discussion pick, The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (2012) and why it is a kind of fairy tale for adults. And Traci talked about the joys of expanding your reading comfort zone to include new genres. Traci’s talks about time travel in the book, A Rip Through Time by Kelley Armstrong (2022), a time-traveling, historical fiction page turner. She also talks about the experience of reading graphic novels, and how amazing the kids in the Hartland community are. A Rip Through Time by Kelley Armstrong (2022), a time-traveling, historical fiction page turner.
**Please note that we weren’t able to edit out the “Your meeting is being recorded” message and it plays during our intro.** The book Lyndsie talks about is on order and will be available soon.
Episode 14 – November 2022 (click for the list of books)
In this rainy day episode, Peggy discusses a “Delicious” memoir by Ruth Reichl, goes back to a simpler time with the L.M. Montgomery classic, Anne of Green Gables, and talks about The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben.
Erik also headed back in publishing time, to the future with Ursula Le Guin’s 1968 classic, A Wizard of Earthsea and the Coretta Scott King honor book, Black Hands, White Sails by Pat and Frederick McKissack which details the bravery of black sailors who were desperate to escape slavery and became whalers. They also discuss the connection between whaling and the abolitionist movement.
Correction: In this podcast, Erik refers to Ged, the protagonist of A Wizard of Earthsea, as black. The character’s skin color is described as “red-brown” in the book. The importance of diverse characters in fiction was championed by Le Guin. We offer this correction in support of the text and in continuing to challenge our assumptions.”
Episode 13 – September 2022 (click for the list of books)
In this episode Nancy finds three pageturners – Chemistry Lessons by Bonnie Garmun; Remarkably Bright Creatures which feature an octopus as a main character; a novel set in the 1950s with housewives and dragons; and a bonus brownie sundae of a cozy mystery. Peggy shares a book about how we breathe, takes a hike with the Day Hiker’s Guide to Vermont, and gets real with Hello Molly!, a memoir by Molly Shannon.
Episode 12 – June 2022 (click for the list of books)
Erik, our newest member of the Hartland Library staff, shares their love of sci-fi and a cinematic graphic novel. Liz reads an fantastical Nora Roberts series and tells us about the pleasures of escaping into another world. They each share the good and the bad of series fiction and why it’s okay to judge a book by its cover.
Episode 11 – May 2022 (click for the list of books)
Amy and Peggy share a few of their favorites this month. Peggy talks about food books. A lovely Ruth Reichl memoir about her years as editor of Gourmet magazine and a book by fiction author Barbara Kingsolver and her daughter Camille about their family’s experience trying to grow the food they eat for one year. Peggy also shares another from one of her favorite authors, Gary Paulsen.
Amy talks about a YA book from popular author John Green about a former child prodigy who loves anagrams and has been dumped by girls named Katherine 19 times, as well as author T J Klune’s YA debut novel about a queer fanboy with ADHD and the heroes he loves.
Episode 10 – April 2022 (click for the list of books)
Nancy and Peggy talk about a few of their staff favorites on this month’s episode. Nancy discovers a novel in letters about food and friendship that takes place in the 1960s and a gender bending historical novel based on the real life of Dr James Miranda Barry born as Margaret Anne Bulkley in 1979 Cork, Ireland.
Peggy has a great way of re-discovering older titles on the library shelves and sharing them with a new audience of readers. She starts of with Patrick Taylor’s Irish Country Doctor series and a well known children’s series from the 1980s.
We wrap it up with a couple of non-fiction books, one an investigative journalism report on Green Bank, West Virginia and the internet and cell phone free area surrounding the Green Bank Observatory; and a book about the Japanese practice of Forest Bathing. Can you guess who chose which title?
Episode 9 – March 2022
Some great staff favorites this month! Amy our Children’s Librarian talks about the Libba Bray YA novel, The Diviners (2012) and if you haven’t discovered it yet…the ever popular YA Jackie Faber series. Yay for pirates! Yay for pirates who identify as a girl!
It’s Liz’s first time on the podcast. She’s our new Community Engagement Librarian and plans adult programs and is our marketing and social media specialist. Liz is chatting about two books that were on our monthly book discussion list, Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate (2017), a novel based on the real life story of Georgia Tann, director of an adoption organization, kidnapped and sold children to the highest bidder; and The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo (2019) is a coming of age novel set in 1930s Malaysia and has an ending which surprised Liz.
Episode 8 – February 2022
We’re back!! This month Dennise and Peggy talk about a few of their favorite books and one movie. Dennise discovers two books with “house” in the title and a novel that has a mystery inside a Hello Kitty lunchbox. Peggy talks about honeybees, Paris, and a film about the creation of a sustainable farm on 200 acres outside of Los Angeles.