Albany Public Library discussion

Hello! We are so happy to see you back again! Or is this the first time? This week's theme is travel back in time, so you will forgive us if we are a bit confused about the times. Are you a familiar face or have we seen you in the future.

I hope you are having fun with the reading challenges so far. Here is our selection of book recommendations if you want to follow this week’s theme.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
Tales from the Café
This Time Tomorrow
The Frozen River
Time Travel: A History
The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780
Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America
Harlem Rhapsody
Absolution
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Glassmaker

If you are traveling linearly this week you will aim to have read 375 minutes or 6 hours and 15 minutes since you have started this challenge. Our discussion prompt is to have you tell us about a book that reminds you of earlier in your life or a favorite childhood book.

Ours will be in the comments!

Is this a mix of historical fiction and time travel books?

It is a mix of historical fiction and time travel, but some of them do a bit of both. For example, Frozen River, is a historical fiction novel, but some of the chapters switch between past diary entries and the present time from after the diary entry was written, so it goes back and forth in time.

Hello group! I must confess I have not been doing the best job of keeping track of my hours. This is no shocker as I was always the kid with a book who never updated their reading list.

That being said, I’m a teacher on summer break, so I’m reading at least 2 hours a day.

A book that reminds me of childhood and that I loved when I was younger is Lord of the Rings, because I read my dad’s copies.
I also remember loving Catwings by Ursula LeGuin, then using Google to try to remember the title so I could buy it for my kids 3 decades later. I also distinctly remember a book report on Sarah Plain and Tall in 5th grade.

Right now I’m doing a slow one year read of Le Miserables on a subreddit and I’m really enjoying being forced to slow down and talk about each chapter. I’m doing the same with Middlemarch. For contemporary, I’m going to burn through all of Liz Moore’s books, a new favorite author.

Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon series take me back, big L.M. Montgomery fan as a kid.

I read Heaven & Earth Grocery Store (recommended above) earlier this year, it’s a good book as related to time as it forced me to slow down my reading pace to fully understand all the connections. And I think it was a much better experience for having done so.

I’ve always been a horror and Gothic (literature) fan. While in college, I also became fascinated with the history of the Gothic (novel). What reminds me of my childhood or rather my tweens are all of Stephen King’s earlier works & writers like Victoria Holt and Daphne Du Maurier. In later years, from my studies, I discovered writers such as Charles Brocken Brown and Ann Radcliffe, etc. My Grandmother always had a collection of the “girl running away from the castle” Gothic romance paperbacks that I treasured.

I am currently reading The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix Harrow.

The book I am currently reading is Winter Sisters and it does take place in 1879.

When I was young, I loved reading Babysitters Club books and other books about teenage illnesses from 3rd-8th grade. However, the Harry Potter craze had begun when I was in High School and it was something I really enjoyed with my friends.

A nostalgic book I've been thinking back on a lot recently is The Boxcar Children, probably since we have nearly a whole shelf of the series at Pine Hills but not the first one, which was a childhood favorite of mine. The subsequent books were some of my go-to's in elementary school when the Scholastic Book Fair order sheets came around, but the kids-mystery formula also never grew on me quite the same way that the original story did. I was really fascinated by the inventiveness and resourcefulness of these kids; two instances that stuck with me were them using an alcove behind a small waterfall as a makeshift fridge, and the older brother earning them some money by entering a local track-and-field competition with a cash prize.

As for my progress, I'm still working my way through Robot Visions (nearly done with the stories that were already included in I, Robot, which I already listened to earlier this year) and planning to read Heavyweight: A Family Story of the Holocaust, Empire, and Memory for this week's theme.

Alicia wrote: "The book I am currently reading is Winter Sisters and it does take place in 1879.

When I was young, I loved reading Babysitters Club books and other books about teenage illnesses from 3rd-8th grad..."

I'm so happy to see some of the current kids "discovering" the Babysitter's Club. It cheers my heart!

Theresa wrote: "Hello group! I must confess I have not been doing the best job of keeping track of my hours. This is no shocker as I was always the kid with a book who never updated their reading list.

That bein..."

Wow, you are reading an incredible amount! I'd say that you can give your best guess as to when you've finished your 1000 minutes and we will make sure you get your tote. We want this to be fun, not another chore to add to your list!

Elizabeth wrote: "Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon series take me back, big L.M. Montgomery fan as a kid.

I read Heaven & Earth Grocery Store (recommended above) earlier this year, it’s a good book as re..."

I read The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store with my bookclub and we had a really good discussion. It gave us a lot to think about!

Tonia wrote: "I’ve always been a horror and Gothic (literature) fan. While in college, I also became fascinated with the history of the Gothic (novel). What reminds me of my childhood or rather my tweens are all..."

I can't tell you the amount of times I've heard people tell me that they got into reading because Stephen King and other great horror writers. (even if they might have been a bit young when they first read them!)

I haven't read the 10,000 Doors of January yet, but I read The Starling House and really enjoyed it, so I'm hoping to read more of this author!

Hannah wrote: "A nostalgic book I've been thinking back on a lot recently is The Boxcar Children, probably since we have nearly a whole shelf of the series at Pine Hills but not the first one, which..."

You are reading such a wide variety of books and they all sound so interesting! I've been reading A LOT of fiction books lately, so I think this is my sign to switch things up and check out a nonfiction book!

Books from childhood, I enjoyed are the Warriors series by Erin Hunter. I enjoy reading about these feral cats who are divided into clans. They disagree on a lot of things. When things disaster strikes, they learn to work together to solve the mystery. The books are more in-depth as the series continues.

I have also done a lot of minutes this week. So far, I have read 840 minutes.

As a member of a fantasy/sci-fi book club, Ive read a ridiculous amount of time travel theme books, however my most recent timey book was Oona Out Of Order for my regular fiction group, as it is more magical realism. Made for a wonderful book discussion on how we all would act if we found ourselves in our bodies from previous years or later one. We talked a lot about regrets or accepting life’s flow as meant to be.

Oh wow, speaking of going back in time, I had quite a flashback during Robot Visions this weekend. Early on in the short story "Some Day" I was struck by the use of "thereupon", which I remembered as a vocabulary word I encountered once in second grade (I was in a fifth grade reading level group at the time) and then never again. And the premise felt really familiar, too......a few more minutes in and, as the kids say these days, Core Memory Unlocked: it was indeed a short story that we'd read and discussed in my Reading and Language Arts class over 25 years ago, and I'd had no idea that it was written by Isaac Asimov! Although if anything of his (that I've encountered, at least) were to be found in an elementary school English textbook, it would definitely be this story: two schoolboys in an audio-centric computerized future learn about the ancient practice of reading and writing (which they call "squiggles") while trying to update a storytelling robot that seems to only know fairy tales. Quite a blast from the past!

I went back in time to 1930’s Albany by (finally) reading Ironweed

I read/listened to
Rednecks by Taylor Brown for around 3 hours. I’m interested in this event in Labor Union history- The Matewan Massacre in 1920. There’s plenty about Mother Brown-a Labor Union provocateur or angel depending on the POV.
This is historical fiction with lots of action, gnashing of teeth. Characters testing their limits; the male heroes are diverse, strong and capable even after being beaten to a pulp. The female heroes are barefoot, folky, caricatures. 3 hours was plenty for me.
I’m reading Butter for 15 minutes a day.
I’m reading Forever Barbie for 15 minutes a day. So probably another 2 hours…

Cam Jansen, the Bailey school kids, Junie B Jones, Nancy drew & the hardy boys are some of the best books I read when I was younger. I recommend them to kids whenever I can.

I’m happy the discussion prompt was on children’s books, on the 14th I finished a YA audiobook on hoopla called Blood in the water by Tiffany D Jackson

My favorite childhood book, and the book that really got me into reading as a kid, is Holes by Louis Sachar. I still have my original copy and treasure it. I also loved the A Series of Unfortunate Events books.

I was a little behind on my minutes last week but I'm quickly catching up...!

Missed posting earlier in the week, but finally was able to dive into Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil and WHAT A RIDE that was! (And definitely fits the “travel back in time” theme!) Admittedly I have been psyched about this one for a while because I LOVE VE Schwab and it lived up to the much deserved hype and my very high expectations!

… and I just realized I missed the discussion prompt!

I’ve always been fascinated with well written fantasy, especially when it weaves in historical fiction, and one of my all time favorite series as a child was The Indian in the Cupboard trilogy by Lynne Reid Banks. The first book was required reading in 4th grade and I wasted no time in gobbling up the subsequent volumes (and then seeking out some of her other books - The Farthest Away Mountain is lesser known and so so so so wonderful!)

I’m reading Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools by Mary Annette Pember. I rarely read non-fiction but this is a topic I have been interested in for a while.