Monday, September 30, 2019, 12:30pm
Monday, September 30 through Friday, October 25, 2019. Read by Jim Fleming. 2019-2020’s Go Big Read Selection! From Pulitzer Prize winner, New York Times-bestselling author and UW Alumni Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story of how food was made safe in the United States and the heroes, led by the...
Monday, September 16, 2019, 12:30pm
Monday, September 16 through Friday, September 27, 2019. Read by Karl Schmidt. "A River Runs Through It" is a semi-autobiographical account of Maclean's relationship with his brother Paul and their upbringing in an early 20th-century Montana family in which "there was no clear line between religion...
Monday, September 9, 2019, 12:30pm
Monday, September 9 through Friday, September 13, 2019. Read by Jim Fleming. In his latest book, acclaimed Wisconsin writer Jerry Apps presents the first comprehensive history of the CCC in Wisconsin. Apps guides readers around the state, from the Northwoods to the Driftless Area, creating a map of...
Monday, August 19, 2019, 12:30pm
Monday, August 19 through Friday, September 6, 2019. Read by Norman Gilliland. Will Post, a celebrated and sometimes controversial columnist, is a professor on the MV Explorer's Semester at Sea program, sailing around the world teaching the ups and downs of travel writing, while navigating the...
Monday, July 22, 2019, 12:30pm
Monday, July 22 through Friday, August 16, 2019. Read by Jim Fleming. As the new Chairman of the Town Board, Fiona Campbell finds that life has become a series of petty squabbles, dull meetings, and papers everywhere, all complicated by her guardianship of the as yet unidentified screaming goat. In...
Wednesday, July 3, 2019, 12:30pm
Wednesday, July 3 through Friday, July 19. Read by Susan Sweeney. As her Wisconsin community endures a long season of drought and feels the shockwaves of World War II, fifteen-year-old Cielle endures a more personal calamity: the unexpected death of her father. On a balmy summer afternoon, she...
Monday, June 10, 2019, 12:30pm
Monday, June 10 through Tuesday, July 2, 2019. Read by Michele Good. Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions. But everything changes when...
Monday, May 20, 2019, 12:30pm
Monday, May 20 through Friday June 7, 2019. Read by Karl Schmidt. Fishermen do love to tell stories, and Linda Greenlaw loves collecting them. In this memoir she pulls together a variety of stories into an afternoon at the Dry Dock Bar. (Hyperion; ISBN-10: 1401300707 ) Theme: John Adams: Naive...
Monday, April 29, 2019, 12:30pm
Monday, April 29 through Friday, May 17, 2019. Read by Jim Fleming. It's November 1958 and the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden in New York City is about to begin. Into the rarefied atmosphere of wealth and tradition comes the most unlikely of horses - a drab white former plow horse...
Monday, April 8, 2019, 12:30pm
Monday, April 8 through Friday, April 26, 2019. Read by Catherine Brand. Terry Ryan's mother Evelyn was amazing. She raised 10 children, and supported her alcoholic husband, by entering -- and winning one out of four -- popular contests in the 1950's. She wrote jingles, and poems, and a hundred...
Monday, March 18, 2019, 12:30pm
Monday, March 18 through Friday, April 5, 2019. Read by Norman Gilliland Much like human families, tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, and support them as they grow, sharing nutrients with those who are sick or struggling and creating an ecosystem that mitigates...
Monday, February 25, 2019, 12:30pm
Monday, February 25 through Friday, March 15, 2019. Read by Jim Fleming and Susan Sweeney January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb. . . . Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration of the written word in all its guises and of finding connection in the most surprising ways. (Dial Press: ISBN-10: 0385340990 | ISBN-13: 9780385341004) THEME: Eric Coates: Summer Days Suite; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra - John Wilson, conductor (Avie AV 2070)
Monday, February 4, 2019, 12:30pm
Monday, February 4 through Friday, February 22, 2019. Read by Cynthia Woodland This is a story, as the title says, of justice and redemption, but it’s more. It’s about the criminal justice system in this country, and about the death penalty…and about people. Mostly it’s about people. (Spiegel...
Monday, January 7, 2019, 12:30pm
Monday, January 7 through Friday, February 1, 2019. Read by Jim Fleming. Willa Drake can count on one hand the defining moments of her life. In 1967, she is a schoolgirl coping with her mother's sudden disappearance. In 1977, she is a college coed considering a marriage proposal. In 1997, she is a young widow trying to piece her life back together. And in 2017, she yearns to be a grandmother. Then, one day, Willa receives a startling phone call from a stranger. (Knopf; ISBN: 0525521224 ) THEME: “Just Like A Woman” by Bill Frisell from the album “Have A Little Faith”
Thursday, December 27, 2018, 12:30pm
Thursday, December 27, 2018 through Friday, January 4, 2019. Read by Jim Fleming. This 1844 Charles Dickens’ novella concerns the disillusionment of Toby "Trotty" Veck, a poor working-class man. When Trotty has lost his faith in Humanity and believes that his poverty is the result of his...
Monday, December 17, 2018, 12:30pm
Monday, December 17, 2001 through Wednesday, December 26, 2018. Read by Jim Fleming in 2001. Luther and Nora Krank, having sent their daughter off to work for the Peace Corps, sense an opportunity. "We won't do Christmas," says Luther, and books a cruise instead. Their neighbors find this decision unseemly, to say the least, and the humor of the story is in how the Kranks respond to pressure. The Kranks may want to skip Christmas, but you won't. (Doubleday; ISBN: 0385505833 )
Monday, December 3, 2018, 12:30pm
Monday, December 3 through Friday, December 14, 2018. Read by Carol Cowan in 1990. In this sixth book in the Little House series, the town of De Smet is hit hard by the brutal winter of 1880. Laura and her family face the winter as best they can. (HarperCollins; ISBN-10: 0060264608 )
Friday, November 30, 2018, 12:30pm
Friday, November 30, 2018. Read by Jim Fleming. "The Eye of Edna" is an essay from the collection "The Essays of E.B. White." The author, one of the founders of The New Yorker magazine, lived in Maine at the time and writes of spending a day listening to the radio while announcers track the...
Monday, November 12, 2018, 12:30pm
Monday, November 12 through Thursday, November 29, 2018. Read by Jim Fleming. Raymond Kaquatosh was born in 1924 on Wisconsin’s Menominee Reservation. The son of a medicine woman, he spent his boyhood immersed in the beauty of the natural world and the traditions of his tribe and his family. When...
Monday, October 29, 2018, 12:30pm
Monday, October 29 through Friday, November 9, 2018. Read by Norman Gilliland and Sam Wood. A young cartoonist becomes one the early “embedded journalists” when he serves as a volunteer infantryman during World War I documenting the harsh realities of combat life for his Iowa newspaper. (University...
