My reading goal for the year is 75 books. Right now I am at 59. This seems like a good time to talk about some of my favorites of 2024 so far.

Back in 2019, when I was in library school and working at the Whitefish Bay Public Library as an intern, my boss put me in charge of hosting a monthly mystery book club. I had been in book clubs for decades, but I had never organized one, so this was a new challenge.

Summer has officially begun. While I love the warmer weather and spending time outside, my favorite season is fall because that’s when many big authors drop their new books! We recently ordered a bunch fall releases and while it’s still months before you can dive in, you can go into CountyCat now and place a hold. Get on the list early and you’ll be reading your favorite author’s book right after the release date.

Love mysteries and thrillers but don’t like all the violence and scary plotlines they usually have? Then Cozy Mysteries may be for you! Cozy Mysteries are a subgenre of mystery novels and are a gentler version of graphic crime dramas. Usually the violence is minimal, the detectives are amateurs and the setting takes place in a small, cozy community. These novels involve a puzzle to be solved with clues interspersed throughout the storyline and have a clear conclusion at the end as to whodunit and why. The main protagonist in the story is rarely a professional and is more than likely to be a community member that stumbles upon a clue and feels compelled to investigate the situation. Most protagonists are women like the famous Miss Marple but they can also have animals as main characters as in Purr M for Murder, the first book in the Cat Rescue Mystery series by T.C. LoTempio, in which Toby the cat helps his owner solve a mystery.

You may have heard of March Madness for basketball but have you heard of March Mystery Madness at the library? March is a great time of the year to enjoy a good mystery and libraries across the country use this month to focus on the Mystery genre. Mysteries are a form of literature that typically involve a crime or circumstance that needs to be solved. Mysteries can include the supernatural and usually have a suspect that the story revolves around.

It appears that winter is upon us even at this early pre-Thanksgiving date. It’s cold, snowy, and dark, and I want to put on my fuzziest pajamas and not leave the house until May. This is not a good state of affairs. Winters in Wisconsin are too long to give in completely. It’s important to keep active, get out of the house, and see other people. One way to do this is to check out the free programs and activities that we offer at the library.

Today it’s not uncommon for folks to have a number of different devices that they can read and listen to books on. Transporting an iPad with 10 books downloaded is so much easier than stuffing 10 physical books in your luggage. So chances are you’ve heard about our digital collection of e-books and e-audiobooks in the Wisconsin Public Library Consortium (WPLC) collection available through Overdrive or Libby. If you are familiar with the collection, you may know that at times the holds list for e-books is much longer compared to the printed copy. There are a number of reasons why this occurs.

NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. It is an annual contest that began in 1999 to write a 50,000 word novel in the thirty days of November. Hundreds of thousands of people all over the world undertake this challenge. The idea is just to write, not to edit or second guess yourself, but just to write. It is a fantastic way to jumpstart the writing process and get the words on the page, 50,000 words to be exact.

I will be hosting a new mystery book club on Thursday evenings starting on March 7, at 7 pm. I have chosen the first three mysteries as a jumping off point. It is my hope that if we have regular attendees, then we can vote on which titles we would like to read. Here are some other mysteries that I have read and enjoyed, and some that I would like to explore.

Hygge (hoo-guh) is the Danish word for the mood of being cozy, comfortable, and wellness. It is the time of year for hygge when we light candles to stave off the darkness of winter and wrap up in a fuzzy blanket against the cold. Why not add a book to your hygge?! There is a genre of books called “cozy mysteries” that I think would be perfect for practicing hygge. A cozy mystery is a subgenre of crime fiction where the violence is toned down, the detective is an amateur, and the suspect remains unknown until the very end to allow the reader to figure out, or try to, the “whodunit”. Think of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple for example. So wrap your kids up in a warm blanket and reach for one of these kid-friendly cozy mysteries!

As the summer winds down, I realized that one of my favorite things in the Youth Services department is when a family comes in before a vacation, and each kid leaves with a teetering stack of books, having been instructed by their parents to get enough for a week or 10 days. It is clear that they are headed to some idyllic spot with no Internet, and the family will have to entertain themselves without screens or devices. As adults, we rarely have this kind of time to devote to reading, and it really is a shame that we get distracted by work, household chores and Netflix. What would you choose to read if you had an uninterrupted week to do so?

Interested in reading local? The last few years there have been a number of really great books that are written by Wisconsinites. Whether you like fiction or nonfiction, mystery or graphic novels, there’s something here for everyone.

Everyone enjoys a good mystery now and then (or if you’re like my Dad, that’s all he reads). With this in mind, here are five excellent mysteries by Scandinavian authors that you can find on the shelves at Whitefish Bay Public Library. Enjoy!