This new feature on the KAXE Morning Show, Where We’re Reading adds to our staff librarian Tammy Bobrowsky’s longtime program, What We’re Reading. We'll learn about the business of books in rural places and what the community is reading.
PARK RAPIDS — There’s an art to recommending a book. “It’s scary for the bookseller,” said Jennifer Geraedts from Beagle and Wolf Books and Bindery. “So often we get people that come in and say, ‘tell us what to read,’ and they really want to hear our recommendations. And you have to be careful with that.”
Geraedts thinks one of the best ways to recommend but not oversell a book is to ask questions and listen. “A good question is ,'What’s the last book you’ve read,'” she explained, “Sometimes they end up walking out the door with something completely different.”
Beagle Books opened in downtown Park Rapids in 2001 by Jill and Deane Johnson. Sally and Bob Wills purchased Sister Wolf Books in Dorset then purchased Beagle Books in 2007. In 2015, the stores were combined, including not just the bookstore, but also a bindery. Geraedts is the bookbinder at the store.
“I’m mostly repairing books, a lot of Bibles, as you can imagine, but I’ve also done a lot of cookbooks over the years.”
Geraedts joined the KAXE Morning Show and told us about what she’s hearing from customers recently. “It seems to me like people are really hungry for historical novels right now, and so we try to point them, maybe towards the ones they don’t know about, but we think we think they will enjoy.”
She talked about the book Unsinkable by Jenni L. Walsh. “It’s about a woman that worked on the Titanic, and we all know how that went,” she said. Turns out, it wasn’t the first boat she had worked on.
It wasn’t even the first boat that sank.
“She kept going back and working on ships and they would sink and you think, why would you ever set foot in a boat again?”
Like many readers, Geraedts likes audiobooks. “I’ve been listening to this fantastic book called Bulgarian Women of Tehran. It’s a friendship story set over years in Iran.”
Like Wildflower Bookshop in Grand Rapids, customers can buy audiobooks that benefit independent bookstores through Libro FM,
Independent bookstores are back
“We’ve had kind of a mini explosion of independent bookstores in outstate Minnesota.” Gaerdts said each bookstore has a different feeling or vibe, so customers get a different experience.
Along with hosting author events, Beagle and Wolf Books and Bindery offers reading retreats and the Second Annual Reading Roadtrip. “We’ve got our own little passport, and if people visit all five of us in the month of August, then at the last store they can fill out their passport and be entered into a grand prize drawing.” Prize baskets include books, socks, pens, puzzles and other items targeted to readers.
They also host two fall reading retreats that are nearly full. Held Oct. 11-13 and 25-27, readers stay at a lodge near Park Rapids and come to the weekend having read the same three books. The books chosen are Gilded Mountain by Kate Manning, How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair and The Brightest Star by Gail Tsukiyama.
As always, we want to know what you are reading! And we want to know about your favorite bookstore!
Join our What We're Reading community on facebook, and catch up with author interviews on KAXE here.
Have a favorite independent bookstore? Let us know!
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