Due to the weird March 19th blizzard and the mayhem that was caused, I had the opportunity to open Espressions: Coffee & Community this morning.

 After getting all the opening tasks done, I highly contemplated digging into the book I tried to start reading yesterday during the blizzard. Instead, I poured myself a cup of coffee and dove into our Worldwide Reading Challenge spreadsheet. So many have asked where we are at with numbers and who is reading what, I wanted to get it all organized. It is hard not to get excited about seeing everyone’s reads. I am pretty sure my “To be read” list just grew by several books!

Let’s get down to numbers because I know you all want to know.

• Number of books read from Jan. 1 – March 19, 2025: 140 books logged. Click to see the most recent list!
• Total pages read from Jan. 1- March 19, 2025: 49,510
•  Average Book Length: 354 pages
• We have readers from Kansas, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Wyoming and Iowa. Can you help us get to all 50 states?
• Our youngest recorded reader is 8 years old and our oldest is 79. (Sharing your age is optional.)
• We’ve had a few of the same books recorded by our readers. Here are those that have it the list more than once:
  • "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” by J.K. Rowling
  • T. Kingfisher’s “The Saint of Steal" Series:
    • Paladin’s Grace
    • Paladin’s Strength
    • Paladin’s Hope
    • "What She Left” H.K. Cristie

This month’s winners are getting a journal with some stencils and a pen. They can use it for all kinds of things including a reading journal! Our winners are:

• Nebraska:           Justise Rhoden with her entry of “The Sea Witch” by Katee Robert
• Worldwide:       Kelly Hunter with her entry of “The Cliffs” by J Courtney Sullivan which she listened to as an audiobook!

While I was at the coffee shop, we had someone come into grab a drink and asked me about some of our activities. I was talking about our clubs that vary from book clubs to game night. In the process I took them to see our back room that is done up as a mix of the Harry Potter common rooms. They noticed that on the wall was a paper book case highlighting our “Friday Night Murder Club.” They asked, “So is it a game or a book club?” I just started to laugh because it was the first time I realized it was, in a way, BOTH.

Our Friday Night Murder Club started because Devin’s son sent her the following Instagram Post. “Cain’s Jawbone” is written by Edward Powys Mathers under the pen-name: Torquemada. It’s not your traditional murder mystery story!

The author was a well-known for his cryptic crosswords for the English newspaper “The Observer”.  When he wrote “Cain’s Jawbone” and published it, he did so the same way he does his puzzles, cryptic! He wrote this 100-page book and published it in random order. There are six murders and six murder victims. He doesn’t include the key. He hoped you’d cut the book apart and piece it together to solve it. When you do, you send your answer to the publisher. Since it’s 1934 publishing date, only four people have solved it! FOUR! None of the four belong to our Friday Night Murder Club.

Once again, we have a club at our shop where community came together around a book. What is great about this book is, those participating in it have learned so much. Each week they are discussing new words or poems or products from the bygone days. The variety of people that come Friday night or stop in during the week to leave notes are from as far away as Lincoln and Grand Island. It’s incredible that a book and in a way, a game, has such draw.

It’s things like the Friday Night Murder Club, any of our book clubs, and the  Challenge  that get me excited. Books connect us in so many ways, expanding our knowledge, taking us on grand adventures, giving us a chance to escape a bit, and expanding our depths of our imagination.

Thank you all for  logging your books! Please feel free to share this endeavor with your friends, book clubs, book stores, and more. Reading in integral to the human experience. It’s magic that shouldn’t be kept a secret.

We look forward to sharing more books, pages and prizes with you all! Have a great day. We hope it involves some delicious coffee and a great book. Ours sure will.

-Maile

PS: Friday Night Murder Club us Friday Night's from 5:30-6:30 p.m. Everyone is welcome. Check out our events.

PSS: The book I am reading is "Everything is Tuberculosis" by John Green