The owner of Pearl Street Books, Beth Hartung, and La Crescent’s public library director, Jess Witkins, stopped in the WIZM studio to discuss, what else, books, including the best of 2024, book bans, reading as a New Year’s resolution, and what’s changed in popularity over the year and years.

This is part of a series of La Crosse Talk PMs about New Year’s resolutions, as we discussed a couple of different strategies to help get you reading more — and how to stick with it. 

We also talked about a shift in popular genres over the years — including to fantasy to horror to unsolved murders — plus what’s been most popular in 2024 and what is a must read this year, and ever.

We discussed book bans, how Wisconsin and Minnesota have handled those and making sense of why they happen.

Other things we hit on included buying used and the two instances when you should buy new, plus reading physical books versus a digital copy. 

Hartung has owned Pearl Street Books downtown for three years, and talked about some of the events she’s been holding there to make the store more inclusive and a third space. Witkins has been with the library systems eight years and talks about programs they have and what’s been popular to the public there, lately.