Our Current Season
2025-26
We will provide a link to YouTube when the video of each program becomes available.
Thank you BATV!
Thank you BATV!
Books Between Bites is held in the large Founders Room at Batavia Public Library
10 S. Batavia Avenue, Batavia, IL Noon - 1 PM
Third Thursday/month (except as noted)
Third Thursday/month (except as noted)
September thru May Reservations NOT required
At the end of each presentation, there is always time
for Q&A and discussion.
for Q&A and discussion.
Our Next Program:
Thursday
March 19, 2026
Lester Munson
On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports
by Christine Brennan
Lester Munson has been a nationally-known commentator, former ESPN senior writer and legal analyst, and WTTW Chicago Tonight guest. For this annual visit, he turns his sports focus and perspective toward women’s basketball and the sensational star athlete, Caitlin Clark, and all she has brought to the explosive interest in her sport.
Munson has added the book Football by Chuck Klosterman. In this recently published book, he shows how football is different from all other sports and argues that football is doomed. He predicts that the sport will be gone within three or four decades.
2025-26 Program Schedule
Thursday
September 18, 2025
Mayor Jeff Schielke
The legacy of those who are considered amongst Batavia’s most prolific book readers
Mayor Jeff Schielke wears the mantle of resident historian and is devoted to finding and sharing interesting things about Batavia and its people. This time he shares his discoveries of certain Batavians and the role some of them had in the actual writing of a published book.
Link to program video:
Thursday
October 16, 2025
Roger Breisch
Kuleana: A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai’i
by Sara Kehaulani Goo
Batavian Roger Breisch has brought us many programs. This one comes from a special place in his heart. He describes the book as a warm, generous, insightful, touching e komo mai into the author’s life. The work, on one level, is an exploration of the kuleana she and her family feel for a sacred piece of property in Hana on the island of Maui. It spoke to me about the extraordinary beauty and unbearable and tragic fragility that is Hawai’i.
Link to program video:
Roger met the author at a book signing in Hawaii in August 2025.
Thursday
Nov. 20, 2025
Marnie O. Mamminga
Author
Mary C. ParksIllustrator
Songs of the Lake
Marnie Mamminga & Mary Parks return to share the third and final book in their Finding Wisdom in Nature series. Songs of the Lake follows the award-winning The Woodpecker’s Song and The Wolf Song in Me. The series is a song trilogy focusing on themes of Dreaming Big, Facing Fears, and Listening to Nature. Seeking to open a child’s heart and mind to the creative power of observation in the natural world, Songs of the Lake is the story of a child’s discovery that sound carries over water and nature’s melodies echo long after leaving the lake. Parks will demonstrate the paper-tearing techniques she uses to create her lovely illustrations.
Thursday
December 18, 2025
Jim Benes
Author
Christmas In Chicago
Jim Benes, now retired in Batavia, was long an editor with WBBM News Radio in Chicago. In 1980, he created a Christmas feature from past news articles about Christmas in Chicago entitled Christmas Past. The annual presentation became a tradition broadcast for many years and two book editions share his collection of stories: Seasons of Joy - Chicago Celebrates the Holidays. Perhaps you used to hear him tell these stories on the radio. Come meet Benes, whose voice is familiar to so many.
Link to program video:
Thursday
January 15, 2026
Pam Otto
The Way of the Hermit My Incredible 40 Years Living in the Wilderness
by Ken Smith
Naturalist Pam Otto returns to our program with a book gifted to her in her retirement from St. Charles Park District this past year. It has been a great read as she explores her new life of “leisure” and felt it a good one to share with our Books Between Bites audience. Perhaps she’ll give us some tips on how to enjoy nature in one’s retirement.
Link to program video:
Thursday
Feb. 19, 2026
Karl Bruhn
Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time
by David Prerau
Batavian Karl Bruhn is a retired history teacher and presenter at Books Between Bites for a number of years. He is fascinated by this book and is eager to share the interesting untold stories of the development of daylight saving time. The book weaves a tale of science, history, and politics and will be shared 17 days before we have to “spring forward.”
Link to program video:
Thursday
March 19, 2026
Lester Munson
On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports
by Christine Brennan
Lester Munson has been a nationally-known commentator, former ESPN senior writer and legal analyst, and WTTW Chicago Tonight guest. For this annual visit, he turns his sports focus and perspective toward women’s basketball and the sensational star athlete, Caitlin Clark, and all she has brought to the explosive interest in her sport.
Thursday
April 16, 2026
Cynthia Wade
The Catcher Was A Spy:
The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg
by Nicholas Dawidoff
Cynthia Wade, a Fox Valley resident, is a life-long learner and veteran presenter.The Catcher was a Spy contains sports, WWII history and is a study in human behavior. This true story of Morris “Moe” Berg tells a back story of espionage. He is the only man that has his Major League Baseball (MLB) card in the International Spy Museum in Washington D.C. and his Office of Strategic Services(OSS) / Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) identification card in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Join us to learn of this intriguing story.
Thursday
May 21, 2026
Daniel Russo
Breaking Architectural Conventions and Societal Norms: a Discussion of
Loving Frank
by Nancy Horan
Daniel Russo is the president of the Batavia Public Library Board of Trustees and is a senior docent at Geneva’s Fabyan Villa Museum. Loving Frank focuses on the years 1907 to 1914, when Frank Lloyd Wright was establishing his reputation as a ground-breaking architect and having a norm-breaking affair with a client, Mamah Borthwick. Russo will show us some of Wright’s buildings in the area and explore Borthwick’s struggles with society’s expectations. Ultimately, their relationship ended in tragedy, providing scandalous headlines for newspapers across the country
