As Garth Brooks fans jostled in line cheek by jowl on the other end of downtown Saturday night, an alternative entertainment quietly transpired at the Minneapolis Central Library. Aptly billed as speed dating for book lovers, Bookmatch presents several Minnesota authors reading short excerpts from their latest works and engaging in a brief conversation with host, author and MPR personality Heather McElhatton. In the space of about an hour, McElhatton pleasantly power-chatted her way through six writers -- poet Ray Gonzalez ("Soul Over Lightning"), YA authors Will Alexander ("Ambassador") and Geoff Herbach ("Fay Boy vs. the Cheerleaders"), memoirist and gravedigger's daughter (really!) Rachael Hanel ("We'll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down"), longform journalist Neal Karlen ("Augie's Secrets") and multi-genre creative-writing prof Julie Schmacher, whose novel "Dear Committee Members" is hilariously structured in the form of an academic's letters of recommendation (that does not sound LOL funny on the surface,but it absolutely is,as she proved in her reading). In keeping with the "love match" theme, one attendee per author was chosen to receive a free book based on a short questionnaire. Karlen's 90-year-old father, Dr. Markle Karlen, was in the audience. Told by a fellow attendee that she'd known his son for many years, he retorted drily, "so have I." Herbach's "Fat Boy" protagonist, a teen named Gabe, shares at least one connection with his creator, the author revealed -- a terrible housekeeper named Doris who is fond of saying "Better laugh than cry." When he was growing up, Herbach said, his family's housecleaner would "spill dirty mop water all over the carpet or fall over and rip down the shower curtain, then say 'better laugh than cry.'" Sounds like a good motto for today's commute home in the "wintry mix" as well.