{"id":92366,"date":"2025-08-18T17:34:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T17:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/92366\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T17:34:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T17:34:09","slug":"september-book-discussions-announced-enterprise-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/92366\/","title":{"rendered":"September book discussions announced – Enterprise Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Decorah Public Library staff will host five book discussions in September. All groups are open to to the public, and newcomers are encouraged to attend. Anyone interested should call the library at 563-382-3717 to learn more or to reserve a copy of the book. To join any of the groups\u2019 email distribution lists, contact ktorresdal@decorahlibrary.org<\/a>. Multiple copy sets are generously provided by Friends of Decorah Public Library.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Happy Hour Book Group\u00a0will meet at Pulpit Rock Brewing Co. on\u00a0Wednesday, Sept. 10 at 5:15 p.m.\u00a0to discuss\u00a0West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge. Woodrow Wilson Nickel, age 105, feels his life ebbing away. But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling the unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave. It\u2019s 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the Atlantic. What follows is a twelve-day road trip in a custom truck to deliver Southern California\u2019s first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. Behind the wheel is the young Dust Bowl rowdy Woodrow.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0History Book Group\u00a0will meet on the second floor of the library on\u00a0Thursday, Sept. 18 at 3 p.m.\u00a0to discuss\u00a0The World After Gaza: A History\u00a0by Pankaj Mishra.\u00a0The World After Gaza\u00a0uses the current war\u2014and the strong, divided reactions to it\u2014as a starting point to rethink two dominant 20th-century stories: the Global North\u2019s tale of defeating totalitarianism and spreading liberal capitalism, and the Global South\u2019s vision of racial equality and freedom from colonialism. As global power shifts and the North loses its unquestioned dominance, Mishra suggests that it\u2019s vital to understand why these two worlds are struggling to communicate.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Friday Book Group ill meet on the second floor of the library on\u00a0Friday, Sept. 19 at 2 p.m.\u00a0to discuss\u00a0Memorial Days: A Memoir\u00a0by Geraldine Brooks. Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz, suddenly collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf. Three years later, Brooks booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. There, she pondered the various ways in which cultures grieve and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Speculative Short Fiction Group\u00a0will meet via Zoom on\u00a0Wednesday, Sept. 24 at 6 p.m.\u00a0to discuss\u00a0She\u2019s Always Hungry: Stories\u00a0by Eliza Clark. From Eliza Clark comes a fierce, visionary and darkly comic story collection.<\/p>\n

A woman welcomes a parasite into her body. A teenager longs for perfect skin. A scientist tends to fragile alien flora. A young man takes the night into his own hands.\u00a0Unsettling, revelatory, and laced with her signature dark humor, Clark\u2019s debut short story collection plumbs the depths of that most basic human feeling: hunger.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Speculative Fiction Book Group\u00a0will follow at approximately\u00a06:30 p.m.\u00a0via the same Zoom link to discuss\u00a0The Ministry of Time\u00a0by Kaliane Bradley. In the near future, a civil servant lands her dream salary\u2014only to learn she\u2019ll be working for a new government ministry testing the limits of time travel. Her job is to be a \u201cbridge,\u201d living with and monitoring an \u201cexpat\u201d plucked from history: Commander Graham Gore, presumed dead in 1847 on Sir John Franklin\u2019s doomed Arctic expedition.<\/p>\n

Gore struggles to adjust to modern life\u2014washing machines, Spotify, the collapse of the British Empire\u2014but his curiosity and a lively circle of fellow expats help him settle in. What starts as an awkward roommate arrangement grows into something entirely different. When the Ministry\u2019s real agenda is revealed, the bridge must decide if what they\u2019ve found together can survive\u2014and whether her next choice could change the future itself.<\/p>\n

Zoom links for the speculative groups are available on the library website.<\/p>\n

For more information, contact\u00a0Tricia Gunderson\u00a0(Friday Book Group) or\u00a0Kristin Torresdal\u00a0(Happy Hour, History, and Speculative Fiction Book Groups) at 563-382-3717.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Decorah Public Library staff will host five book discussions in September. All groups are open to to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[223,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-92366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}