Author: Decorah Public Library

Decorah Public Library staff are hosting six book discussions in November. The groups are open to the public and newcomers are encouraged to attend. Anyone interested should call the library at 382-3717 to learn more or to reserve a book. Zoom links are available on the Library’s website or you can email ktorresdal@decorahlibrary.org to be added to any of the six groups’ email distribution lists. Funds for multiple copy sets were generously provided by Friends of Decorah Public Library.

For more information, contact Tricia Crary (Friday Book Group), Zach Row-Heyveld (Cookbook Book Group) or Kristin Torresdal (Happy Hour, History, and Speculative Fiction Book Groups) at 563-382-3717.

The Happy Hour Book Group will meet via Zoom Wed. Nov. 9 at 5:15 p.m. to discuss Karen Joy Fowler’s “Booth.” In 1822, a secret family moves into a secret cabin some thirty miles northeast of Baltimore, to farm, to hide, and to bear ten children over the course of the next sixteen years. Junius Booth—breadwinner, celebrated Shakespearean actor, and master of the house in more ways than one—is at once a mesmerizing talent and a man of terrifying instability. One by one the children arrive, as the country draws closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war.

The Cookbook Group will meet in the library’s lower level meeting room on Thursday, November 10 at 6:30 p.m. for the potluck and final discussion of “Baking with Dorie” by Dorie Greenspan. Every recipe is easy and accessible, made with everyday ingredients. You’ll find ingenious twists like Berry Biscuits. Footlong cheese sticks made with cream puff dough. Apple pie with browned butter spiced like warm mulled cider. A s’mores ice cream cake with velvety chocolate sauce, salty peanuts, and toasted marshmallows. It’s a book of simple yet sophisticated baking. Like all of Dorie’s recipes, they lend themselves to being remade, refashioned, and riffed on.

The History Book Group will hold a hybrid meeting Thurs. Nov. 17 at 3:00 p.m. to discuss chapters 1-7 of Orlando Figes’ “The Crimean War: A History.” In-person attendees will meet in the lower-level public meeting room at the library and digital attendees will join via Zoom. The Charge of the Light Brigade, Florence Nightingale—these are the enduring icons of the Crimean War. Less well-known is that this savage war (1853-1856) killed almost a million soldiers and countless civilians; that it enmeshed four great empires—the British, French, Turkish, and Russian—in a battle over religion as well as territory; that it fixed the fault lines between Russia and the West; that it set in motion the conflicts that would dominate the century to come.

The Friday Book Group will meet via Zoom Fri. Nov. 18 at 2:00 p.m. to discuss Anthony Doerr’s “Cloud Cuckoo Land.” Constantinople, 1453: An orphaned seamstress and a cursed boy with a love for animals risk everything on opposite sides of a city wall to protect the people they love. Idaho, 2020: An impoverished, idealistic kid seeks revenge on a world that’s crumbling around him. Can he go through with it when a gentle old man stands between him and his plans? Unknown, Sometime in the Future: With her tiny community in peril, Konstance is the last hope for the human race. To find a way forward, she must look to the oldest stories for guidance.

The Speculative Fiction Book Group will meet via Zoom Wed. Nov. 30 at 5:15 p.m. to discuss Ryka Aoki’s “Light From Uncommon Stars.” Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has delivered six. When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka’s ear with her talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She’s found her final candidate.

The Speculative Fiction Novella Group will meet via Zoom Wed. Nov. 30 at 6:15 p.m. to discuss Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone’s “This is How You Lose the Time War.” Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions, and what began as a battlefield boast grows into something more. But the discovery of their bond would mean death—there’s still a war going on, after all.

5-Biking Field Trip*
7-Baby Dance Party
10-Storytime in the Park
11- Take-and-Make:  Daffodil Planting*
12-Biking Field Trip*
13-Stroller Walk
14-Family Yoga
17-Storytime in the Park
18- Take-and-Make: Apple Prints*
19: Crafternoon at Phelps Park*
19: Up in the Garden Book Walk begins
20-Stroller Walk
20-Up in the Garden Book Walk Kick-off Party*
21-Family Yoga
25-Take-and-Make: Corn Cob Painting*
26-Crafternoon at DPL
27-Stroller Walk
28-Family Yoga

*Preregistration required

Decorah Public Library staff are hosting six book discussions in October. The groups are open to the public and newcomers are encouraged to attend. Anyone interested should call the library at 382-3717 to learn more or to reserve a book. Zoom links are available on the Library’s website or you can email ktorresdal@decorahlibrary.org to be added to any of the six groups’ email distribution lists. Funds for multiple copy sets were generously provided by Friends of Decorah Public Library.

For more information, contact Tricia Crary (Friday Book Group), Zach Row-Heyveld (Cookbook Book Group) or Kristin Torresdal (Happy Hour, History, and Speculative Fiction Book Groups) at 563-382-3717.

The Happy Hour Book Group will meet via Zoom Wed. Oct. 12 at 5:15 p.m. to discuss Liese O’Halloran Schwarz’s “What Could Be Saved.” Laura Preston is a reclusive artist at odds with her older sister Bea as their mother slowly slides into dementia. When a stranger contacts Laura claiming to be her brother who disappeared forty years earlier when the family lived in Bangkok, Laura ignores Bea’s warnings of a scam and flies to Thailand to see if it can be true. But meeting him in person leads to more questions than answers

The Cookbook Group will meet in the library’s mezzanine on Thursday, October 13 at 6:30 p.m. to discuss “Baking with Dorie” by Dorie Greenspan. Every recipe is easy and accessible, made with everyday ingredients. You’ll find ingenious twists like Berry Biscuits. Footlong cheese sticks made with cream puff dough. Apple pie with browned butter spiced like warm mulled cider. A s’mores ice cream cake with velvety chocolate sauce, salty peanuts, and toasted marshmallows. It’s a book of simple yet sophisticated baking. Like all of Dorie’s recipes, they lend themselves to being remade, refashioned, and riffed on.

The History Book Group will hold a hybrid meeting Thurs. Oct. 20 at 3:00 p.m. to discuss Woody Holton’s “Unruly Americans and the Origin of the Constitution.” In-person attendees will meet in the lower-level public meeting room at the library and digital attendees will join via Zoom. The framers of the Constitution who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 were determined to reverse America’s post-Revolutionary War slide into democracy. The primary purpose of the Constitution was to make America more attractive to investment, which meant taking power away from the states and ultimately away from the people. That the framers were only partially successful in curtailing citizen rights is due to the reaction of unruly average Americans. 

The Friday Book Group will meet via Zoom Fri. Oct. 21 at 2:00 p.m. to discuss Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray’s “The Personal Librarian.” In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J.P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs: she was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard.

The Speculative Fiction Book Group will meet via Zoom Wed. Oct. 26 at 5:15 p.m. to discuss John Elizabeth Stintzi’s “My Volcano.” On June 2, 2016, a protrusion of rock is spotted by a jogger growing from the Central Park Reservoir. Three weeks later, when it finally stops growing, it’s nearly two-and-a-half miles tall, and has been determined to be an active volcano. As the volcano grows and then looms over New York, an eight-year-old boy in Mexico City finds himself transported 500 years into the past; a scholar in Tokyo studies a folktale about a woman who descends a mountain and destroys a village; a writer in Jersey City struggles to write a sci-fi novel; a nurse tends to refugees in Greece while grappling with the trauma of living through the bombing of a hospital; a nomadic farmer in Mongolia is stung by a bee, magically transforming him into a creature that aspires to connect every living thing into its consciousness.

Following the Speculative Fiction Book Group, the Speculative Short Fiction Group will meet at 6:15 p.m. via the same Zoom link to discuss the following stories from Ted Chiang’s collection “Exhalation:” “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” “Exhalation,” and “What’s Expected of Us.”

6-Take-and-Make: Crocus Planting*
6-Dog Tales
8-Stroller Walk
8-Fall Process Art in the Park*
9-Baby Dance Party
12-Storytime in the Park
13-Take-and-Make: Milkweed Planting*
14-Biking Field Trip*
15-Stroller Walk
15-Fall Process Art in the Park*
16-Family Yoga at Driftless Yoga Center
17-Mississippi River Museum Ocean Odyssey*
19-Helping Services Playgroup in the Park
20-Take-and-Make: Fall Lantern Making*
21-Biking Field Trip*
22-Stroller Walk
22-Naturebrary: Outdoor Art*
23- Family Yoga at Driftless Yoga Center
27- Take-and-Make: Leaf Mask*
27-Dog Tales
28-Biking Field Trip*
29-Stroller Walk
30- Family Yoga at Driftless Yoga Center

Decorah Public Library staff are hosting six book discussions in September. The groups are open to the public and newcomers are encouraged to attend. Anyone interested should call the library at 382-3717 to learn more or to reserve a book. Zoom links are available on the Library’s website or you can email ktorresdal@decorahlibrary.org to be added to any of the groups’ email distribution lists. Funds for multiple copy sets were generously provided by Friends of Decorah Public Library.  

For more information, contact Tricia Crary (Friday Book Group), Zach Row-Heyveld (Cookbook, Quick Bites Groups and Troubled Water) or Kristin Torresdal (Happy Hour, History, and Speculative Fiction Book Groups) at 563-382-3717.

The Happy Hour Book Group will hold a hybrid meeting Wed. Sept. 7 at 5:15 p.m. to discuss Richard Powers’ “.” In-person attendees will meet in the lower-level public meeting room at the library and digital attendees will join via Zoom. The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while raising his nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He’s also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs, and he learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin’s emotional control.

The Cookbook Group will meet in person at Shelter 2 in Phelps Park on Thursday September 8 at 6:30 p.m. for the potluck and final discussion of Mark Bittman’s “How to Grill Everything.” “How to Grill Everything” features 1,000 recipes and variations, plus Bittman’s practical advice on all the grilling basics. Recipes cover every part of the meal, including appetizers, seafood, meat and poultry, vegetables (including vegetarian mains), and even desserts. Plenty of quick, high-heat recipes will get dinner on the table in short order (Spanish-Style Garlic Shrimp, Green Chile Cheeseburgers); low and slow “project” recipes (Texas-Style Smoked Brisket, Pulled Pork with Lexington BBQ Sauce) are ideal for leisurely weekend cookouts. You’ll also find unexpected grilled treats like avocado, watermelon, or pound cake, and innovative surprises—like cooking meat loaf or from-scratch Rosemary Olive Oil Bread on the grill—to get the most out of every fire.

The Friday Book Group will hold a hybrid meeting Fri. Sept. 16 at 2:00 p.m. to discuss David Zucchino’s “Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy.” In-person attendees will meet in the lower-level public meeting room at the library and digital attendees will join via Zoom. By the 1890s, Wilmington was North Carolina’s largest city and a shining example of a mixed-race community. But across the state, white supremacist Democrats were working to reverse the advances made by former slaves and their progeny. They suppressed the Black vote and stuffed ballot boxes to win control of the state legislature on November 8^th, 1898. Two days later, more than 2,000 heavily armed Red Shirts swarmed through Wilmington and shot at least sixty Black men dead in the streets. The rioters forced city officials to resign at gunpoint and replaced them with mob leaders. In “Wilmington’s Lie,” Pulitzer Prize-winner David Zucchino uses contemporary newspaper accounts, diaries, letters, and official communications to create a narrative of a forgotten chapter of American history.

The History Book Group will hold a hybrid meeting Thurs. Sept. 22 at 3:00 p.m. to discuss Charles Nauert’s “Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe.” In-person attendees will meet in the lower-level public meeting room at the library and digital attendees will join via Zoom. In this updated edition of his classic account, Charles Nauert charts the rise of humanism as the distinctive culture of the social, political, and intellectual elites in Renaissance Europe. He traces humanism’s emergence in the unique social and cultural conditions of fourteenth-century Italy and its gradual diffusion throughout the rest of Europe, and he shows how, despite its elitist origins, humanism became a major force in the popular culture and fine arts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the impact it had on both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations.

The Speculative Fiction Book Group will meet via Zoom Wed. Sept. 28 at 5:15 p.m. to discuss J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Silmarillion.” “The Silmarillion” is an account of the First Age of Tolkien’s world. It is the ancient drama to which the characters in “The Lord of the Rings” look back, and in whose events some of them, such as Elrond and Galadriel, took part. These tales are set in an age when Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in Middle-earth, and the High Elves made war upon him for the recovery of the Silmarils, the jewels containing the pure light of Valinor.

The Speculative Fiction Novella Group will meet via Zoom Wed. Sept. 28 at 6:15 p.m. to discuss Tade Thompson’s “The Murders of Molly Southbourne.” Whenever Molly Southbourne bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction. Molly knows every way to kill herself, but she also knows that as long as she survives, she’ll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?

Note: We’re taking a brief break in programming during August to plan for fall

8/18-Stroller Walk
8/18-Naturebrary
8/19-Baby Dance Party
8/25-Stroller Walk

Save the date: Mississippi River Ocean Odyssey Touch Tanks are coming to DPL 9/17!