New reading/discussion group to begin at Decorah Library

Decorah Public Library will offer a new reading and discussion group beginning Monday, June 25th. The group will meet twice a month to discuss a wide variety of texts, beginning with the first anthology in the Great Books Foundation's "Great Conversations" series. Discussions about the "Great Conversations" texts will continue until February or March, at which point a second book will be selected by the group. Participants may attend as many or as few meetings as they wish, though regular attendance is encouraged.

The 15 selections in the "Great Conversations" anthology range from the ancient Mesopotamian "Epic of Gilgamesh" to the fiction of Alice Munro. The readings are intended for book groups that embrace both classic and contemporary writing, for those who believe that great books- regardless of when and where they were written- address questions of perennial concern to people the world over. Each selection is accompanied by a brief introductory essay and questions designed to provoke lively and focused discussion.

Participants need not have any prior knowledge of the texts; group discussions will be informal and fun. Selections include Aeschylus, Michel de Montaigne, Blaise Pascal, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Alexis de Tocqueville, Henrik Ibsen, Henri Poincare, Sigmund Freud, Joseph Conrad, Thorstein Veblen, Carl Jung, Tillie Olsen, and Alice Munro.     

Each participant is asked to pre-register and pay $30 for a copy of the Great Conversations book by Monday, June 11th. Books will be ordered no later than Tuesday, June 12th.  Meetings will be held every other Monday on the second floor of the library beginning Monday, June 25th.

Anyone interested in participating should stop by the library or contact Kristin Torresdal at (563) 382-3717 or ktorresdal@decorah.lib.ia.us to indicate meeting time preference (if any): Mondays from 10:30 a.m. until noon or Mondays from 3:00 p.m. until 4:30 p.m.