SDPB Book Club
Join the Dakota Midday Book Club. About every other month you will receive a book selected by Dakota Midday host Lori Walsh. You’ll have 4 to 6 weeks to read the book, and then join Lori as she interviews the author on Dakota Midday to discuss the book. You may participate by emailing your questions to Lori at Lori.Walsh@SDPB.org, or follow her on Twitter @MiddaySDPB. Become part of the club – support SDPB and receive a half-dozen books from a variety of regional and national authors.
Upcoming books being featured in the Dakota Midday Book Club include:
Downstream: Reflections on Brook Trout, Fly Fishing, and the Waters of Appalachia by David O’Hara and Matthew Dickerson (Cascade Books). A mosaic combining nature writing, fly fishing narrative, memoir, and philosophical and spiritual inquiry. O’Hara is a professor at Augustana University. His book was a surprise bestseller at Zandbroz Variety of Sioux Falls in 2015. Members will receive the book in late February – author interview in March.
Really Happy! by Jim Reese (NYQ Books). Everything about Really Happy, Jim Reese's third full-length collection of poetry, is ordinary—focused on life all around us. But out of this ordinary the humanity of each of his characters comes to life, each craftily spun by Reese in perfect Midwestern tone and tenor, making these saints and sinners feel like family members. This familiarity, this elevation that Reese creates, making the ordinary extraordinary, will leave the reader feeling right at home, and Really Happy. Members will receive the book in early April – author interview in late April.
Worthy by Denice Turner (University of Nevada Press). Worthy is a memoir of loss and the search for acceptance. Raised in a Mormon household, Denice Turner strives to find her place in the Church, longing to be worthy of her mother’s love. When her mother dies in a suspicious house fire, Turner is forced to face the problems with the stories she inherited. Contemplating the price of worthiness, Turner grapples with the mystery of her mother’s death, seeking to understand her mother’s battle with chronic pain. Members will receive the book in May – author interview in June.
Dear County Agent Guy by Jerry Nelson (Workman Publishing Co.). In the tradition of Mark Twain and Jean Shepherd, Dave Barry and Garrison Keillor, Jerry Nelson is a humorist whose beat is the American heartland, a small-town world of pickup trucks and Sunday night pancake dinners, dropping on neighbors and complaining to the county agent. Members will receive the book in July – author interview in August.
Some Luck by Jane Smiley (Knopf). Each chapter in this extraordinary novel covers a single year, encompassing the sweep of history as the Langdons abide by time-honored values and pass them on to their children. With the country on the cusp of enormous social and economic change through the early 1950s, we watch as the personal and the historical merge seamlessly: one moment electricity is just beginning to power the farm, and the next a son is volunteering to fight the Nazis. Later still, a girl we’d seen growing up now has a little girl of her own. This is the One Book South Dakota. Members will receive the book in August – author interview in September.
Dumb Bunnies and Expecting Cats by Matthew Moen (self-published). Packed with wry humor and filled with tenderness, this is the true story of a slightly misnamed cat called Frodo, who chooses as her companion a struggling male graduate student unprepared for the steep learning curve ahead of him. Members will receive the book in October – author interview in November.
Click here to join and select the Dakota Midday Book Club as your Thank You Gift!