Fergus Falls Public Library

Happy ! Every great story starts with a small beginning....what are you reading this summer?🌱📖✨

Featuring: "The Garden of Small Beginnings" by Abbi Waxman

Task completed! "Visit a Bookstore" (pictured is the lovely Victor Lundeen Company) is one of the many tasks on our Adult Summer Reading Challenge gameboard. All ages can sign up at https://ffpubliclibrary.org/summer-reading-program/

Our first adult weekly Summer Reading prize winner has been chosen! What can you win when you answer our weekly question? Adults this summer will get a lovely goody bag of local treats: Stumbeano's Coffee Roasterie freshly roasted coffee, Sted Chocolate Lakeside Blend chocolate, heirloom popcorn and either honey or maple syrup. Yum!

We're shouting it from the rooftops: Tonight at 6:30pm, former Star Tribune Editor Dave Hage will speak about the American prairie 🌾🌾. Copies of his award-winning book "Sea of Grass" are available at the library and we also spotted some today at Victor Lundeen Company!

Summer Storytime starts TODAY!🤩

Baby/Toddler: T/W, 9:30-10:00am; Preschool: T/W, 10:30-11:00am; Evening: TH, 6:00-6:30pm.📖

Former Star Tribune Editor Dave Hage will speak about the American Prairie at the Fergus Falls Public Library on Tuesday, June 16 at 6:30pm!

'Sea of Grass' highlights the beauty, complexities of our prairies In “Sea of Grass,” Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty dig into the history, science and future of the North American Prairie — painting a vivid portrait of this diverse, but disappearing ecosystem.

The library will be closed on Friday, June 19th for Juneteenth.

Armchair Travel: Cruise Ships!
By Katelyn Boyer, Adult Services Librarian

I delight in armchair travel, traversing the world through books. I haven’t been on a cruise myself, but books set on cruise ships have always fascinated me. Novelists use this setting for compelling family dramas; everyone is stuck on the ship with each other. These make for delicious summer reading. I’ve also included a memoir, although reader beware, this is not a book you want to read before taking a cruise yourself.

American Fantasy by Emma Straub
'90s band Boytalk is doing a reunion cruise on the ship American Fantasy, and 50 year old Annie has reluctantly agreed to go with her sister. While both loved Boytalk as kids, Annie thinks it's kind of silly that grown women ("Talkers") are still obsessed with the group. When her sister backs out due to a broken leg, Annie is paired with a roommate, who shows her the ropes and helps Annie embrace the American Fantasy experience. I love Straub's writing and especially appreciated how lovingly she treated her characters--mostly middle aged women--highlighting their strengths, praising their awesome, diverse bodies of all sizes, and forgiving them their weaknesses. In preparation for this book, author Emma Straub took a New Kids on the Block cruise. Her biggest surprise on the cruise was the incredible women she met. Her understanding of them shines through.

All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun
Just days after 9/11, the three main characters of this book board a cruise ship for the Bahamas. Unable to have their trips refunded, they've reluctantly gone on the cruise. Franny is trying to be a good Korean daughter and celebrate her mother's 70th birthday. Doug spent years as the star of a TV show set on the cruise ship, and his agent got him a job for a reunion cruise. Lucy is graduating from MIT and has just interviewed with a company on the rise: Google. Each of them is struggling with different aspects of their life, and has choices to make that will be influenced by both the cruise and the terrible events on 9/11. This is a delicious family drama wonderfully written. The author's family went on a similar trip days after 9/11.

The Floating Feldmans
I love Friedland's novels about dysfunctional families. My favorite of hers is "Last Summer at the Golden Hotel," although I thoroughly enjoyed this one too. Annette is despairing; her adult children mostly ignore her. Facing her 70th birthday, she pays for the entire family to take a cruise together. On the cruise, she reasons, they'll be trapped at sea and forced to spend time together. Friedland gives you each family member's viewpoint. All of the characters are well-developed and have interesting back stories.

The Summer Sail by Wendy Francis
The Summer Sail is about three women who have been best friends since college. The women remain friends, despite living in separate cities, and meet up every year for a weekend trip. A few decades after graduating, they pack up their families for a 7-day cruise to Bermuda. Each of them is dealing with different struggles in their lives, with tensions boiling over during the cruise. I loved the cruise-ship setting, complete with bright sunshine and characters reading on the ship’s deck.

The Passenger: How a Travel Writer Learned to Love Cruises & Other Lies from a Sinking Ship by Chaney Kwak
In 2019, Travel journalist Kwak was on assignment on the Viking Sky cruise ship, traversing Norway's rivers and coast. During a stretch on the coast, the ship was hit with hurricane-level winds. All 4 of their engines stopped working. Kwak and over 1,000 other passengers spent the next 12+ hours on the ship as it rocked uncontrollably, threatening to capsize or run aground the nearby shore. While recounting the cruise, Kwak also ties in his relationship to his partner, which is floundering and he knows needs to come to an end. I could not stop turning the pages on this memoir.

I’ll also give a quick shout out to rom-com writer Katherine Center’s latest novel “The Shippers.” The premise was a bit too unbelievable for me, but fans of a good rom-com may enjoy the cruise-ship setting.

Katelyn Boyer is the Adult Services Librarian at the Fergus Falls Public Library

Fergus Falls Public Library