EDUCATION - ADULT LEARNING
Conservancy Member Book Club
Participate with fellow Conservancy members in a literary journey.
Books selected each month will feature contemporary environmental scientists and naturalists, with a mix of foundational texts from the literary giants that walked the road before us.
Hour-long discussions occur at 5:30pm the last Wednesday of the featured month. These discussions are a space for exploring new ideas, connections, and personal revelations while reading, with other members of Conservancy.
Book Club Calendar
September- The Dreamt Land by Mark Arax
The Dreamt Land by Mark Arax
Discussion September 27
A vivid, searching journey into California’s capture of water and soil–the epic story of a people’s defiance of nature and the wonders, and ruin, it has wrought. Mark Arax is from a family of Central Valley farmers, a writer with deep ties to the land who has watched the battles over water intensify even as California lurches from drought to flood and back again. In The Dreamt Land, he travels the state to explore the one-of-a-kind distribution system, built in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, that is straining to keep up with California’s relentless growth. The Dreamt Land weaves reportage, history and memoir to confront the Golden State myth in riveting fashion.
November- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Discussion November 29
A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Bestseller Named a Best Essay Collection of the Decade by Literary Hub As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).