Reading the Western Landscape Community Book Discussion - The Arboretum
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Wednesday, January 22; 7:00PM - 8:00PM

Reading the Western Landscape Community Book Discussion

About the Community Book Discussion

The Arboretum Library’s book group explores the portrayal of western North American landscape in fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry, letters, graphic novels, etc.  The group generally, but not always, meets the 4th Wednesday of the month in the Arboretum Library.  When the weather is good and the mosquitos are less active, the group will meet outside in appropriate places in the gloriously, beautiful grounds of the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden. At other times the group will meet in the Arboretum Library with social distancing and masking if desired. The group leader will decide each month whether the meeting will be in-person (in the Arboretum Library or outside on the Arboretum grounds) or on Zoom.

The group uses a modified version of the Shared Inquiry™ method developed by the Great Books Foundation.  The discussion is greatly enhanced if the chosen book of the month is read, although we welcome those who just want to listen. Let the host know you want to listen. New participants are always welcome!

Click here to see the questions already asked for this year’s past books and check out the history of the book club by hovering on the tab and explore the books from previous years.

For more information and to be added to the e-mail reminder list about the Community Book Discussion Group, please contact, Arboretum Librarian Emeritus, Susan Eubank, at Susan.Eubank@Arboretum.org.  You must RSVP to Susan for the discussions you would like to attend.


 

March 26, 2025, 7:00 p.m.

 

An Owl on Every Post by Sanora Babb, with forward by William Kennedy, Old Greenwich, Conn.: Muse Ink Press, ©2012.

ISBN: 9780985991500

Sanora Babb experienced pioneer life in a one-room dugout, eye-level with the land that supported, tormented and beguiled her; where her family fought for their lives against drought, crop-failure, starvation, and almost unfathomless loneliness. Learning to read from newspapers that lined the dugouts dirt walls, she grew up to be a journalist, then a writer of unforgettable books about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, most notably Whose Names Are Unknown. This evocative memoir of a pioneer childhood on the Great Plains is written with the lyricism and sensitivity that distinguishes all of Sanora Babb’s writing. What this true story of Sanora’s prairie childhood reveals best are the values courage, pride, determination, and love that allowed her family to prevail over total despair.

This long, out-of-print memoir is reissued with new acclaim: “On a par stylistically and thematically with Willa Cather’s My Antonia, this is a classic that deserves to be rediscovered and cherished for years to come.” Linda Miller, English Professor at Penn State.

“An unsung masterpiece in the field of American autobiography. Arnold Rampersad, author of Ralph Ellison: A Biography.

Editorial Reviews “A wry, affectionate but unsentimental recall of frontiering struggles in Colorado just prior to WWI.”–Kirkus

“Babbs engaging memoir recalls a childhood spent on the harsh and wild Colorado frontier during the early 1900s.” —Publishers Weekly

“Babbs memories of her childhood in eastern Colorado before World War I. . .relating vividly and with fine and fond recollection”–Library Journal


April 23, 2025, 7:00 p.m.

Invisible Country by Bill Bunbury, Crawley, Western Australia: UWA Publishing, 2015.

ISBN: 9781742586250
[The author] is a notable W[estern] A[ustralia] broadcaster and author who has specialised in local, particularly Indigenous, histories since the 1980s. In [the book], Bunbury examines the ways European settlement has shaped Southwest Australia, a biodiversity hotspot of rivers, forests and coastal plains. Bunbury contributes to the complex narratives of the environment since European settlement through extensive oral histories[…] [I]ntroductory and concluding chapters, which give a broader historical context [and], four case studies each detail one particular environmental change[…] As Bunbury notes in the introduction, the book is written in a style reminiscent of a radio script, with long quotes from his sources interspaced with his own sparse narration…–Brad Jefferies, Books+Publishing

When Europeans first settled in Australia, the land withheld many of its secrets from them. There were broad rivers, wide plains and tall forests, all of which, to European eyes, suggested promising sites for settlement. To many of the new settlers, the First Australians were a puzzle. They moved freely through country they knew intimately. They had useful things to say to the European newcomers – if they would listen. What few realised then was that Aboriginal people, and the land they lived in, were indistinguishable. Failure to read the people made it hard to read the country. Invisible Country describes the environmental change that has occurred in south-western Australia since European settlement, through four case studies of the development of local rivers, forests and coastal plains. These stories, compiled through extensive conversations with farmers, ecologists, traditional owners and others who rely on the land, are book-ended by an examination of the historical perspective in which these changes have occurred. It is a reminder that the land owns people, not the other way around, and is the beginning of a conversation about understanding and care for a land we are all lucky to live in.


May 28, 2025, 7:00 p.m.

Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin, New York : Harper & Row, c1978.

ISBN: 0060906545
[…] In what is the first and best book in a six-part series constructed from a serial column in the San Francisco Chronicle, [the book] is smart, guilty entertainment at its best. It’s a soap opera. But like, say, Six Feet Under, [the book] purports to be little more than a creative and intelligent soap opera. Taken as such, it is a delight. Vivid characters. A setting — San Francisco — that Maupin gives an almost pop-up book feel. And addictive storytelling. [It] is an escapist read. And itself an exercise in escapism — using what San Francisco represents in the popular imagination to open wide a world of freedom and possibility within its pages, and without.–Jason, Goodreads

Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City has blazed a singular trail through popular culture — from a groundbreaking newspaper serial to a classic novel to a television event that entranced millions around the world. The first of six novels about the denizens of the mythic apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, Tales is both a wry comedy of manners and a deeply involving portrait of a vanished era.


June 25, 2025, 7 p.m.

Read Me, Los Angeles by Katie Orphan, Altadena, California : Prospect Park Books, 2020.

ISBN: 9781945551680

The book […] has surprising depth. Orphan visits the stomping grounds of historic and contemporary Los Angeles writers[…] and gathers illustrations, interviews, and reading lists to create a well-rounded resource. While Read Me is a light romp, it has the potential to open new doors to familiar territory—namely the city itself. H.L. Mencken’s famously tart description of Los Angeles as “nineteen suburbs in search of a metropolis” appears […], but for some authors, sprawl emerges as a superpower. Los Angeles narratives are layered, shifting; just take a look (or a walk, or a drive) around.–Agatha French, Alta Journal

A colorful, lively, and informed celebration of all things bookish in L.A. past and present, including interviews with current L.A. writers; day trips in search of favorite fictional characters, from Marlowe to Weetzie Bat; author quotes galore; curated lists of the must-read L.A. books; a look at where writers have lived and worked in the City of Angels; and insight into the city’s book festivals, bookstores, publishers, literacy nonprofits, libraries, and more. Rich with photographs, book images, and vintage maps.

 

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