Wednesday, May 27; 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 SCEArboretumLibrary@outlook.com. You must RSVP to Susan for the discussions you would like to attend.
June 24, 2026, 7:00 p.m.
Small Memories by
José Saramago was eighteen months old when he moved from the village of Azinhaga with his father and mother to live in Lisbon. But he would return to the village throughout his childhood and adolescence to stay with his maternal grandparents, illiterate peasants in the eyes of the outside world, but a fount of knowledge, affection, and authority to young José. Shifting back and forth between childhood and his teenage years, between Azinhaga and Lisbon, this is a mosaic of memories, a simply told, affecting look back into the author’s boyhood: the tragic death of his older brother at the age of four; his mother pawning the family’s blankets every spring and buying them back in time for winter; his beloved grandparents bringing the weaker piglets into their bed on cold nights; and Saramago’s early encounters with literature, from teaching himself to read by deciphering articles in the daily newspaper, to poring over an entertaining dialogue in a Portuguese-French conversation guide, not realizing that he was in fact reading a play by Molière. Written with Saramago’s characteristic wit and honesty, Small Memories traces the formation of an artist fascinated by words and stories from an early age and who emerged, against all odds, as one of the world’s most respected writers
July 22, 2026, 7:00 p.m.
My Place by ISBN: 9780949206312
Looking at the views and experiences of three generations of indigenous Australians, this autobiography unearths political and societal issues contained within Australia’s indigenous culture. Sally Morgan traveled to her grandmother’s birthplace, starting a search for information about her family. She uncovers that she is not white but aborigine–information that was kept a secret because of the stigma of society. This moving account is a classic of Australian literature that finally frees the tongues of the author’s mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories.
August 26, 2026, 7:00 p.m.
Inland Island: The Sutter Buttesby ISBN: 9780961072278
“As a mountain range, the Sutter Buttes of California stands apart, an island of upland in the great sea of lowland flanked by the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Ranges. Its softly rounded hills and angular pinnacles are cloaked in grasses, shrubs, and trees in patterns that reflect nature’s design, not man’s. [The author] provides an insiders view of this special mountain, telling stories with both insight and humor. […] Humans are also a part of the natural history of this place, and their roles, from prehistoric to modern, are discussed..” — Publisher book description on Goodreads
September 23, 2026, 7:00 p.m.
The Antidoteby ISBN: 9780593802250
“The novel opens in the aftermath of the Black Sunday dust storm of April 14, 1935, when a sunny afternoon suddenly turned darker than night, and the entire region became known as the Dust Bowl. […T]he great thematic concern of the book, comes into focus […], when the prairie witch realizes that she, her ancestors and her community have all played a part in this violent national project. “I hadn’t known — no one had ever told me — that I was a soldier in a war,” […]Russell’s ambitious and exciting novel, like all good historical fiction, makes a powerful case for never forgetting. Erasure is a form of combat, but so is remembering.” — Victor LaValle , New York Times
National Bestseller * Finalist for the National Book Award * From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove […]: a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town “Achingly gorgeous. . . . Karen Russell is one of our most humane and generous writers; this book is as profound as it is wonderfully strange.” –Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing–not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a “Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate. Russell’s novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting–enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been–and what still could be.
October 28, 2026, 7:00 p.m.
Dead Wood: The Afterlife of Trees by Ellen Wohl, Corvallis, OR, Oregon State University Press, 2022, to be discussed, ISBN: 9780870715273
“[The book] follows the afterlives of three trees: a spruce in the Colorado Rocky Mountains that remains on the floodplain after death; a redcedar in Washington that is gradually transported downstream to the Pacific; and a poplar in the Mackenzie River of Canada that is transported to the Arctic Ocean. With these three trees, Wohl encourages readers to see beyond landscapes, to appreciate the ecological processes that drive rivers and forests and other ecosystems, and demonstrates the ways that the life of an ecosystem carries on even when individual members of that system have died. Readers will discover that trees can have an exceptionally rich afterlife—one tightly interwoven with the lives of humans and ecosystems.—Publisher’s description
The West is full of magnificent trees: mighty spruces, towering cedars, and stout firs. We are used to appreciating trees during their glory years, but how often do we consider what happens to a tree when it dies? We’ve all seen driftwood on the beach. But how many people have truly looked at it and appreciated its ecological role? Ellen Wohl has thought about these questions, and In Dead Wood, she takes us through the afterlife of trees, describing the importance of standing and downed dead wood in forests, in rivers, along beaches, in the open ocean, and even at the deepest parts of the seafloor. Downed wood in the forest provides habitat for diverse plants and animals, and the progressive decay of the wood releases nutrients into the soil. Wood in rivers provides critical habitat for stream insects and fish and can accumulate in logjams that divert the river repeatedly across the valley floor, creating a floodplain mosaic that is rich in habitat and biodiversity. Driftwood on the beach helps to stabilize shifting sand, creating habitat for plants and invertebrates. Fish such as tuna congregate at driftwood in the open ocean. As driftwood becomes saturated and sinks to the ocean floor, collections of sunken wood provide habitat and nutrients for deep-sea organisms. Far from being an unsightly form of waste that needs to be cleaned from forests, beaches, and harbors, dead wood is a critical resource for many forms of life. Dead Wood follows the afterlives of three trees: a spruce in the Colorado Rocky Mountains that remains on the floodplain after death; a redcedar in Washington that is gradually transported downstream to the Pacific; and a poplar in the Mackenzie River of Canada that is transported to the Arctic Ocean. With these three trees, Wohl encourages readers to see beyond landscapes, to appreciate the ecological processes that drive rivers and forests and other ecosystems, and demonstrates the ways that the life of an ecosystem carries on even when individual members of that system have died. Readers will discover that trees can have an exceptionally rich afterlife–one tightly interwoven with the lives of humans and ecosystems.
November 25, 2026, 7:00 p.m.
The Loved One by ISBN: 9780316926089
December 30, 2026, 7:00 p.m.
Kafka in a Skirt by ISBN: 9780816539918
“Set partly in El Paso, the stories bridge the real and surreal in a journey through universal themes of desire, love, loss and loneliness. They also navigate the invisible but all-too-familiar walls and barriers that separate and divide people, even loved ones, in contemporary, multicultural society, which often seems to consist of multiple, parallel universes.[…The book] is a literary experience that you will not soon forget. It has the power to change how you think about literature, life and relationships. And it will likely leave you with a desire to experience more of the universe through the mystical glow of Chacón’s imagination.—Bill Clark, El Paso Inc.
This is not your ordinary short story collection. In his newest work, Daniel Chacón subverts expectation and bends the rules of reality to create stories that are intriguing, hilarious, and deeply rooted in Chicano culture. These stories explore the concept of a wall that reaches beyond our immediate thoughts of a towering physical structure. While Chacón aims to address the partition along the U.S.-Mexico border, he also uses these stories to work through the intangible walls that divide communities and individuals–particularly those who straddle multiple cultures in their daily lives. Set in El Paso and other Latinx-dominant urban spaces, Kafka in a Skirt is an immersive look into the myriad lives of the characters who inhabit these culturally diverse areas. Chacón masterfully weaves elements of the surreal and fantastic through a shining tapestry of fiction, creating moments of touching realism in contrast with scenes that are fascinatingly unfamiliar. Occasionally teasing the ghosts of Jorge Luis Borges and the Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, this collection disregards boundaries and transports readers into a world merely parallel to our own. Kafka in a Skirt unravels the intricacies of culture, sexuality, love, and loneliness in a collection that shows the personal implications of barriers while remaining hopeful and bright.
Cost
Free event
