Reading the Western Landscape Community Book Discussion
Schedule
Wed Dec 18 2024 at 07:00 pm
UTC-08:00Location
Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden | Arcadia, CA
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Not a Thing to Comfort You by Emily Wortman-Wunder, Iowa City, IA, University of Iowa Press, 2019 to be discussed on December 18, 2024.ISBN: 9781609386818
The Book Group explores the portrayal of western North American landscape in fiction, non-fiction, letters, drama, graphic novels, poetry, etc. The group uses a modified version of the Shared Inquiry™ method developed by the Great Books Foundation. The chosen book of the month must be read in order to actively participate, although participants who only want to listen are welcome. Let the host know. New participants are welcome. When the weather is good and disease rates are low, the group meets outside in appropriate places in the gloriously, beautiful grounds of the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden with appropriate social distancing and masking if you chose to. Currently the group is meeting In Person at the Arboretum or, very rarely, on Zoom. Be sure to check for In Person dates and Zoom dates.
New members are always welcome! For more information about the Book Group, please contact, Arboretum Librarian, Susan Eubank, at 626-821-3213 or [email protected]. Please RSVP to Susan if you plan to attend.
ABOUT THIS MONTH'S SELECTION:
Not a Thing to Comfort You by Emily Wortman-Wunder, Iowa City, IA, University of Iowa Press, 2019 to be discussed on December 18, 2024.
ISBN: 9781609386818
…[This] should be added to this growing cannon of writing by women that reexamines women’s relationship to nature...[T]he … protagonists are not so much struggling against nature as coming to terms with the possibility that their fundamental humanness is inseparable from the ... the natural world. T]he collection pivot[s] on misperception, both of self & of others, & on betrayals, some purposeful, some accidental...[She] ... reveals the interior mechanisms, the psyches, that drive her ... protagonists to make the choices they do. [S]he ... creates characters whose personalities & choices seem at once very human & clearly woven into the fabric of a larger natural order…[and] … are always gripping, near perfect in their construction, and often wondrous..”— Hasanthika Sirisena, Fiction Writers Review
From a lightning death on an isolated peak to the intrigues of a small town orchestra, the glimmering stories in this debut collection explore how nature--damaged, fierce, and unpredictable--worms its way into our lives. Here moths steal babies, a creek seduces a lonely suburban mother, and the priorities of a passionate conservationist are thrown into confusion after the death of her son. Over and over, the natural world reveals itself to be unknowable, especially to the people who study it most. These tales of scientists, nurses, and firefighters catalog the loneliness within families, betrayals between friends, and the recurring song of regret and grief.
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Where is it happening?
Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden, Bauer Lawn & Fountains, Arcadia, CA 91007, United States,Arcadia, CaliforniaEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
