GN21’s Environmental Book Club
Do you enjoy reading books on environmental topics? Wish you had someone to discuss them with? Then join our grassroots environmentally-themed book club!
Before the pandemic, the book club was meeting on Friday afternoon about 3 times a year in the fall, winter and spring at the beautiful Tollkeeper’s Cottage. Let us know if you are interested in joining the group by sending an email to: greenneighbours@gn21.ca We hope to start meeting again soon. Space in the cottage is limited. It is wheelchair accessible. We hope you will join us!
List of book club attendee's favourite books from Feb 3 2017, Tollkeeper’s Cottage, Toronto
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge
By Robin Wall Kimmerer
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices.
Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses
By Robin Wall Kimmerer
“Kimmerer explains the stories of mosses in scientific terms as well as in the framework of indigenous ways of knowing. In her book, the natural history and cultural relationships of mosses become a powerful metaphor for ways of living in the world.”
Invisible Nature: Healing the Destructive Divide between People and the Environment
By Kenneth Worthy
“Invisible Nature presents a new explanation for why environmental crisis proliferates under our noses and against our will.”
The Hive: The Story of the Honeybee and Us
By Bee Wilson
“Bee Wilson shows how humans will always view the hive as a miniature universe with order and purpose, and look to it to make sense of their own.”
The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies Are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet
By Kristin Ohlson
“..."our great green hope"—a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon—and potentially reverse global warming.”
By Steven Johnsonhttps
See his TED talk.
“In a triumph of dynamic, multidisciplinary thinking, Steven Johnson examines the [cholera] epidemic from the microbial level to the human level to the urban level.”
The Green Boat: Reviving Ourselves in Our Capsized Culture
By Mary Pipher
"Mary Pipher takes on our planet's greatest problems with the skills of a truly gifted therapist. She knows why we avoid and deny the truth and she knows how we can heal ourselves and our communities even as we try to heal the earth." Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth.
By Allen Smutylo
“The Memory of Water probes a crucial and contemporary issue--that of our relationship to water and the wildlife and human life that depends upon it.”
Journey to the Future: A Better World is Possible
By Guy Dauncey
“In futurist Guy Dauncey’s inspiring and timely novel, 24-year-old Patrick Wu journeys to a future world brimming with innovation and hope, where the climate crisis is being tackled, the solar revolution is underway, and a new economy is taking shape. Yet enormous danger still lurks.”
Two Billion Trees and Counting. The legacy of Edmund Zavitz.
By John Bacher
“As a result of Zavitz’s work, the Niagara Escarpment, once a wasteland, is now a UNESCO World Biosphere.”
Also favourites – although not books:
“Alex Steffen explores our planet's future, telling powerful, inspiring stories about the
hard choices facing humanity ... and our opportunity to create a much better tomorrow.” See his Ted Talk.
The Legacy of the Man Who Changed Our View of Nature
Interview with Andrea Wulf, by Diane Toomey
“In a Yale e360 interview, biographer Andrea Wulf explains how Humboldt’s vision helped
create modern environmentalism.”
Climate Talks. Kids Have Questions. It is time to talk.
See here.
Imaging and Imagining Water Underground
“The Vanishing Point website is a resource that has emerged from a decade of underground
research and photographic practice by Michael Cook.” (A resource for Toronto, and
elsewhere). See here.