Arboretum Library: Reading the Western Landscape Community Book Discussions 2025

[...] 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.

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.

“Big Sur is so devastatingly honest & painful & yet so beautifully written. He was able to document his own destruction & breakdown, & at the same time you feel that the person who was documenting this tragedy was also someone with high ideals that wanted more. He was sharing his pain & suffering with the reader in the same way Dostoyevsky did, with the idea of salvation through suffering. [Kerouac's] idea […] was [...] rather, looking for a higher spiritual & moral ground & going through all those twisted paths we meet to get there. [...I]t was a twisted path that he, in part, created himself, because he was trying to escape the horror of unwanted celebrity & becoming a victim of a stereotype that most people would have profited from. He didn't. He wanted to be accepted for just what he was, [...] a great man of American and English Letters.”— David Amram , speaking at "Kerouac in Newport"

Big Sur was written some time after Kerouac's best-known work, following a visit to northern California and the first ravages of midlife crisis. The book reveals Kerouac's burgeoning problem with alcoholism, the mental duress aggravated by his unwanted fame, and his quest for inner peace.

“Every once in awhile, a book comes along that, even though it is non-fiction, is so well written that it reads like a novel. [...] I was drawn in immediately by Ms. Brown’s eye for detail and [the] well written narrative of […] Lemmon’s life, loves, and scientific contributions to the field of botany. [The book] chronicles [her] remarkable life, in which [she & her husband] found new plant species in Arizona, California, Oregon, & Mexico & traveled throughout the Southwest [...]. [It] is a timeless tale about a woman who discovered who she was by leaving everything behind. Her inspiring story is one of resilience, determination, & courage—and is as relevant to our nation today as it was in her own time.” — Mary Sauers, NCompass Blog

WILLA Literary Award Winner in Creative Nonfiction
2022 Spur Award Winner
2022 Top Pick in Southwest Books of the Year
New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards Finalist in Cover Design
Honorable Mention in the At-Large NFPW Communications Contes
The Forgotten Botanist is the account of an extraordinary woman who, in 1870, was driven by ill health to leave the East Coast for a new life in the West--alone. At thirty-three, Sara Plummer relocated to Santa Barbara, where she taught herself botany and established the town's first library. Ten years later she married botanist John Gill Lemmon, and together the two discovered hundreds of new plant species, many of them illustrated by Sara, an accomplished artist. Although she became an acknowledged botanical expert and lecturer, Sara's considerable contributions to scientific knowledge were credited merely as "J.G. Lemmon & wife." The Forgotten Botanist chronicles Sara's remarkable life, in which she and JG found new plant species in Arizona, California, Oregon, and Mexico and traveled throughout the Southwest with such friends as John Muir and Clara Barton. Sara also found time to work as a journalist and as an activist in women's suffrage and forest conservation. Her inspiring story is one of resilience, determination, and courage--and is as relevant to our nation today as it was in her own time.

“This dark tale of mothers, daughters and the enigma of ‘womanhood’ is told through the eyes of Astrid Magnussen, a thirteen year old girl who finds her idyllic life shattered when her mother Ingrid gets sent to jail for murder...I loved everything about this novel. The characters, the settings, each and every turn of phrase which is so painstakingly written. ... It’s a relief to read something that makes no apologies for what it is; a book about women for women. Fitch is a brave, bold author who is unashamedly feminine in her approach to the subject of mother-daughter relations and everything else in between. ... it is intimate, raw with a sheer clarity for memory, place and emotion.” — Zee, Wordly Obsessions

A New York Times bestseller Astrid is the only child of a single mother, Ingrid, a brilliant, obsessed poet. Astrid worships her mother and cherishes their private world full of ritual and mystery -- but their idyll is shattered when Ingrid falls apart over a lover. Deranged by rejection, she murders the man, and is sentenced to life in prison. White Oleander is the unforgettable story of Astrid's journey through a series of foster homes and her efforts to find a place herself in impossible circumstances. Each home is its own universe, with a new set of laws and lessons to be learned. With determination and humor, Astrid confronts the challenges of loneliness and poverty, and strives to learn who a motherless child in an indifferent world can become.

“[...The photographers] find their inspiration not only in the canyon but also in other artists’ interpretations of this immense landscape. The catalogue, [...]is an in-depth look at [...the] collaborative project (2007–2011). Following two introductory essays, the catalogue opens into lush reproductions of the artist’s work. While Klett & Wolfe’s original photographs are large format, the device of utilizing several foldout pages allows the eye to pick out details that we might not ordinarily see. [..]Senf’s informative essay contextualizes [the] project by detailing their intricate process of incorporating other artists’ work to both capture the essence of the original image & to chart differences to the canyon wrought by time. [...] Pyne contributes a [...] wider view of the canyon, familiar to so many through visiting or the vast existing imagery...”— Jennifer Jankauskas , Museums & Society

Using landscape photography to reflect on broader notions of culture, the passage of time, and the construction of perception, photographers Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe spent five years exploring the Grand Canyon for their most recent project, Reconstructing the View. The team's landscape photographs are based on the practice of rephotography, in which they identify sites of historic photographs and make new photographs of those precise locations. Klett and Wolfe referenced a wealth of images of the canyon, ranging from historical photographs and drawings by William Bell and William Henry Holmes, to well-known artworks by Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, and from souvenir postcards to contemporary digital images drawn from Flickr. The pair then employed digital postproduction methods to bring the original images into dialogue with their own. The result is this stunning volume, illustrated with a wealth of full-color illustrations that attest to the role photographers--both anonymous and great--have played in picturing American places. Rebecca Senf's compelling essay traces the photographers' process and methodology, conveying the complexity of their collaboration. Stephen J. Pyne provides a conceptual framework for understanding the history of the canyon, offering an overview of its discovery by Europeans and its subsequent treatment in writing, photography, and graphic arts.

“Deon Meyer's gritty crime novels [are] part police procedural, part political thriller . . . What makes Meyer such a national treasure - and as good as anyone in the world - is that even if you have no knowledge or interest in South Africa's history or present, his books are compelling page-turners. Politics and race are just part of the intricately crafted superstructure bolted onto the rock-solid chassis of a top-quality crime thriller, driven by a writer with deceptive skill.” — Books Live [A] …”great discovery: classy, edgy writing, subtly plotted and beautifully balanced between fast-paced action, pungent social comment and the process of investigation.” —Weekend Australian

South Africa's preeminent crime fiction writer, Deon Meyer is internationally acclaimed for his razor's-edge thrillers, unforgettable characters, and nuanced portrayals of contemporary life in his native country. The fifth pulse-pounder starring Captain Benny Griessel, a lead detective in South Africa's priority crimes unit, delves into the country's burgeoning tech and wine industries. A week before Christmas, a young photographer discovers a plastic-wrapped corpse amidst the sand dunes north of Cape Town. The only thing found on the corpse is a dead iPhone, but it doesn't take long for the police to identify the body as that of Ernst Richter--the tech whiz behind MyAlibi, an internet service that provides unfaithful partners with sophisticated cover stories to hide an affair. Meanwhile, Benny Griessel is called to the scene of a multiple homicide involving a former colleague, and four years of sobriety are undone on the spot. He emerges from his drunken haze determined to quit the force, but the take-no-sass Major Mbali Kaleni, now his boss, wants Griessel on the Richter case. The high-profile murder has already been the subject of fierce media speculation, with questions swirling about the potential for motive: could the perpetrator be one of the countless jilted spouses? An aggrieved client? Before the week is out, an unexpected connection to a storied family winery comes to light, and Griessel's reputation is again on the line. Mounting towards a startling conclusion, Icarus is another exceptional novel from the "King of South African Crime."

“... [She] writes beautiful prose. This hymn to Venice, from someone who has lived there, is, as you would expect, a lyrical and haunting evocation of the beauty of one of the world's most visited tourist destinations, and a fascinating history of a city state that was a republic and maritime empire throughout the middle ages. […I]t is also shrewd and practical and funny. [...] This is a piece of the best sort of travel writing, the sort where the traveller becomes part of an alien landscape and has deep interactions with the inhabitants and begins to struggle to an understanding of what it must be like to live in such a place..”— David Appleby, Goodreads

"[...]Its ambition is evident in the apparent humility of its subject: [...] it’s to be nothing more or less than the story of a life. And there is something in even those first paragraphs, an un-show-off-y assurance in the prose, like the soft opening notes of a virtuoso or the first casual gestures of a master artist, that tells us we are in the presence not just of a great writer but of something more—someone who knows life, who maybe even understands it[...;]the presence of wisdom. And wisdom is, of course, perennially out of style".--Tim Kreider, The New Yorker

Discover an American masterpiece. This unassuming story about the life of a quiet English professor has earned the admiration of readers all over the globe. William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar's life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a "proper" family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude. John Williams's luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.

Here are the questions I pondered as I read the book.
Icebreaker: Tell a story about a professor or teacher you liked or disliked and why and/or your favorite landscape at a school or college you went to.

What was the point of the introduction in the New York Review of Books version of the book?
What makes this book a "masterpiece"? Or not? Why? Give an example of "masterpiece" writing here if those are your thoughts.
What can you take from this book for your life today?
What did you think about the "courtship" and marriage?
Did the writing style change after the marriage? Why? Why not?
Do you believe the scenes that don't have the male gaze? Why? Why not?
Why did the author make Edith seem so alien to traditional female roles?
What does this book tell about the time it was written?
How does the disability of the the two characters fit into the story?
How does the landscape fit into the story?
What did you think about William Stoner's "standing on principle" about what is best for the students?
How does the relationship between William Stoner and Katherine look in today's light.
      What did you think of Katherine's part of the conversation on p. 215?
Why didn't anyone do anything for the daughter?
What did you think of the paragraph on page 250 starting "But he was not beyond it, he knew, and would never be".... Ending with "Look! I am alive."
Did you anticipate the late plot twists? Why? Why not?
Do you perceive this book as arrogant, self-important and filled with the male gaze? Why? Why not?
What did you think about the ending?

"Taylor is an expert at concentration; rarely deterred, though heavyhearted in her pursuit of truth, her poems are precise, crisp. “Normalcy devastates. Stillness lies to me,” she writes as the author is once again reminded, and here to remind us how purposefully memory can be erased, the way life goes on despite its wounds, that we are just filling the holes with sand until once again, it erodes. Concentrate begs us to do just that for our insured survival."-- Ashia Ajani, Split Lip Magazine

In her virtuosic debut, Courtney Faye Taylor explores the under-told history of the murder of Latasha Harlins--a fifteen-year-old Black girl killed by a Korean shop owner, Soon Ja Du, after being falsely accused of shoplifting a bottle of orange juice. Harlins's murder and the following trial, which resulted in no prison time for Du, were inciting incidents of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, and came to exemplify the long-fraught relationship between Black and Asian American communities in the United States. Through a collage-like approach to collective history and storytelling, Taylor's poems present a profound look into the insidious points at which violence originates against--and between--women of color.Concentrate displays an astounding breadth of form and experimentation in found texts, micro-essays, and visual poems, merging worlds and bending time in order to interrogate inexorable encounters with American patriarchy and White supremacy manifested as sexual and racially charged violence. These poems demand absolute focus on Black womanhood's relentless refusal to be unseen, even and especially when such luminosity exposes an exceptional vulnerability to harm and erasure. Taylor's inventive, intimate book radically reconsiders the cost of memory, forging a path to a future rooted in solidarity and possibility. "Concentrate," she writes. "We have decisions to make. Fire is that decision to make."

Icebreaker: Tell a story about getting your hair worked on.
Since this is a poetry book, each person picked out 2 or 3 poems you would like to read to the group. Since this is not a conventional poetry book, the group came with questions to explore with the group.

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
About the Author Sanora Babb is the author of five books, as well as numerous essays, short stories, and poems that were published in literary magazines alongside the work of William Saroyan, Ralph Ellison, Katherine Anne Porter, and William Carlos Williams. Her Dust Bowl novel, Whose Names Are Unknown, was recently featured in the Ken Burns documentary on The Dust Bowl.
"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

Here are the questions we discussed on March 26, 2025:
Ice Breaker: Tell about a time when isolation and/or crowding was a part of your life.
What do you think about the writing style? What is the best part of the author's writing?
Why did the author frame the story in the voice of a child? Was it successful? Why? Why not?
Who do you think the audience for this book originally was? Why?
What did you think about the chapter about Daft?
What did you learn from this book?
Does this book help us understand our own time? Why? Why not?
Any ambiguities we need to clear up? If not, why not?
Favorite line, image or passage?

[Bunbury] 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.

Here are the questions we discussed, Wednesday, April 23, 2025:

Icebreaker: Give an example of how your life is attuned to the Mediterranean climate seasons we have here in Southern California? Or not, then give another example of your adaptations to your place.

Is there a particular west coast climate that the areas in the book remind you of? Yes, which and why? No, Why not?
Name one thing you learned from this book that could be applied to our local environment.
How do you think this book has been used in Australia?
What is the most discouraging thing in the book? The most uplifting?
What did you think of the writing style? Benefits? Deficits? Do you think the reliance on transcripts worked? Why? Why not?
What are your thoughts on the environmental disasters in the 1800s and how they are presented and how they appear the same or different the local ones here?
Which of all the projects was your favorite and why?
Do you think the projects mentioned in this book would work in other Mediterranean climate areas? Why? Why not?
What do you think about the debate on thinning and fire routines on pages 173-83?
Do you agree or disagree with the quote at the top of p. 189? Why? Why not?
Does the quote at the bottom of p. 195 apply to others besides farmers as well? Why? Why not?
What do you think about the discussions at the end?
Favorite line, image, or passage?