Arboretum Library: Reading the Western Landscape Community Book Discussions 2025

“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

This farcical [mystery] introduces the Loudermilk family: Big Joe, a retired police officer; his wife, Dottie [...] and their [...] children, whom they sell their house and buy an Airstream trailer to get away from—only to find, while they're admiring the Grand Canyon, their sour-smelling son Bad Dog in residence, together with a corpse on their toilet. Bad Dog tells a wild story[...]. The truth, [...] is even wilder.[...] How do all these zanies fit together? Not very closely at all [...]. Through it all, the Loudermilks remain ineffably daffy and foolish, like long-lost African-American relatives of Stanley Hastings. Geez Looweez” — Kirkus Reviews

Gar Anthony Haywood is the author of two highly acclaimed mystery series. His series featuring South Central Los Angeles private investigator Aaron Gunner debuted with the publication of Fear of the Dark, which won the St. Martin's Press/PWA Best Private Eye Novel Contest in 1987. The two succeeding novels in that series, Not Long For This World and You Can Die Trying, received wide praise. It's Not a Pretty Sight (G.P. Putnam's Sons; September 10, 1996) is the fourth book in the Gunner series. Haywood's second series features the comic Loudermilk family and includes the novels this one and Fast and Bad News Travels Fast. Currently a writer for the FOX television series "New York Undercover," Haywood has also written for the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. He lives in Los Angeles.

"[The book] proves you can write a powerful memoir one recipe at a time. [T]here is a not-so-secret feminist core to this book, as Schmitt argues against the sad sexist trope[s] one unfussy but brilliant plate at a time.[...] Schmitt is also very much a mother [...]. Her solution was simple—have the whole family work for you. [...] Beyond specific dishes, Schmitt provides lots more general teaching [...]. [U]ltimately this book is a celebration of food, farm, and family. [...S]he clearly was overjoyed to note that four generations were living on the Apple Farm."— George Yatchisin, California Review of Books

Winner of a 2023 IACP Cookbook Award and the Golden Poppy Book Award in the Glenn Goldman Cooking category Six California Kitchens is the quintessential California cookbook, with farm-to-table recipes and stories from Sally Schmitt, the pioneering female chef and original founder of the French Laundry. "Schmitt, [...] reflects on the food that defined her life, in this sumptuous collection of recipes and tales from the kitchens that inspired them. [...] Fans of Alice Waters won't want to miss this delectable page-turner."--Publishers Weekly Sally Schmitt opened The French Laundry in Yountville in 1978 and designed her menus around local, seasonal ingredients--a novel concept at the time. In this soon-to-be-classic cookbook, Sally Schmitt takes us through the six kitchens where she learned to cook, honed her skills, and spent her working life. Six California Kitchens weaves her remarkable story with 115 recipes that distill the ethos of Northern California cooking into simple, delicious dishes, plus evocative imagery, historic ephemera, and cooking wisdom. With gorgeous food and sense-of-place photography, this is a masterful, story-rich cookbook for home and aspiring chefs who cook locally and seasonally, food historians, fans of wine country, and anyone who wants to bring the spirit of Northern California home with them. This book celebrates a respected, reputable chef and shares a collection of her best recipes from a lifetime of cooking. From a native Californian chef, who founded one of the most well-known and revered restaurants in California (and in the world), this book was written, photographed, and designed by members of Sally's family. This book is full of evocative images of Napa Valley, rustic kitchens, and the rugged California coastline. With lifestyle photography that offers a peek into the history of Northern California and its food revolution, this book will appeal to readers with its lovely design and package--but they'll stay for the inspiring story and approachable recipes. This book is perfect for: Home cooks who cook locally and seasonally or enjoy California cuisine, foodies who collect regional cookbooks rich with history and visuals.

[Four women] came from that strange late-Victorian era in America when old roles and obligations […] were under considerable strain. Smart, well-educated daughters were growing up in the ferment of revolutionary movements in art, music, science, and industry. They were looking for a way out of old societal roles and into lives created on their own terms. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, [the author] takes the reader on a fascinating journey along-side these pioneer women who traveled rough on the trail, witnessed ceremonies and gatherings never seen before by Anglos, hobnobbed with politicians and tribal chiefs, built businesses, made art, fell in and out of love, and recognized every day that what they were doing was extraordinary.—Peter BG Shoemaker, New Mexico Magazine

Ladies of the Canyons is the true story of remarkable women who left the security and comforts of genteel Victorian society and journeyed to the American Southwest in search of a wider view of themselves and their world. Educated, restless, and inquisitive, Natalie Curtis, Carol Stanley, Alice Klauber, and Mary Cabot Wheelwright were plucky, intrepid women whose lives were transformed in the first decades of the twentieth century by the people and the landscape of the American Southwest. Part of an influential circle of women that included Louisa Wade Wetherill, Alice Corbin Henderson, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Mary Austin, and Willa Cather, these ladies imagined and created a new home territory, a new society, and a new identity for themselves and for the women who would follow them. Their adventures were shared with the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Robert Henri, Edgar Hewett and Charles Lummis, Chief Tawakwaptiwa of the Hopi, and Hostiin Klah of the Navajo. Their journeys took them to Monument Valley and Rainbow Bridge, into Canyon de Chelly, and across the high mesas of the Hopi, down through the Grand Canyon, and over the red desert of the Four Corners, to the pueblos along the Rio Grande and the villages in the mountains between Santa Fe and Taos. Although their stories converge in the outback of the American Southwest, the saga of Ladies of the Canyons is also the tale of Boston's Brahmins, the Greenwich Village avant-garde, the birth of American modern art, and Santa Fe's art and literary colony. Ladies of the Canyons is the story of New Women stepping boldly into the New World of inconspicuous success, ambitious failure, and the personal challenges experienced by women and men during the emergence of the Modern Age.

The people here are mothers and fathers of kids growing up in the city or young people finding ways to carve out their own identities while connecting with their familial and cultural heritage. [...] Many of the themes in the stories are universal, and the writing is weighted with a sense of urgency and emotion that comes through clearly. [...T]he author's style is, at times, voyeuristic; the reader is dropped into circumstances that take time to fully unfold and are whisked out just as abruptly. Some stories become uncomfortable and alienating [however, they are b]eautifully written and charged with vitality[;] this collection plucks people from an obscure place and tells their stories.--Kirkus Reviews

Two brothers bury a statue of Saint Jude for their grieving nana. A Griffith Park astronomer makes his own discovery at an East L.A. wedding. A young man springs his Cherokee-obsessed grandfather from the confines of senility. The common thread? Each is weaving their way through the challenging field of play that is living and loving in Los Angeles. In Dodger Blue Will Fill Your Soul, Bryan Allen Fierro brings to life the people and places that form the fragile heart of the East Los Angeles community. In the title story, a father's love of Dodger baseball is matched only by the disconnect he must bridge with his young son. In another story, a young widower remembers his wedding day with his father-in-law. The boys and men in this collection challenge masculine stereotypes, while the girls and women defy gender roles. Hope and faith in their own community defines the characters, and propels them toward an awareness of their own personal responsibility to themselves and to their families, even as they eschew those closest to them in pursuit of a different future. Dodger Blue Will Fill Your Soul is a tour de force--the first collection of an authentic new voice examining community with humor, hope, and brutal honesty.

A novel[...] -- less like storytelling than a conceptual painting. Visualize a symbolic black corpse posted at either end like the pillars of hell, and in between an expanse of bleached grasses and baked, repetitive hills -- the terrain of a white South African's consciousness. Mehring is a successful Johannesburger who has acquired a farm. [...] Mehring's cynicism allows him to be an honest conservative but precludes all human attachment. The political status quo, the veld, himself are locked into a single system of inertias which Gordimer prophecies shall suffer under one law, […] . . . Instead of direct narrative and interpretation, there is a density of implication which makes for resistant reading [...] once again and beyond question, Gordimer's art.—Kirkus Reviews

"This is a novel of enormous power' New Statesman. 'Gordimer is a great writer ... It is Turgenev that she most brings to mind' -- New York Review of Books... The Booker Prize winning political novel by the Nobel Prize winning author Nadine Gordimer... Mehring is rich. He has all the privileges and possessions that South Africa has to offer, but his possessions refuse to remain objects. His wife, son, and mistress leave him; his foreman and workers become increasingly indifferent to his stewardship; even the land rises up, as drought, then flood, destroy his farm.

What are the chances? That a child surrounded by illiteracy, shuffling between his family’s new life in Lisbon & their roots in the countryside, will have such an intense appetite for words that he relishes pages from discarded newspapers [...].[The author] has provided us with a collection of memories of his childhood and adolescence. The recollections don’t follow a linear path but instead touch lightly on lives framed by poverty and frequent brutality. But in Saramago’s retrospective imagination, these are also lives infused with dignity, affection and deep connection. [He] knows the tricks that memory can play, and on some matters he has taken great pains to test his recollections against recorded facts. [He] is fascinated by the vagaries of remembrance, at one point wondering if certain memories he had were really his.--Michael S. Roth, Washington Post

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.

"[...]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?

[...] 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.

Here are the questions discussed Wednesday, May 28, 2025, 7:00 p.m.:
Icebreaker: Tell about a place or trip you had during the time period of the book and/or when you were the age of one of the characters.

What do you think of about the very short chapters? Do you think it worked in when it was a newspaper column? Why? Why not?
Does the writer's style work for you? Why? Why not?
How does this book hold up now? Are there any parts of the book you wish were part of today's times, but now aren't? How does this book fit with your recollection of the time period or what else you've read about that time period?
Who is your favorite character? Why?
Do you have a favorite chapter? Which one? Why? Or Why not?
Generally what is the author trying to tell us?
What is Mary Anne's role in the book? What did you think of the author's rendition of her?
Were you able to keep track of all the characters? Why? Why not?
What did you think about the endings?
Any ambiguities we need to clear up?
Favorite line, image or passage.

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.

Here are the questions discussed on June 25, 2025

Icebreaker: Tell about a place that you learned about from a book that you would like to visit or have visited. Which book? Why do/did you want to visit?

Which book in this book is the first one you'd like to read after this book? Why?
Which road trip or walking tour in this book would you like to take most? Why?
Which "essay" is your favorite in this book? Why? What was your least favorite? Why?
Is there anything in the book you strongly agreed with? Disagreed with? What? Why?
Is there anything she missed writing about? What? Why?
What did you think of her research approach?
What did you think about the book design and layout of the book?
Does this book create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts? Why? Why not?
Is there anything you would change about this book if you could? What? Why?/Why not?

Favorite line, image or passage.

“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.

Here are the questions discussed on July 23, 2025

What do you think of the writing style?
What made these people think they could live the way they did? Does it make you want to stop reading? Does this make you want to read faster? Which? Neither? Why?
What do you think about his foreshadowing of disaster? How well does the foreshadowing of his "crack-up" work? Well? Why? Not so much? Why? Why does he keep telling us madness is coming?
Does this book seem misogynistic? Why? Why not?
What makes this fiction? Non-fiction? Autobiographical? Do you think he had to persuade his publishers about his choice to write it as fiction? Would this be different today?
Do you believe all his stories? Why? Why not?
What are you thinking while he is telling his tale?
What do you think of his descriptions of the California landscape?
How did he manage to write about the drunken parties? Do you think it is realistic? How good is his memory? Am I totally duped by his specificity of remembrance?
How did the "crack-up" chapters work for you? What did you feel?
Why do you think he wrote this book and had it published?
What did you think of his hallucinations?
What do you think of the ending?
Favorite line, image, or passage.

“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 Contest
The [book] 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." 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. [The book] is a timeless tale about a woman who discovered who she was by leaving everything behind. 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.

Here are the questions discussed:
Icebreaker: Who is your favorite historical Westerner and why?
What did you think of the writing style?
Who would this book appeal to? Why?
Does the way the author incorporated the letters work for you? Why?
What else could an editor done for this book?
How do you reconcile the informal writing style with the scientific pursuits?
Does the book solve the challenge of bringing an underserved subject to the forefront? Why? Why not?
What did you think of the bibliography?
What did you think of the ways she dealt with the indigenous people in this book?
What is the best part of the book? What do you think the author thinks is the best part of the book?
What fun fact did you learn in this book?
What did you think about their economic circumstances?
Any questions from other participants?
Favorite line, image or passage?

“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.

Here are the questions we discussed on on September 24, 2025.

Ice breaker: What is your favorite image of nature and/or weather in Southern California?
What is your opinion about how the author wrote about Southern California?
    Is nature a significant character in this book? Why, Why not?
What did you think about how the plot moved in this book?
Why did Ingrid kill?
What is this book trying to achieve?
What did you think of all the women in the book? Who stood out the most for you? Why?
How did this book do with the time period presented in the book? Did it work? Why? Why not?
Can you compare this to other books you have read? What? Why?
What is the best part of this book? Why?
What did you think of the writing style? Why?
Did you feel manipulated by this book? Why? Why not?
What did you think of these sentences on page 191: "Ron took us to Musso & Frank, a restaurant right on Hollywood Blvd. I never noticed it before. Just down from the last apartment I lived in with my mother."
How does the narrator's voice fit into the story?
Why did the last chapter end up as a paean to Los Angeles? What did you think about that?
Favorite line, image, or passage

“[...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.

Here are the questions we pondered on October 29, 2025.
Icebreaker: Tell about a visit to somewhere that you thought had wonderful geology or flora, or fauna.
What did you think of the photographers' approach to their photography?
Does this art photography exhibition work as a book? Why/Why not?
How do these views confirm or contrast to your idea of Grand Canyon or if you haven't been, how do they effect your desire to go or not?
What did you think of their effort to find the exact places?
Does this book define an era of photography development that is now so ubiquitous that it is hard to understand the innovations in the book? Why? Why not?
What is your favorite photograph? Why?
What is a question you had while reading the book?
Favorite line or passage in the book?