Knowledge and Community Builder|A Greener Book Club

August 3, 2010

A fun way to build your knowledge about eco-issues and get more connected to your community is to start or participate in a book club. You can create a theme around topics including classics that form the foundation of environmentalism such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (published 1962) or Paul Hawken’s Natural Capitalism (published 1999). Other topics that you and your readers may way to explore include: water and conservation, renewable energy, green building, sustainable living, local food movement or social enterprise. Your local book store or library may also offer guidance on suggested titles and even provide a venue for meeting with your green book club.

Locally, the Redmond Library, part of the King County Library System or KCLS has hosted a Sustainable Futures Book Club for several years now. This group meets monthly to discuss a variety of readings that cover a broad spectrum of green or sustainability topics. Here is a sampling of this year’s reading list to-date:

1. Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations by David R. Montgomery
2. Can Poetry Save the Earth? by John Felstiner
3. The Green Collar Economy by Van Jones
4. Small is Possible: Life in a Local Economy by Lyle Estill
-or- Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller by Jeff Rubin
5. Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand
6. The Web of Life by Fritjof Capra
-OR- Worldshift 2012 by Ervin Laszlo (or any book by either author)
7. Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach
8. The Value of Nothing by Raj Patel

Consider starting your own green book club at your home with friends, broaden your reach by meeting at a local community center or library. You might target different audiences from adults to teens or even a parent and child focus. There are many new books directed specifically at children, one that comes to mind is Why Should I Recycle? by Mike Gordon.

Remember to pass along or trade your titles, and do the green thing. You may even decide to start a Facebook page or a blog that provides a summary of your readings as a way to deepen the experience and share it with others. If you find some great books that opened up a dialogue where you are, please share your titles with our readers. The End – alex

Filed under: general musings,Green blog,Green books,green education,green marketing,Sustainable Eastside

Tags: book clubs, community building, green books, green reading, kcls, library programs, redmond, silent spring, sustainable solutions