Climate Change Book Club: 2023 Reading List

After a brief hiatus, we're back!

This is Book Club for the Planet, a book club dedicated to reading about the climate crisis in community. Want to see all of the 2023 book picks and recommendations in one place? Check out my shop link at Bookshop.org.

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Hi friends! It’s been a minute and it feels wonderful to sit down with my morning cup of coffee and write these words of “hello” to you. Hello! Spring is here! The coffee is hot! Book club is back!

First off, I want to thank you for your support, patience and kindness during these last several months. I finished up my 2-year graduate certificate in Sustainability from Harvard in December, underwent a major preventative surgery in January, and ended back up in the hospital a few weeks later with a liver complication. I’ve been recovering at home ever since. I could write so much about the time warp and perspective of those recovery months, but I’ll spare you the novella and invite you to read Jenny Odell instead. Bless bless bless, I feel well and back to myself, ready to devour all the books with you.

Before we dive into the list for 2023 (abbreviated, by the way, since we’re starting halfway through the year), I have two announcements:

First, we will finally be meeting on Zoom to discuss 2022’s last book, Healing Grounds, on Sunday, June 18. Many of you loved this book and I’m so excited to talk about it with you! If you haven’t read it yet or you need a refresher, it’s short and sweet and you have plenty of time.

Second, I’m thrilled to announce that this book club will now be meeting in-person at my favorite local bookstore, Greedy Reads in Baltimore, Maryland! We will still be meeting virtually over Zoom on Sundays, and our in-person meetings will be held the following Monday evening at Greedy Reads’ Remington location. We will kick off the book club with a discussion of Healing Grounds. If you live in Baltimore, I encourage you to join us. All the details about this book club and Greedy Reads’ other wonderful book clubs can be found here. Thank you to Emily, Julia, and the entire Greedy Reads team for hosting us!

With that, let’s jump into the books! If you need a refresher about book selection or how book club works, read this.

May - June

Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming by Liz Carlisle

See above for the details!

Book club dates: 6/18 (virtual) and 6/19 (in-person)

July - August

A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars, edited by Erin Sharkey

Compared to just a few years ago, there are many anthologies being released that focus on the climate and environment (see: Greta Thunberg’s version, Rebecca Solnit’s version, and a book dedicated to trees with heavy hitters like Ross Gay, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ada Limón, Robert Macfarlane, Zadie Smith, Radiohead, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Robin Wall Kimmerer). This is worthy of celebration! More voices, more perspectives! However, the bigger the tome and the broader the scope, the more I find myself re-reading familiar arguments boiled down into a 5-page essay. (That’s not a hit on any of the above references; I haven’t read them and actually want to read elements of all three.)

Enter A Darker Wilderness, a newly published book with a sharp edit towards the Black experience in nature. It doesn’t have 100 voices—it has just a dozen—but these voices represent some of the most revered writers in Black environmental writing today. It includes Carolyn Finney, author of our third book club read, Black Faces, White Spaces, and Lauret Savoy, author of Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape, a book that’s been on my radar for years. It’s also a beautifully printed book with black and white photographs and a sparse layout, making it a pleasure to hold and read.

Book club dates: 8/27 (virtual) and 8/28 (in-person)

For continued reading, please check out Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape by Lauret Savoy, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, edited by Camille Dungy, and Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman.

September - October

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton

One of the surprising side effects of my liver damage was that I had no energy to read any of the books on my stack. Novels, no matter how light, felt daunting. Short stories still felt like they required too much stamina. In response, my sister lent me her copies of her favorite graphic novels, and I was immediately in love. I had read a couple graphic novels before, but it was wonderful to fall into their visual world-building again in a way that allowed me to read in a refreshing new way.

That’s why I’m so excited to read Ducks together. It’s our first graphic novel and I hope it allows those new to graphic novels to experience them, as well as folks who are overwhelmed by meatier non-fiction tomes to join book club. The book is a memoir of the writer’s experience working the oil sands in Alberta, Canada. It’s easy to demonize the faceless oil industry (and we have, often), but it’s equally important to understand the lives and experiences of the workers on the ground working the oil sands.

Book club dates: 10/29 (virtual) and 10/30 (in-person)

For continued reading, please check out Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country by Sierra Crane Murdoch and The Patch: The People, Pipelines and Politics of the Oil Sands by Chris Turner.

November - December

Stolen by Ann-Helén Laestadius

Here in the U.S., when we think of indigenous voices we first think of our own first peoples who lived on this continent before the arrival of European colonization and genocide. We’ve read some of their stories (and will read more!), but I’m eager to include indigenous voices from other parts of the world. Stolen is our first translated book, written by a Swedish author of Sámi and Tornedalian descent. It’s a novel about Sámi reindeer herders through the lens of a crime thriller, based on actual events. It’s also being made into a Netflix film, to be released in 2024!

Book club dates: 12/10 (virtual) and 12/11 (in-person)

For continued reading, please check out I Will Live for Both of Us: A History of Colonialism, Uranium Mining, and Inuit Resistance by Joan Scottie and Warren Bernauer, The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia by Piers Vitebsky, Life in the City of Dirty Water: A Memoir of Healing by Clayton Thomas-Muller, and Me Tomorrow: Indigenous Views on the Future, edited by Drew Hayden Taylor. Also, anything by Louise Erdrich.