In 2024 the CWCN Book Club will be in its 11th year celebrating environmental literature.
Since its inception it has been very much enjoyed by all who participate. Our book club is for booklovers, bookworms, food for thought gourmets, those who appreciate the natural world, those who enjoy a debate, and those who just love having a good time.
We are thrilled about the success. Regular participants are looking forward to the third Wednesday of each month (except December). Two hours of informal, wide ranging and lively discussions are combined with loads of fun. A cup of coffee/tea and refreshments contribute to the atmosphere.
Like most of our events, the CWCN Book Club is open to everyone. However, due to the nature of the club, participation needs to be kept to workable numbers. We kindly ask you RSVP for sessions which take place at the CWCN Centre, 47 Hepworth St, Chapel Hill on the third Wednesday of each month (except December) between 2:00pm and 4:00pm. A fee of $5.00 is charged per session.
We are pleased to offer another varied and interesting program for 2024 and hope you will find the chosen titles to your liking. They can usually be obtained through your library.
For further information, contact us by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or ring us on 07 3378 1465.
BOOK CLUB PROGRAM 2024
Wednesday, 17th January 2024
The Most Dammed Country in the World by Dai Qing
The courageous, unflinching speeches and writings collected in The Most Dammed Country in the World detail the devastating human and environmental cost of China's economic rise.— Dai Qing, an investigative journalist and environmentalist had been opposed to the construction of the Three Gorges before work started and draws on a wealth of knowledge.— The author is forbidden to publish or speak publicly in China but remains in the country to continue documenting the truth … This short book is one of 20 titles in the Penguin Classics series bringing us the new canon of great environmental works. (2021, 96pp)
Wednesday, 21th February 2024
The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy by Tom Mustill
Drawing on a wealth of memorable experiences, from a lifetime of watching and thinking about wildlife and natural landscape, the author, a highly reputed British writer on the environment, not only presents a new way of looking at the world around us, but proposes this joy as a defence of a natural world which is ever more threatened, and which, he argues is inadequately served by the two defences put forward: sustainable development and the recognition of ecosystem services. McCarthy’s book is powerful, timely, and wholly original. (2015, 263pp)
Wednesday, 20th March 2024
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
As a botanist, [the author] has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert). Her argument is that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgement and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. (2020, 400pp)
Wednesday, 17th April 2024
Walter Rothschild: The Man, the Museum and the Menagerie by Miriam Rothschild
Born into what was one of the wealthiest families in the world, Walter Rothschild became the best known zoologist of his day—and one of Britain’s great eccentrics. A benign and enigmatic figure with a boundless enthusiasm for nature, he amassed the largest single accumulation of zoological specimens ever collected by one man, establishing his own private Museum in 1892, now the Natural History Museum of Tring. Walter’s extraordinary life traversed the fields of politics and finance as well as zoology and it was packed with achievements and incidents. (2008, 386pp)
Wednesday, 15th May 2024
Rewilding. The Radical New Science of Ecological Recovery by Paul Jepson and Cain Blythe
The ground-breaking science behind ambitious new schemes for restoring lost natural systems. Nature conservation in the 21st century has taken a radical new turn. Instead of conserving particular species in nature reserves as ‘museum pieces’, frozen in time, the thinking now is that we should allow landscape sized areas to ‘rewild’ according to their own self-determined processes. By fencing off large areas and introducing large herbivores, along with apex predators..... dynamic new habitats are already being created. (2021, 224pp)
Wednesday, 19th June 2024
Hot Money by Naomi Klein
Three essays in which Klein presents her argument that deregulated capitalism is waging war on the climate, and shows that, in order to stop the damage, we must change everything we think about how our world is run. Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist, documentary filmmaker and author of the international bestsellers and thought provoker. She was awarded Australia’s prestigious Sydney Peace Prize for, according to the prize jury, “inspiring us to stand up locally, nationally and internationally to demand a new agenda for sharing the planet that respects human rights and equality.” This small title is part of Penguin’s Classics series on the environment. (2021, 129pp)
Wednesday, 17th July 2024
A Pirate of Exquisite Mind - The Life of William Dampier by Diana and Michael Preston
Dampier was the first to map the winds and currents of the world’s oceans; led the first recorded party of Englishmen to set foot on Australia—80 years before Cook, wrote about Galapagos wildlife 150 years before Darwin; was the first travel writer and bestselling author in 1697. A man full of contradictions—he who achieved so much ‘blew it’ later in life, declining into scandal, failure and even farce. A unique man ahead of his time, he lived a large part of his life among pirates yet managed to preserve what Coleridge called his ‘exquisite refinement of mind’. A classic example of the best narrative history. (2005, 512pp)
Wednesday, 21st August 2024
The Plant Thieves by Prudence Gibson
The book explores the secrets of the National Herbarium of New South Wales and unearths remarkable stories of plant naming wars, rediscovered lost species, First Nations agriculture, illegal drug labs and psychoactive plant knowledge. Gibson reveals the tale of the anti-inflammatory plant that saved a herbarium manager when collecting in Papua New Guinea, stories about the secret Wollemi pine plantation and follows collaboration with Indigenous and non-indigenous researchers. The Plant Thieves is both a lament for lost or disappearing species and celebration of being human, of wanting to collect things and of learning more about plant life and ourselves. (2023, 272pp)
Wednesday, 18th September 2024
An Idea Can Go Extinct by Bill McKibben
McKibben is the author of Earth, The End of Nature, Deep Economy, Enough, Fight Global Warming Now, The Bill McKibben Reader, and numerous other books. He is the founder of the environmental organisations Step It up and 350.org, and was among the first to warn of the dangers of global warming. An Idea Can Go Extinct is Bill McKibben's impassioned, groundbreaking account of how, by changing the earth's entire atmosphere, the weather and the most basic forces around us, 'we are ending nature.' The title is part of Penguin Classic Environment series. (2021, 72pp)
Wednesday, 16th October 2024
The Insect Crisis. The Fall of the Tiny Empires that Run the World by Oliver Milan
A groundswell of research suggests insect numbers are in serious decline all over the world—in some places by over 90%. The Insect Crisis explores this hidden emergency, arguing that its consequences could even rival climate change. We rely on insects pollination for the bulk of our agriculture, they are prime food source for birds and fish, and they are a key strut holding up life on earth, especially our own. In a compelling and entertaining investigation spanning the globe, Millman speaks to the scientists and entomologists studying this catastrophe and asks why these extraordinary creatures are disappearing. Part warning, part celebration of the incredible variety of insetcs, this book highlights why we need to wake up to this impending environmental disaster. (2022, 272pp)
.
Wednesday, 20th Nov 2024
Your own choice of Nature Poetry
For the last book club session of the year participants are invited to choose and present their personal favourites—individual poems or collections. Previous book club poetry sessions followed that pattern, often with surprising gems from Australia and other countries, introduced and (re)discovered, and inspiring everyone present. The choices are wide and may range from well know classic Australian poems to more contemporary selections, may focus on an individual flora or fauna species, the bush in general, or the life and experiences of individuals. Past end of year book club sessions enjoyed poetry by Les Murray, Judith Wright, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Ali Cobby Eckermann and William Wordsworth, to name just a few.