This Changes Everything: Capitalism vrs. the Climate by Naomi Klein

According to Klein, all the attempts that individuals make to reduce our carbon footprint - solar panels, recycling, etc - are worthy contributions to saving the planet but it will not be enough without a fundamental change in the structure of the world's economies.  Wealth must be more evenly distributed with economic power placed in small local businesses and utilities.  The carbon based resources currently in the ground must stay there and not be used to serve the requirements of big business.  She takes on NAFTA and similar agreements which put trading power in the hands of the 1%.  She urges each of us to use the power we have with our voices and our votes to take aim at the environmental damage being done to our planet or she fears our individual efforts will be for naught.  It is pretty dense reading with some odd personal connections towards the end but an important read for anyone who is serious about reversing climate change.

The 6th Extinction: an Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

Through fossil records we have been able to identify five times in the history of the world when 50% or more of the known biology has been lost - an extinction.  The causes have all been natural events - ice ages, asteroids, great shifts in the surface of the earth - stuff like that.  We are currently in the middle of a sixth extinction and it is all on us - humans abusing mother earth.  In a highly readable naturalist style we travel with Kolbert while she visits the sites of a few of these observable losses and explores the likely causes one domino after another.  Add this to the list of wake up calls for the current environmental crisis.  The science is made accessible through humor and adventure but the warning is no less serious.

The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed by Lee Smith

Susan Tobey is nine and both happy and confused about her life in rural Australia.  Daddy spends most days working in the basement, her mother is the beautiful Queen, her sister is the charming but arrogant Princess and it is unclear the roll of the Baron who seems to make the Queen smile. The sense of disquiet is heightened by the entrance of Eugene, a young boy visiting a neighbor.  The summer fun starts innocently enough until gradually Eugene demands absolute obedience to the games he events.  Can Susan create a fantasy strong enough to cover a disturbing reality or must she just accept a passing from the age of innocence?  A coming of age story with a little Lord of the Flies and a little To Kill a Mockingbird but a little less powerful than either one.

The Thing with Feathers by Noah Strycker

The writing is elegant from this young local author but it is really a book for bird lovers.  Full of fascinating details and bird / human comparisons, the research is extensive -  full of bird lover stories and scientific birdy discoveries.  An added perk are the wonderful drawings by the author.  The book is certainly a testament to Strycker's passion and knowledge of all things bird.

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

Family, friendship, Vietnam, the absurdity of war in general, religion, faith, the possibility of miracles - this is THAT book.  I read it somewhere in the 90's and because it is "my generation" it is still relevant to me but may be universal enough to speak to even the millenials.  Not to mention that fact that it appears in high school required reading lists in many places even today.  It is the same Irving cast of quirky characters in weirdly believable situations.  In fact he acknowledges that he recycled some of the characters from his earlier books.  Can you plagiarize yourself?   As usual, there is fodder for many good conversations.

Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf

Another slice of life in Haruf's Holt, Colorado except this is an interesting exploration of the difference between intimacy and sex.  When Addie, in her 70's, invites her neighbor Louis to her house he is a little surprised.  Addie and his wife Diane had been friends but Diane had died a while back and it hadn't occurred to Louis be more than neighborly to Addie.  He was even more surprised to learn that Addie was inviting him to sleep with her.  Not to have sex but to have quiet conversations in the dark; to feel the companionship of someone next to her in bed.  After a short hesitation, he says yes.  And so they begin, the quiet intimate sharing as they lie next to each other, the truths they have never had the chance to say out loud even in their marriages, holding hands during the difficult revelations.  The town knows - some approve, others don't - but neither Addie or Louis really care - at first.  Written in Haruf's quiet simple style, it is small moments and conversations that stimulate reflection on the reader's own life experience.

Circling the Sun by Paula McLain

Before Kenya was Kenya, little Beryl Clutterbuck roamed free as a lion cub on her father's estate overlooking the Great Rift Valley.  Her mother had found life in Africa too hard and had returned to England with Beryl's younger brother.  She would not see her again for 20 years.  Her father was a gifted horse trainer, a skill Beryl would inherit.  Life in the colonial ex-pat community was both restraining and morally and ethically hypocritical.  Beryl would struggle with all of it and grow up to be Beryl Markham.  This fictional biography is every bit as engaging as The Paris Wife, also by McLain.  Beryl is fiercely independent but susceptible to the trials and tribulations of a complicated love life.  Behind it all is her love of Africa - her passion for it's wildness, her fear for what it might become, and her desire to fly above it all.  A fascinating read.  Now I need to find a copy of West with the Night, Markham's own memoir of her historic flight over the Atlantic.

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Our book group decided to give this classic a try to see if it read any differently to us as adults than it did to the disgruntled teen-agers we may have been when we read it the first time.  Truthfully, I didn't remember a thing about the first reading than the existence of Phoebe and the source of the title.  I'd like to think that my view of life during the first reading was not as sour as Holden's.  But after years of observing young adults trying to understand how to trust and embrace a world and a future that seems disappointing at best, I may be more sympathetic to Holden as an adult than I might have been as a teen-ager sharing in his angst.  However there is a Stekel quote shared by a teacher: "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."  It made me think of all those comfortable middle America kids turning terrorist.  Was Salinger trying to tell us something?

Snow in August by Pete Hamill

Eleven year old Michael Devlin's world in 1940's Brooklyn was all about his Irish Catholic neighborhood.  Michael's dad was killed in WWll but he and his mom are doing fine.  Then one morning, on the way to church to fulfill his alter boy duties, he hears a request for help.  For the first time Michael meets the very orthodox Rabbi Judah Hirsch, a Czech refugee, who needs him to turn on the lights because it is Shabbos and Hirsch is not allow to work.  Although Michael's summer is filled with back street baseball, Jackie Robinson and Marvel comics, he finds himself drawn to the Rabbi and offers to be his "shabbos goy".  Michael teaches Hirsch about American customs and Hirsch shares the rich traditions of his faith - even teaches him a little Yiddish.  Their friendship is challenged by a tragic act of violence that forces Michael to recognize prejudice against the Jews but leaves him questioning its logic.  As acts of violence by a local gang escalate, Michael believes it will take the power of the Golem to make things right.  It is here that Hamill turns to a bit of magical realism to bring the story to it's rightful conclusion - rightful because this is the way you want the world to respond to the senseless evil we too often choose to ignore.