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It's almost summertime which means more time spent outdoors, rooted in the natural world. If you're lucky enough to own a gardening patch, you know how therapeutic an exercise it can be to smell the lavender and work the soil to get the tomatoes going. These book club selections borrow on the botanical delights of the season and deliver much to enjoy with the turn of every leaf. We hope you dig them as much as we do! But first - we're currently discussing The Fair Fight and Spinster in our Book Club - you'll find links to find out more about these books, or join the discussion, below. Your Editor Davina
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  BookBrowse Book ClubPlease Join Us to Discuss:
 Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own
by Kate Bolick
Available in paperback & ebook, 336 pages
Intellectually substantial and deeply personal, Spinster is both an unreservedly inquisitive memoir and a broader cultural exploration that asks us to acknowledge the opportunities within ourselves to live authentically. Bolick offers us a way back into our own lives - a chance to see those splendid years when we were young and unencumbered, or middle-aged and finally left to our own devices, for what they really are: unbounded and our own to savor. More about this book | Join the discussion
 The Fair Fight by Anna Freeman
Published in paperback & ebook, 480 pages
The Crimson Petal and the White meets Fight Club: A page-turning novel set in the world of female pugilists and their patrons in late eighteenth-century England. The Fair Fight is a raucous, intoxicating tale of courage, reinvention, and fighting one's way to the top.
More about this book | Join the discussion |
Botanical Delights - for Book Clubs
 | Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening: How I Learned the Unexpected Joy of a Green Thumb and an Open Heart by Carol Wall
Nonfiction. Paperback Feb 2015. Also in ebook. 304 pages. Published by Berkley Books
Here's proof that gardening can be therapeutic and bring people together. Carol Wall's cancer treatments have meant that she needs both refuge and distraction, something she seeks in her own backyard. Over the fence, she strikes a conversation with a Kenyan man, Giles Owita, a gardener attending to her neighbor's plot. This plants a beautiful and blossoming friendship that will nurture Wall through difficult times.
More about this book including discussion guide |
 | A Garden of Marvels: How We Discovered that Flowers Have Sex, Leaves Eat Air, and Other Secrets of Plants by Ruth Kassinger
Nonfiction. Paperback Mar 2015. Also in ebook. 416 pages. Published by William Morrow
Not everyone has a green thumb - Ruth Kassinger certainly didn't and she realized it after she killed yet another houseplant. Not fazed by her early stumbling blocks, she was determined to approach the process following a scientific method. Her discoveries along the way to becoming a green-thumbed gardener will delight all lovers of the botanical world, especially those who see plants as mild-mannered creatures incapable of naughty deeds.
More about this book including discussion guide |
 | The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
Fiction. Paperback Sep 2012. Also in ebook. 352 pages. Published by Weinstein Books
In the season of garden home tours, you don't want to miss this transport to the Malaysian highlands where an enigmatic Japanese gardener who once created his native country's Imperial gardens has recreated such a specimen using all the classical techniques of the method. Saturated with greenery and dripping with atmosphere, this is also a moving tale of one's past and the difficult task of living in the present.
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 | The Language of Flowers: A Novel by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Fiction. Paperback Apr 2012. Also in ebook. 352 pages. Published by Ballantine Books
Roses for love, asters for patience, honeysuckle for devotion. Victoria Jones is well-versed in the language of flowers and it's a good thing too because it serves as succour for her through a trying childhood. Her passion for the botanical world soon garners attention and fragrant blossoms continue to fill her life with meaning. Proof that when words fail, you can always say it with flowers.
More about this book including discussion guide |
 | Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
Nonfiction. Paperback Apr 2008. Also in ebook. 400 pages. Published by Harper Perennial
You'll find much to savor in these chronicles by the popular author who embarks on a mission to grow (and raise) her own food. In the wake of the growing popularity of community-supported agriculture and farmers' markets, this book will provide much food for thought while serving a heaping portion of a delicious sense of humor on the side.
More about this book including discussion guide |
 | My Garden by Jamaica Kincaid
Nonfiction. May 2001. Also in ebook. 229 pages. Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Avid gardeners will relate to Jamaica Kincaid's obsession of planting only the flowers she likes - and sometimes can't grow. After all, gardening is about love and memories, and here Kincaid's careful plans for each of her plants reveal deeper connections to her life. From her garden in Vermont to her childhood plot of land in Antigua, this book eloquently captures the infinite pleasures of mud underneath your fingernails.
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 | The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
Nonfiction. Paperback May 2002. Also in ebook. 304 pages. Published by Random House
There was a time when the price of a single tulip bulb cost as much as a townhouse in Amsterdam. Years later, the obsession turned to marijuana. Pollan, the darling of the foodie world, turns his attentions to plants and the symbiotic relationship they strike with humans to keep themselves green and thriving. Engrossing and illuminating reading for a book club. Which plant is your favorite?
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 | Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
Nonfiction. Hardcover & ebook Apr 2016. 304 pages. Published by Knopf
How many of us can really say that we're living out our life's passions? Botanist Hope Jahren certainly can. Encouraged to tinker in her Dad's lab as a young girl, Jahren's enthusiasm for the plant world lead her to travel around the world and find a labmate who speaks to her heart as well as her work. An eloquent treatise, planted in nature, about following your dreams no matter where they take you.
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List curated by Davina Morgan-Witts. Written by Poornima Apte |
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