InspireSeattle - Books Club

About Book Club

The InspireSeattle book club is always seeking new  regarding key political issues of these times. We meet every 4 to 6 weeks on a Sunday evening for 2 hours to discuss our latest book. The meeting place rotates among the homes of our membership, located from West Seattle to Mountlake Terrace. Carpooling is encouraged and is generally available.

Each book club concludes with a discussion of which book the majority of attendees would prefer to read next. You can take a look at a list of books previously suggested by InspireSeattle members or make your own suggestion at the book club or online.

 
  Provide us with your email address
  to receive invitations to
  future book club meetings

  Your name:
  Email address:
  

Click here to see a list of books previously read by the InspireSeattle book club.

  • View a list of books suggested for future book clubs, or

    Submit an idea for a book to read:  

     

 
Click here to read reviews of books by book club members
 
   

What we're reading for our next gathering,
Sunday, April 13, 2025 at 6pm

The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
by Zoë Schlanger

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The New Yorker's Best Books of 2024 - TIME's 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 - New York Magazine's 10 Best Books of the Year - Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction of 2024 - Smithsonian's 10 Best Science Books of the Year - A Best Book of the Year: Boston Globe, Scientific American, New York Public Library, Christian Science Monitor, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly - An Amazon Best Nonfiction Book of the Year

Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Nonfiction Prize - Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize - Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History

"A masterpiece of science writing." - Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass

"Mesmerizing, world-expanding, and achingly beautiful." - Ed Yong, author of An Immense World

"Rich, vital, and full of surprises. Read it!" - Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky and The Sixth Extinction

Award-winning Atlantic staff writer Zoë Schlanger delivers a groundbreaking work of popular science that probes the hidden world of the plant kingdom, "destabilizing not just how we see the green things of the world but also our place in the hierarchy of beings, and maybe the notion of that hierarchy itself." (The New Yorker)

It takes tremendous biological creativity to be a plant. To survive and thrive while rooted in a single spot, plants have adapted ingenious methods of survival. In recent years, scientists have learned about their ability to communicate, recognize their kin and behave socially, hear sounds, morph their bodies to blend into their surroundings, store useful memories that inform their life cycle, and trick animals into behaving to their benefit, to name just a few remarkable talents.

The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zoe Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close.

What can we learn about life on Earth from the living things that thrive, adapt, consume, and accommodate simultaneously? More important, what do we owe these life forms once we come to understand their rich and varied abilities? Examining the latest epiphanies in botanical research, Schlanger spotlights the intellectual struggles among the researchers conceiving a wholly new view of their subject, offering a glimpse of a field in turmoil as plant scientists debate the tenets of ongoing discoveries and how they influence our understanding of what a plant is.

We need plants to survive. But what do they need us for—if at all? An eye-opening and informative look at the ecosystem we live in, this book challenges us to rethink the role of plants -- and our own place -- in the natural world.

 

Planning ahead?
After the meeting described above, we will be discussing An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong

 
Contact Us Copyright 2010 InspireSeattle ©