nature book club

Get together, expand your knowledge of the natural world, meet other folks, and have a good time!
Nature Book Club meets monthly, is free, and open to all.

Nature Book Club is a great way to keep up on your nature learning, meet new people, read new books, and participate in discussion about the ways nature writing shapes our experiences and relationship to the natural world.
New folks are always welcome to join! 

Nature Book Club meets the fourth Wednesday of each month, 6:00pm-7:30pm
Online, contact us for the meeting link

Next Meeting: Wednesday, February 26, 6:00-7:30pm.

A Little Queer Natural History
by Josh L Davis

From a pair of male swans raising young to splitgill mushrooms with over 23,000 mating types, sex in the natural world is wonderfully diverse. Josh L. Davis considers how, for many different organisms—animals, plants, and fungi included—sexual reproduction and sex determination rely on a surprisingly complex interaction among genes, hormones, environment, and chance. As Davis introduces us to fascinating biological concepts like parthenogenesis (virgin birth), monoecious plants (individuals with separate male and female flowers), and sex-reversed genitals, we see turtle hatchlings whose sex is determined by egg temperature; butterflies that embody male and female biological tissue in the same organism; and a tomato that can reproduce three different ways at the same time. Davis also reveals animal and plant behaviors in nature that researchers have historically covered up or explained away, like queer sex among Adélie penguins or bottlenose dolphins, and presents animal behaviors that challenge us to rethink our assumptions and prejudices. Featuring fabulous sex-fluid fishes and ant, wasp, and bee queens who can choose both how they want to have sex and the sex of their offspring, A Little Queer Natural History offers a larger lesson: that the diversity we see in our own species needs no justification and represents just a fraction of what exists in the natural world.

Upcoming selections:
January 2025: Oregon Geology by Elizabeth Orr
February: A Little Queer Natural History by Josh L Davis
March: Better Living Through Birding: Notes From a Black Man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper
April: Big River: Resilience and Renewal in the Columbia Basin by David Moskowitz and Eileen Delehanty Pearkes
May: The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies Are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet by Kristin Ohlson
June: Sing Like Fish: How Sound Rules Life Under Water by Amorina Kingdon
July: The Bears of Brooks Falls by Mike Fitz
August: Dead Wood: the Afterlife of Trees by Ellen Wohl

Also check out our Tracking Club!