New Book Group Info!

Back in the fall I met with Hope Long, the director of the Botanical Gardens library. We wanted to start a book group combining Emmet O'Neal Library's patrons and those who frequent Hope's library.

Our new group met last night to discuss Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and to organize and plan for later meetings. Here’s what we decided:

We planned to meet on the first Tuesday of each month which means we will meet on Tuesday, March 2nd at 6:30 p.m. and Tuesday, April 6th at 6:30 p.m. All meetings will be at the Botanical Gardens library.

We picked two books for discussion. Our March book will be Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky. For April we will be reading a book which Hope Long recommended highly called
The $64 Tomato by William Alexander. Both books are available through the Jefferson County Library Cooperative and may be requested and picked up at any branch.

We discussed that the group needs a name! Katie Moellering (Emmet O’Neal Library, Adult Services Department) stated that a prize will be given to the book group member who comes up with the best name for the group – this will be based on a vote at the March meeting – so bring your suggestions in March!

We talked about several possibilities for field trips – in particular we thought it would be fun to visit June Mays’ garden and take a peek at a “gardener’s garden”.

Hope Long (Botanical Gardens Librarian) mentioned that she keeps seed catalogs at the gardens for patrons to peruse at the library, use for ordering while placing orders online, or for checkout.

Some of the catalogs we talked about that were particular favorites of members were:
Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, The Seed Saver, Sand Mountain Seed Bank (not a seed catalog, but here in Alabama), Thompson & Morgan, and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

We also discussed showing films of interest to our group – among them: Food Inc. (which will be shown on March 21st at Emmet O’Neal Library) as well as Fresh, The Real Dirt On Farmer John, King Corn, and more.

We need to choose at least four more books to carry our group through to the fall, so please bring the names of your top choices to our March book group. You can either use the list Hope handed out at the meeting, or bring your own. There were some additions to the list, among them: Passalong Plants, This Common Ground, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Wicked Plants, and Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Hope passed out two lists entitled “Alabama’s Guide to EAT LOCAL” which lists places to get locally grown/raised/produced meats, vegetable and fruits.

In all, we had a great meeting – this is going to be a fun new group!