The Reader's Loft recognizes the importance of book groups as a way of creating community around the written word in these modern and often too-busy times.
We've created our book group registry to offer you and your book group the greatest support we can.
When you register your book group at The Reader's Loft, you receive:
15% OFF Book Group Purchases for Each Member, Online Listing of Your Group's Title Selections, Free Reading Group Guides and any other discussion materials you need, guaranteed availability and connection with other reading groups in the area, for great book suggestions. Click here to download our Book Group Registration Form.
Green Books Group |
Crude World By Peter Maas
Wednesday, October 137:30 PM at Daily Buzz in the Historic Bellin Building Downtown 130 E. Walnut Street A stunning and revealing examination of oil's indelible impact on the countries that produce it and the people who possess it. Every unhappy oil-producing nation is unhappy in its own way, but all are touched by the "resource curse"—the power of oil to exacerbate existing problems and create new ones. In Crude World, Peter Maass presents a vivid portrait of the troubled world oil has created. He takes us to Saudi Arabia, where officials deflect inquiries about the amount of petroleum remaining in the country's largest reservoir; to Equatorial Guinea, where two tennis courts grace an oil-rich dictator's estate but bandages and aspirin are a hospital's only supplies; and to Venezuela, where Hugo Chávez's campaign to redistribute oil wealth creates new economic and political crises. Maass, a New York Times Magazine writer, also introduces us to Iraqi oilmen trying to rebuild their industry after the invasion of 2003, an American lawyer leading Ecuadorians in an unprecedented lawsuit against Chevron, a Russian oil billionaire imprisoned for his defiance of Vladimir Putin's leadership, and Nigerian villagers whose livelihoods are destroyed by the discovery of oil. Rebels, royalty, middlemen, environmentalists, indigenous activists, CEOs—their stories, deftly and sensitively presented, tell the larger story of oil in our time. is a startling and essential account of the consequences of our addiction to oil. Crude World 
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Our Choice By Al Gore
Wednesday, November 107:30 PM at Daily Buzz in the Historic Bellin Building Downtown 130 E. Walnut Street Our Choice is an inspiring call to action for those ready to fight for solutions that really work — including some bold initiatives that were deemed impossible only a short time ago but are now gaining support around the world.
Since the publication of the New York Times bestseller An Inconvenient Truth and the release of the Academy Award-winning film of the same title, Mr. Gore has led more than 30 Solutions Summits with top scientists, engineers, and policy experts to examine every solution to the climate crisis in depth and detail. Our Choice draws on conclusions developed through those summits as well as on extensive independent research, describing how the bold choices necessary to save the earth's climate should also be the foundations of policies worldwide to create new jobs and stimulate sustainable economic progress. As they did with An Inconvenient Truth, former Vice President Gore and Mrs. Tipper Gore will donate 100 percent of the proceeds of the book to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group dedicated to spreading awareness about the climate crisis and how to solve it. Our Choice features 100 percent recycled paper, locally produced and sourced editions, low VOC inks, and is carbon neutral.
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Eaarth By Bill McKibben
Wednesday, December 87:30 PM at Daily Buzz in the Historic Bellin Building Downtown 130 E. Walnut Street Twenty years ago, with The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now, he insists, we need to acknowledge that we've waited too long, and that massive change is not only unavoidable but already under way. Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen. We've created, in very short order, a new planet, still recognizable but fundamentally different. We may as well call it Eaarth. That new planet is filled with new binds and traps. A changing world costs large sums to defend — think of the money that went to repair New Orleans, or the trillions it will take to transform our energy systems. But the endless economic growth that could underwrite such largesse depends on the stable planet we've managed to damage and degrade. We can't rely on old habits any longer. Our hope depends, McKibben argues, on scaling back — on building the kind of societies and economies that can hunker down, concentrate on essentials, and create the type of community (in the neighborhood, but also on the Internet) that will allow us to weather trouble on an unprecedented scale. Change — fundamental change — is our best hope on a planet suddenly and violently out of balance.
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