Climate Change Book Group titles

[Ken Krause]

Here are upcoming titles for "Planet and Pages," the Medford Public Library's new Climate Change Book Group:

Weds., February 28, 7 p.m. - “Weather: A novel” by Jenny Offill. Lizzie Benson slid into her job as a librarian without a traditional degree. But this gives her a vantage point from which to practice her other calling: she is a fake shrink. For years she has tended to her God-haunted mother and her recovering addict brother. They have both stabilized for the moment, but Lizzie has little chance to spend her new free time with husband and son before her old mentor, Sylvia Liller, makes a proposal. Sylvia has become famous for her prescient podcast, Hell and High Water, and wants to hire Lizzie to answer the mail she receives: from left-wingers worried about climate change and right-wingers worried about the decline of western civilization.

Weds., March 20, 7 p.m. - "The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable" by Amitav Ghosh. Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability — at the level of literature, history, and politics — to grasp the scale and violence of climate change.

Books will be available at the library approximately one month in advance. Stop by to pick up your copy.

Led by green entrepreneur Clare Flaherty, owner of Trove Green Provisions in Medford Hillside, the Planet and Pages group reads both non-fiction and fiction books about climate change and explores topics such as global warming, plastic pollution, environmental inequity, and proposed solutions to combat their effects. Trove Green Provisions, located at 330a Boston Avenue, is a people and planet friendly product and refilling store offering provisions and services to help you live a lower waste and greener life.