Wisdom sits in Places by Keith H. Basso; Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996. 

For more than thirty years, Keith Basso has been doing fieldwork among the Western Apache, and now he shares with us what he has learned of Apache place-names -- where they come from and what they mean to Apaches. "This is indeed a brilliant exposition of landscape and language in the world of the Western Apache. But it is more than that. Keith Basso gives us to understand something about the sacred and indivisible nature of words and place. And this is a universal equation, a balance in the universe. Place may be the first of all concepts; it may be the oldest of all words."-N. Scott Momaday, Publisher’s website.

Future books

Wednesday, July 11, 2012, 7:00 p.m.

You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up by Richard Hallas (pseudonym for Eric Knight). New York: R.M. McBride, 1938.

"[…]for many noir aficionados, [this book] remains one of the most evocative and subversive novels of its time.   […]The book does read like James Cain filtered through Thomas Pynchon. Although Knight's first person narrative begins in typical tough-guy fashion, with Dick Dempsey, an Oklahoma-born AWOL Marine hopping a freight in Texas for Southern California in pursuit of his wife and son, it soon moves off in another, wilder direction — more like a noir Alice in Lotus Land than a cool and conventional hardboiled novel.” — Woody Haut , Los Angeles Review of Books

 Wednesday, August 1, 2012, 7:00 p.m.

 

Where I was From by Joan Didion;  New York: Knopf,  2003. 

Train Dreams: A Novella by Denis Johnson; New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2011. 

“I first read [the book] in a bright orange 2002 issue of The Paris Review and felt that old thrill of discovery . . . Every once in a while, over the ensuing nine years, I’d page through that Paris Review and try to understand how Johnson had made such a quietly compelling thing. Part of it, of course, is atmosphere. Johnson’s evocation of Prohibition Idaho is totally persuasive . . . The novella also accumulates power because Johnson is as skilled as ever at balancing menace against ecstasy, civilization against wilderness. His prose tiptoes a tightrope between peace and calamity, and beneath all of the novella’s best moments, Johnson runs twin strains of tenderness and the threat of violence . . . it might be the most powerful thing Johnson has ever written.” —Anthony Doerr, New York Times Book Review 

Wednesday, October 10, 2012, 7:00 p.m.

Come in and Cover Me by Gin Phillips; New York: Riverhead Books, 2012. 

"Ren has devoted her career to discovering the history of the Mimbres culture, which flourished about 1,000 years ago in the American Southwest. […] Phillips’s writing [is] brimming with imagery. [...] her greatest talent is her ability to create the world of the story. [The book] moves us into the earth. The dusty landscape serves as both setting and metaphor, a beautiful but dangerous place where a sudden loss of footing can prove fatal. [...] Still, this is ultimately a novel about recovery. In that way, the fragmentation of image and memory seems realistic. For most of us, like Ren, healing from tragedy arrives in little pieces and over time". — Brunonia Barry, Washington Post.

Saturday, November 10, 2012, 2:00 p.m.

An American Provence by Thomas P. Huber ; Boulder : University Press of Colorado, 2011. 

"I have talked about luscious wines and succulent fruit and exquisite dinners. But there may be no more evocative experience of the two valleys than the smell of new-mown hay in the fields at dusk. If a person were to close their eyes, they could not tell if they were in Provence or the North Fork Valley. That sweet, earthy odor is part of the beauty of these places."— [Excerpt]  In this poetic personal narrative, Thomas P. Huber reflects on two seemingly unrelated places-the North Fork Valley in western Colorado and the Coulon River Valley in Provence, France-and finds a shared landscape and sense of place. — Goodreads.com

Saturday, December 8, 2012, 2:00 p.m 

Klee Wyck by Emily Carr; Vancouver, B.C.: Douglas & McIntyre, 2004. (Originally published 1941.)

The legendary Emily Carr was primarily a painter, but she first gained recognition as a writer. Her first book, […], was titled Klee Wyck ("Laughing One"), in honor of the name that the Native people of the west coast gave her as an intrepid young woman. The book […] won the prestigious Governor General's Award […]. [She] wrote these twenty-one word sketches after visiting and living with Native people, painting their totem poles and villages, many of them in wild and remote areas. She tells her stories with beauty, pathos and a vivid awareness of the comedy of people and situations. — Goodreads.com

For more information about the Reading the Western Landscape Book Group, please contact the Arboretum Librarian, Susan Eubank, at 626-821-3213 or via email.

• donate, 
• become a member 
• or volunteer your time 

• Living 
• Historic 
• Library