March 25 - This is Your Mind on Plants
At our February 26th meeting, we discussed The House of Lincoln by Nancy Horan. Everyone learned something new about Springfield, IL and all would recommend the book.
Our next book group meeting is Monday, March 25th at 3pm in the LME Library's large meeting room. The book this month is This is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan. Copies of the book can be picked up at the front desk and the discussion sheets are also available for pickup or can be viewed online.
Book summary: Of all the things humans rely on plants for-- sustenance, beauty, fragrance, flavor, fiber-- surely the most curious is our use of them is to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs-- opium, caffeine, and mescaline-- and explores the cultures that have grown up around these drugs. He examines the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants, and the equally powerful taboos with which we surround them. The result is a unique blend of history, science, memoir-- and participatory journalism--Adapted from jacket.
House of Lincoln - February 26
At our January 29th meeting, we discussed the Air Raid Book Club by Annie Lyons. This was a book everyone who attended felt they could recommend to almost anyone. We had tea and "biscuits" for refreshments.
Our next book club meeting will be Monday, February 26th at 3pm. We are reading House of Lincoln by Nancy Horan. Copies of the book are available for pickup at the front desk and discussion sheets are also available online.Summary: "A sweeping historical novel, which tells the story of Abraham Lincoln's ascendance from rumpled lawyer to U.S. president to the Great Emancipator through the eyes of a young asylum-seeker who arrives in Lincoln's home of Springfield from Madeira, Portugal. Showing intelligence beyond society's expectations, fourteen-year-old Ana Ferreira lands a job in the Lincoln household assisting Mary Lincoln with their boys and with the hostess duties borne by the wife of a rising political star. Ana bears witness to the evolution of Lincoln's views on equality and the Union and observes in full complexity the psyche and pain of his bold, polarizing wife, Mary. Along with her African American friend Cal, Ana encounters the presence of the Underground Railroad in town and experiences personally how slavery is tearing apart her adopted country. Culminating in an eyewitness account of the little-known Springfield race riot of 1908, The House of Lincoln takes readers on a journey through the historic changes that reshaped America and that continue to reverberate today"