December 2023 Spotlight: The Forestry Book Club
Our December 2023 Spotlight loves to read and discuss environmental books!
The Forestry Book Club is made up of current and former staff from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Forestry Division. We’ve been meeting virtually for the past four years after discovering that many of us love reading and talking about what we’ve read! Membership in our group is extremely flexible and changes for each meeting, with two staff members serving as organizers and facilitators. We include a meeting announcement in our internal newsletter, and anyone interested is welcome to join; everyone that shows up gets to vote on the next book.
Since we are a statewide agency, our book club has not met in person and many of us have never met each other at all. It’s a great way to both stay in touch across distances and to meet others in the division. Members cross all positions, from field foresters to data analysts to IT support professionals to administrative staff, and everyone comes to the meetings eager to share their reading experiences.
The group meets several times each year and has enjoyed many books that connect with an environmental theme; most notably The Overstory, Psalm for the Wild-Built, Braiding Sweetgrass, Where the Crawdads Sing, The Seed Keeper, and The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair With Nature.
All of our Spotlight Groups receive a box of books for discussion! Milkweed Editions will be sending the members of the Forestry Book Club copies of The Quickening by Elizabeth Rush, Conversations With Birds by Priyanka Kumar, Soil and Spirit by Scott Chaskey, and A Darker Wildness: Black Nature Writing From Soil to Stars by Erin Sharkey.
To enter to become an RGC Spotlight group, email a picture and description of your group to info@readinggroupchoices.com.