Palisades Reads Reveals Third Annual Book Club Selection

By SARAH SHMERLING | Editor-in-Chief

Friends of the Palisades Library has teamed up with locally founded environmental nonprofit Resilient Palisades to present the third annual edition of Palisades Reads—a communitywide book club designed to “foster connections, spark conversations and celebrate reading.”

The 2021 selection is New York Times Bestseller “The Overstory,” written by Richard Powers.

“‘The Overstory,’ winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world,” according to the author’s website. “From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’ 12th novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late 20th-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

“There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.”

Local author Laura Diamond, who is involved with Friends of the Palisades Library, shared with the Palisadian-Post that partnering with Resilient Palisades for this year’s event was “kismet.”

“The Palisades Reads committee had been discussing ‘The Overstory’ as a possible selection, when a couple of us received the Resilient Palisades newsletter announcing a book club to discuss ‘The Overstory,’” she explained. “I love how proactive the organizers of Resilient Palisades are with everything they do, and we were happy to see if we could collaborate.”

She shared that central to Palisades Reads’ mission is cultivating community through books, so having a local partnership makes the club even more meaningful.

Diamond said that those involved with Friends of the Palisades Library who have read “The Overstory” were huge fans of the novel—both for its “riveting story-telling” and the “unique perspective shift it creates” in those that read it.

“I have not read anything like it,” she said. “It is a marvel to imagine the author becoming so expert in something we see every day, but understand so little about, and to weave the natural world with human frailty so expertly. People who have already read it will enjoy the chance to discuss it, and those who have not yet read it have a great reason to start.”

Diamond explained that it was important for Palisades Reads to continue for its third year—even though it will have to remain virtual, due to repairs underway at Palisades Branch Library following a 2020 fire—because they set out to create an annual event the community can count on and look forward to: “Our goal is to continue as long as there is interest,” she added.

She shared that since its inception in 2019, interest in the book club has grown, with community members enthusiastically nominating books and joining the committee.

The book club event is scheduled to take place via Zoom on Wednesday, September 22, at 7 p.m. Friends of the Palisades Library and Resilient Palisades are planning additional events related to “The Overstory,” including a film screening and Q&A by a local filmmaker, a book event for “Finding the Mother Tree” by Suzanne Simard (which one of the main characters in “The Overstory” is modeled after), and possibly a guided forest bath.

To sign up to participate, visit resilientpalisades.org/events/the-overstory.