Readalikes: If you enjoyed May's selection . . .

If you enjoyed The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson, then you might also like these books suggested by our discussion group members:

• Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake by Frank W. Abagnale
• The White Road: Journey into an Obsession by Edmund de Waal
• The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Edward Dolnick
• Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies by Ross King
• The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
• H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
• The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession by Mark Obmascik
• The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession by Susan Orlean
• The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese by Michael Paterniti
• The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed by John Vaillant

May Not Fiction Book Discussions

What is the line between interest and obsession? The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson considers this question through several intertwined stories.

The central story is that of Edwin Rist, an accomplished young American flautist whose deep interest in the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying led him to break into the British Museum of Natural History at Tring and steal hundreds of rare, historically and scientifically significant bird specimens to support his own fly-tying and to sell so that he could buy a golden flute. Supporting Rist's story is that of what Johnson calls "the feather underground," the clannish fly-tying community that shares and encouraged his interest in the feathers of endangered and protected species of birds used for creating their exquisite flies. Parallel in interest but different in intent is the story of naturalists such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace who braved dangerous journeys to collect these specimens for scientific purposes. As Johnson comes to see it, it is a "war between knowledge and greed." But perhaps most interesting of all is Johnson's own story. He took up fly fishing to relieve PTSD symptoms resulting from his work coordinating the reconstruction of the Iraqi city of Fallujah for USAID and subsequent work through his own nonprofit, the List Project, to bring Iraqi refugees to safety in the United States. He was waist-high in the Red River in New Mexico when his guide told him Rist's story. Johnson admits, "I don't know if it was Edwin's Victorian-sounding name, the sheer weirdness of the story, or the fact that I was in desperate need of a new direction in life, but I became obsessed with the crime within moments." He would spend much of the next five years investigating Rist's crime, for which Rist avoided any serious repercussions.

What do you think? Have you ever had an interest that verged on obsession? What do you think was behind the obsessive nature of your interest? Why do you think fly-tiers are so interested in rare bird feathers? Is it essentially similar to or different from the interest naturalists like Darwin and Wallace and present-day scientists take in rare species of birds? How does the Internet support and even fuel "the feather underground"? What kind of person does Edwin Rist seem to be? What do you think motivated his crime? Asperger's syndrome? Greed? Something else? What about his accomplice, Long Nguyen? Why did he assist Rist? And what about Johnson himself? Why do you think Johnson was so interested in this story? And why did he decide to include his own story in what is essentially a true-crime narrative?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, May 7, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, May 16, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed April's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island by Earl Swift, then you might also like these books suggested by our discussion group members:

The Beans of Egypt, Maine by Carolyn Chute
The Water is Wide: A Memoir by Pat Conroy
The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea by Sebastian Junger
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local--and Helped Save an American Town by Beth Macy
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The Tillerman Cycle by Cynthia Voigt

You might also enjoy watching this video created by Jeff Leeds Cohn from The Atlantic series The Atlantic Selects posted June 1, 2018 at https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/561587/tangier-island/. In it, viewers meet several of the residents of Tangier profiled in Swift's book and see beautiful footage of the island's landscape. The film has an elegiac tone in keeping with Swift's title Chesapeake Requiem.

April Not Fiction Book Discussions

For April's discussions, we move from the heartland to a tiny island on the East Coast facing many of the same challenges as America's farming communities.

In Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island, journalist Earl Swift navigates centuries of history, the effects of climate change, and the rhythms of the crabbing and oystering life on Tangier Island in Chesapeake Bay, Virginia. First settled in the 1700s, Tangier Island has lost two-thirds of its land to the sea since the mid-1800s. Residents and scientists debate the cause, and a feasible solution remains elusive. Meanwhile, as crab and oyster stocks decline, consequent regulations of these fisheries increase, such that making a living as Tangier watermen will prove difficult for young people who might want to stay on the island. Its population has fallen to under 500. Tangier Island will likely be a victim of either or both climate change and the dissolution of its community.

What do you think? Swift titles his book a "requiem," an act of remembrance for someone or something that has passed. What do you think will happen to Tangier Island? As Swift asks, what do you think should happen? Should it be saved, both the physical island and its traditional, conservative community? What criteria should we use to make this decision? The significance of its natural resources? The size of its population? Its value within the narrative of American history and culture? As Swift notes, it will require a national consensus as the effects of climate change accelerate to affect more American places: "We will not have the money, the physical means, or the time to save them all. So we as a people will have to develop a rubric for deciding which towns and properties we save and which we surrender to the sea."

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, April 2, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, April 18, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed March's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh, then you might also like these book recommended by The Booklist Reader:

• Born Bright: A Young Girl's Journey from Nothing to Something in America by C. Nicole Mason
• Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
• The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
• Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance
• Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive by Stephanie Land
• Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in Boom-Time America by Barbara Ehrenreich
• There Will Be No Miracles Here: A Memoir by Casey Gerald
• White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg

March Not Fiction Book Discussions

This month we continue to read about strong women living in the middle of America, formerly a frontier, today considered "flyover" country, with Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh.

Born the daughter of generations of Kansas wheat farmers on her father's side and generations of teen mothers on her mother's side, Smarsh's life was shaped by social and economic trends away from small family farms that left her hard-working family trapped in a cycle of poverty and the chaos it creates in people's lives. Combining memoir with social and cultural analysis, Smarsh examines America's unspoken socioeconomic class divide through her family's experience. Smarsh realized at a young age that avoiding teen pregnancy and doing well in school would be her pathway to a more stable and fulfilling life. She is today a successful academic and journalist. Acknowledging that white privilege and a good public education were advantages, she says,

The American narrative of a poor kid working hard, doing the right thing, and finding success for it is so deep in me, my life story so tempting as potential evidence for that narrative's validity, that I probably sometimes err on the side of conveying a story in which I'm an individual beating the odds with her own determination. There's some truth in that story. But my life is a litany of blessings somehow sewn into my existence rather than accomplishments to my own credit.

What do you think? At the beginning of her memoir, Smarsh writes that, as a child, "I heard a voice unlike the ones in my house or on the the news that told me my place in the world." How did this voice differ from the voices of her family and culture? Who or what did this voice, that of a child, represent to Smarsh? She addresses this voice throughout the memoir. Did you find this to be a successful narrative technique? Why or why not? How was Smarsh's family affected by the shift from rural to suburban life? By Reaganomics, welfare reform, the housing bubble and mortgage crisis, the criminalization and monetization of poverty, and other political and economic trends in the 1980s, 90s, and early 2000s? In addition to these challenges, many of the women in Smarsh's family were the victims of domestic abuse at the hands of fathers, boyfriends, and husbands. Smarsh writes, "When I was well into adulthood, the United States developed the notion that a dividing line of class and geography separated two essentially different kinds of people." What are some of the stereotypes our culture holds about poor people, especially poor, white people? How do Smarsh and her family both confirm and challenge these stereotypes? Has Heartland changed the way you think about poverty in America? Why or why not? Good public education made a real difference in Smarsh's life, She argues that "this country has failed its children." Do you agree? If so, what could we do differently to ensure a more equitable outcome for all American and immigrant children? Critics have compared Heartland to Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. If you have read both books, what similarities and differences do you see between the two books and the authors' attitude toward poverty and their own personal success?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, March 5, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, March 21, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed February's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser, then you might also like these books suggested by our discussion group members:

• The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan
• Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C. Gwynne
• Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
• Caroline: Little House, Revisited by Sarah Miller
• The Birchbark House series by Louise Erdrich