Books That Will Change Your Life: A Nonfiction Book Club

Note: We’ll be joined by local author Angela Tedesco as well as Hilary Burbank, Program Manager at Cultivate: Local Food Connections, a Des Moines-based non-profit with a mission to strengthen our local food system with a focus on supporting small-scale producers and regenerative farming practices.

Feel free to come to meet the author, even if you haven't read the book yet!

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Join librarians Dennis and Elizabeth for a monthly conversation around a life-changing nonfiction book.  Each month we’ll select a book that will change your perspective, give you new strategies for handling life’s challenges, or deepen your understanding of a topic.

Some of the books have been recommended by local community leaders who told us which books inspired them in their lives and work. Other selections are our favorites or are popular with you, our patrons (based on length of holds lists or number of checkouts), or have otherwise won acclaim.

This month we will be reading "Finding Turtle Farm: My Twenty-Acre Adventure in Community-Supported Agriculture" in which local author and retired farmer Angela Tedesco shares her story of starting and running an organic farm, one of the first Community Supported Agriculture operations in the Upper Midwest. The author, as well as Hilary Burbank from the local organization, Cultivate: Local Food Connections, will join us for the discussion.

Burbank says that “Reading Finding Turtle Farm will transform how you think about your food, and how it gets to your plate.  Valuing our bodies and what goes into them can lead us to value the process that food goes through from the soil, to the care of the farmer, then transport and arrival to your fork.  Finding Turtle Farm covers numerous aspects of the web of life and how we can care for it and impact not only our Earth, but ourselves. After reading this book, you'll want to strengthen your commitment to those who grow healthy food, build the soil, and care for creation.”

Pick up your book* starting December 13 at the Central Library Pickup Window.

*UPDATE: as of 12/19, all copies of the book are currently checked out.