Adult book club: The Light Eaters

Join fellow community members for a discussion of The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger.

Participants can attend at the library or via Zoom. All are welcome!

Registration is required by 12 p.m. on the day of the discussion. For those attending virtually, the Zoom link will be sent to the email address you used to register. The meeting link and reading guide will be emailed on the day of the event.

We have a limited number of copies for registrants to borrow, based on the order that they register. Registrants will be contacted if a copy is available. If all of the copies are spoken for, you can try to find one by:

• Placing a hold on a regular circulating copy in the NVCL catalogue;
• Checking at other local libraries, such as North Vancouver District Library or West Vancouver Memorial Library. 

Do you have questions or need help finding a copy? Email info@nvcl.ca or call 604-998-3450.

About the book

"It takes tremendous biological creativity to be a plant. To survive and thrive while rooted in a single spot, plants have adapted ingenious methods of survival. In recent years, scientists have learned about their ability to communicate, recognize their kin and behave socially, hear sounds, morph their bodies to blend into their surroundings, store useful memories that inform their life cycle, and trick animals into behaving to their benefit, to name just a few remarkable talents.

"The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close” [publisher].