The Fields Pond Book Group meets monthly on Thursday nights at 6:30 p.m., in-person at the Orono Public Library and online via Zoom. If you would like to participate, please contact Joyce directly at
ru****@ma***.edu
to sign up for the Zoom link, which she will send out shortly before the meeting. Here are the book listings for September through November.
October 10, 2025
Goldfarb, Ben. Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of the Planet. 2023. 384 pp.
Some 40 million miles of roadways encircle the earth, yet we tend to regard them only as infrastructure for human convenience. While roads are so ubiquitous they’re practically invisible to us, wild animals experience them as entirely alien forces of death and disruption. Goldfarb travels throughout the United States and around the world to investigate how roads have transformed our planet. A million animals are killed by cars each day in the U.S. alone, but as the new science of road ecology shows, the harms of highways extend far beyond roadkill. Creatures from antelope to salmon are losing their ability to migrate in search of food and mates; invasive plants hitch rides in tire treads; road salt contaminates lakes and rivers; and the very noise of traffic chases songbirds from vast swaths of habitat. Yet road ecologists are also seeking to blunt the destruction through innovative solutions. Goldfarb meets with conservationists building bridges for California’s mountain lions and tunnels for English toads, engineers deconstructing the labyrinth of logging roads that web national forests, animal rehabbers caring for Tasmania’s car-orphaned wallabies, and community organizers working to undo the havoc highways have wreaked upon American cities. Today, as our planet’s road network continues to grow exponentially, the science of road ecology has become increasingly vital.
November 14, 2024
Schaub, Eve O. Year of No Garbage: Recycling Lies, Plastic Problems, and One Woman’s Trashy Journey to Zero Waste. 2023. 270 pp.
Schaub, humorist and stunt memoirist extraordinaire, tackles her most difficult challenge to date: garbage. Convincing her husband and two daughters to go along with her, Schaub attempts the seemingly impossible: living in the modern world without creating any trash at all…for an entire year. In the process, Schaub learns some startling things: that modern recycling is broken, and single stream recycling is a lie. That flushable wipes aren’t flushable, and compostables aren’t compostable. That plastic drives climate change, fosters racism, and is poisoning the environment and our bodies at alarming rates, as microplastics are being found everywhere, from the top of Mount Everest to the placentas of unborn babies.
