Join us monthly, February through November, for our new book club "Reading Roundtable" a book discussion for adult readers. Pick up a bookmark at the Recommendations desk with a list of books for upcoming discussions. Books will be a mix of non-fiction and fiction, and will be available at the check-out desk one month before the discussion date.
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton is the August Reading Roundtable book club book.
Beaton delivers a masterpiece graphic memoir: an immersive, devastating portrait of the two years she worked at Fort McMurray and nearby oil sands in northern Canada. In 2005, Beaton, 21 and desperate to pay off her student loans, left her small Nova Scotia town for the booming wilds of an oil operation in Alberta. The human and environmental toll of energy dependence are painstakingly recorded on her Heart of Darkness–like journey.
Appeal factors: Biographical, graphic novel, candid, richly detailed, witty and moving.