Evening Book Group: Ducks

The SBPL Evening Book Group meets in the Community Room on the 4th Thursday of every month. Enjoy a stimulating conversation about books and exchange perspectives about characters and plot while getting to know your neighbors. Join us in November as we talk about the graphic novel Ducks, by Kate Beaton. NOTE: We will be meeting on the third Thursday this month. 

A New York Times Notable book, one of Barack Obama's favorite books of 2022, and winner of Canada Reads 2023, Kate Beaton's coming-of-age memoir is "an exceptionally beautiful book about loneliness, labor, and survival." (Carmen Maria Machado)

Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark! A Vagrant, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, Katie heads out west to take advantage of Alberta's oil rush--part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can't find it in the homeland they love so much. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands, where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet is never discussed.

Beaton's natural cartooning prowess is on full display as she draws colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles set against a sublime Albertan backdrop of wildlife, northern lights, and boreal forest. Her first full length graphic narrative, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people.

This book is available to borrow from the library. Book group reserve copies will be available one month ahead of the discussion.

Discussion will be hybrid, with in-person and Zoom options. Zoom participants should join the meeting no later than 5:55pm to be admitted.

Please email sbplprograms@southburlingtonvt.gov or call 802-846-4140 if you have questions or would like to be added to the email list for this group, or if you would like to attend via Zoom.