From bestselling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants — and the equally powerful taboos.
This meeting will be held IN PERSON and ON ZOOM. Those unable to attend in person, can join us via Zoom simultaneously. Registration begins March 12. This book club meets every second Tuesday of the month at 7 p.m.
Join us to discuss This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan:
"Of all the things humans rely on plants for--sustenance, beauty, fragrance, flavor, fiber--surely the most curious is our use of them is to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: people around the world rely on caffeine to sharpen their minds. We don't usually think of caffeine as a drug, or our daily use as an addiction, because it is legal and socially acceptable. So then what is a "drug?" And why, for example, is making tea from the leaves of a tea plant acceptable, but making tea from a seed head of an opium poppy a federal crime?
In This Is Your Mind on Plants, Michael Pollan dives deep into three plant drugs -- opium, caffeine, and mescaline -- and throws the fundamental strangeness, and arbitrariness, of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs, while consuming (or in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants, and the equally powerful taboos with which we surround them."
In order to participate, please click one of the REGISTER buttons.
Physical copies of the book will be available for participants to borrow at the Circulation Desk beginning March 12, 2024.
If you have any questions, please email: tuesdaybookclub@westlakelibrary.org
Love to read and talk about it? Check out any of Westlake Porter Public Library's regularly held Book Discussions.
AGE GROUP: | Adults |
EVENT TYPE: | Books and Authors |
TAGS: | National Library Week | book discussion | book club |
Westlake Porter Public Library is an independent public library serving the residents of the city of Westlake, western Cuyahoga County and eastern Lorain County. The library is located at 27333 Center Ridge Road in Westlake, Ohio. Anyone who lives, works, owns property, or goes to school in Ohio can register for a free library card.