For Fall 2025, Webster Wellness and the Webster University Library are partnering to offer a book club to faculty and staff. This is a low-stakes endeavor asking only that you read a few chapters a month and join the discussion when you can.
The book for Fall 2025 is The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Book Club discussions will be held from noon - 1 p.m. (CT) in the Library Classroom (rm. 110) or via Zoom. Feel free to bring your lunch! We will meet 3 times throughout the semester:
Special Offer for Main Campus Faculty and Staff: The first 13 people to email us about the book club will receive a free copy of the book! Please email Julie Laramie: julielaramie@webster.edu
Tuesday, September 30, 2025 to discuss Chapters 1, 2, and 3
12 p.m. (Central Time)
The Serviceberry
by
For a physical copy or audiobook, visit the St. Louis County Public Library.
"Learning from the land. Kimmerer, drawing from her Potawatomi heritage, uses the abundant serviceberry to demonstrate the gifts that the natural world provides, highlighting the “enoughness” of these gifts if we choose to view them as such. For a society consumed by consumption, this portrait is startling in its simplicity. “Recognizing ‘enoughness’ is a radical act in an economy that is always urging us to consume more,” Kimmerer writes. While the prose occasionally verges on saccharine, each word is clearly chosen with care and deliberation, resulting in a masterful reflection on ecology and culture. The book seamlessly blends science, inherited wisdom, and philosophy, urging readers to reconsider their relationship with the environment and society. Kimmerer pushes back against the individualism and scarcity mindsets entrenched in our interactions, encouraging us to draw inspiration from the natural world and Indigenous knowledge systems. Rather than the exploitative system of modern capitalism, which can be damaging to both the earth and our relationships, Kimmerer invites readers to envision a life that embraces the gift economy—one built on reciprocity, collective well-being, and care. She writes, “When we speak of [sustenance provided from the land] not as things or natural resources or commodities, but as gifts, our whole relationship to the natural world changes.” Despite the dire repercussions of not living in harmony with nature, her beautiful and hopeful prose leaves readers feeling sated, galvanized, and keenly aware of the world around them.
A welcome meditation on living in harmony with the earth and fostering deeper connections with one another."
(Krikus Reviews, 2024)
