George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides is this month’s selected reading at the Clayton Community Library Book Club. It’s selection did not come easily, post-apocalyptic novels have been absent from our reading lists for years and I’m hoping the turnout for next Tuesday’s meeting does not reflect that aversion.
I picked up my copy a few weeks ago at Sundance Books in Reno. The clerk, a Bay Area transplant bookseller, told me it was a special book and he was happy that I was finally going to read it. “We’ll see,” I mumbled back. It took another week before I read “Men go and come, but earth abides. – Ecclesiastes, 1,4.”
How fitting to finish Earth Abides on the same day the National Climate Assessment was published. – Sunny Solomon.