Our Community Reads: Flight Behavior

By Denise Ward

An enthusiastic crowd assembled at the Aptos Branch Library on Oct. 1 to select the 2025 book for Our Community Reads.

A reception was given by the Friends of the Aptos Library along with five other chapters of Friends: Capitola, La Selva Beach, Scotts Valley, Felton, and Garfield Park.

Five books were presented and then voted on. The list of finalists was created by a book selection committee whose members had spent the entire summer plodding through hours of reading!

The candidates were:

Brave the Wild River, by Melissa L. Sevigny
California Against the Sea, by Rosanna Xia
Better Living Through Birding, by Christopher Cooper
The Book of Hope, by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams
Flight Behavior, by Barbara Kingsolver

After listening to a presentation on each, complete with a video excerpt from the author, the participants were asked to choose just one book that they felt would resonate best with our community and one that would lend itself to an array of exciting events and activities

It was a tough decision, evidenced by the fact that the voting results were very, very close. The selected book garnered just 3 more votes than the runners-up which were tied!

All in all, each finalist had plenty of merit and each deserves a read.

Flight Behavior was ultimately selected, and it is a fine choice. The story, a novel, written quite eloquently by Barbara Kingsolver, delves into the topic of climate change and its effect on migration, specifically relating to monarch butterflies.

Set in rural Tennessee, the book explores logging, sheep farming, animal intelligence, community ecosystems among other topics.

Programming for Our Community Reads begins the last week in January and runs through the first week in March.

The timeframe happens to coincide with the time of year those of us in Santa Cruz are most likely to see the Monarchs leaving the area from their winter perch at Natural Bridges. A visit there will most definitely be included in our schedule of events.

Each year we offer a vast array of events, all of which are free and open to the public. They include, author talks, book discussions, art and music activities, panels and presentations, films and more.

For more information about Our Community Reads visit: https://www.friendsofaptoslibrary.org and click on Our Community Reads.

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Editor’s note: This 2012 novel was a New York Times best-seller, and was declared “Best Book of the Year” by the Washington Post and USA Today.