The Gamble House Book Club: DUST JACKET JOURNEYS
Tuesday September 8, 2026 at 5:30pm
The Museum of Whales You Will Never See by A. Kendra Greene
FREE – RSVP requested
Join us for our book club, Dust Jacket Journeys, where we invite you to explore perspectives around architecture, art, identity, and place with us on the second Tuesday of each month.
Each gathering will offer an opportunity for exploring diverse perspectives, sharing discoveries, and the exchange of ideas which make for a meaningful reading experience. In honor of the 60th anniversary of the Gamble House opening to the public, the theme this quarter is Museum Musings. Together we will delve into the personal, cultural, and societal impacts of museums both big and small. We look forward to sharing a literary journey to new perspectives and new understandings one book at a time.
The Museum of Whales You Will Never See:
Iceland is home to only 330,000 people (roughly the population of Lexington, Kentucky) but more than 265 museums and public collections. They range from the intensely physical, like the Icelandic Phallological Museum, which collects the penises of every mammal known to exist in Iceland, to the vaporously metaphysical, like the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, which poses a particularly Icelandic problem: How to display what can't be seen?
In The Museum of Whales You Will Never See, A. Kendra Greene is our wise and whimsical guide through this cabinet of curiosities, showing us, in dreamlike anecdotes and more than thirty charming illustrations, how a seemingly random assortment of objects--a stuffed whooper swan, a rubber boot, a shard of obsidian, a chastity belt for rams--can map a people's past and future, their fears and obsessions. "The world is chockablock with untold wonders," she writes, "there for the taking, ready to be uncovered at any moment, if only we keep our eyes open."
Attend Dust Jacket Journeys and receive a 20% off coupon for the next featured book. Books available at https://shop.gamblehouse.org/collections/dust-jacket-journeys
Next Book Club: Metropolitan Stories on October 13