karissakate's review against another edition
2.0
This book is hard to rate because I felt very differently about each section. Some, I would've given a 4, where as others would have only gotten a 1. Muir has some resonating quotations and I love how his mind seems to have worked, but I did find myself skimming some sections.
sarakomo's review against another edition
2.0
2022: In my humble opinion, not worth the effort required.
I think I would have been better served if I had started with a biography of John Muir first, to sort of get the timeline of events here under my belt. This collection instead is basically a series of journal entries that jumped around time and space without identifying where we had gone. I would have appreciated a little effort from the editors to just let me have SOME indication of where the next essay was taking place! The book was very cumbersome to navigate.
It was also full of scientific names of plants that I have never heard of, which certainly didn't help. I get that I don't quite have the biology or botany background that Muir did, so I guess I can take some of the blame here. But I really didn't enjoy this read and this didn't help!
I did super appreciate the forward from Indigenous Women Hike founder Jolie Varela, because by the time I got to Muir's most egregiously racist essays, I sure was done with this guy. It was giving me big "these kids wouldn't let me play with them, so I took my ball and went home so no one could play" vibes. Except instead of taking his ball home, Muir was referencing shooting the Native Americans and stealing their land. So there's that.
Muir does go on some adventures, but if that's what you came to this book looking for, go pick up [b:Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster|1898|Into Thin Air A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster|Jon Krakauer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1631501298l/1898._SY75_.jpg|1816662] instead.
I think I would have been better served if I had started with a biography of John Muir first, to sort of get the timeline of events here under my belt. This collection instead is basically a series of journal entries that jumped around time and space without identifying where we had gone. I would have appreciated a little effort from the editors to just let me have SOME indication of where the next essay was taking place! The book was very cumbersome to navigate.
It was also full of scientific names of plants that I have never heard of, which certainly didn't help. I get that I don't quite have the biology or botany background that Muir did, so I guess I can take some of the blame here. But I really didn't enjoy this read and this didn't help!
I did super appreciate the forward from Indigenous Women Hike founder Jolie Varela, because by the time I got to Muir's most egregiously racist essays, I sure was done with this guy. It was giving me big "these kids wouldn't let me play with them, so I took my ball and went home so no one could play" vibes. Except instead of taking his ball home, Muir was referencing shooting the Native Americans and stealing their land. So there's that.
Muir does go on some adventures, but if that's what you came to this book looking for, go pick up [b:Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster|1898|Into Thin Air A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster|Jon Krakauer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1631501298l/1898._SY75_.jpg|1816662] instead.
bernrr's review
2.0
My interest in this book changed with each subject. I found myself much more interested in the stories of his youth and of his travels. For my taste his writings about Yosemite were too joyful, and he concentrated on the drama of the rocks and moraines but played down the adverse circumstances of his own wanderings.
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