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Reviews tagging 'Alcohol'
Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard
2 reviews
purplepenning's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer and Death
Moderate: Cursing, Misogyny, Sexism, Grief, Pregnancy, and Alcohol
Minor: Animal cruelty, Dementia, and Colonisation
hmatt's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
3.25
This book was... not what I expected.
I have been on a tree-book kick lately, and I was excited to learn about the relationships between trees in what the title would suggest is an accessible way. Unfortunately, I found a lot of the writing that described these natural relationships to be laden with scientific jargon. I think it may be more easier for folks with even a 101 undergraduate science background, or people who have read more tree-books than I have, to understand, but it left me with my eyes glazing over.
These sections were interspersed between personal autobiographical details. One thing to know going into this read is that these personal sections are not limited to anecdotes or career-specific stories. They actually make up a large chunk of the book. In my opinion, these inclusions were a bit much. I thought it necessary and interesting to learn about how the author's career developed and how she struggled to be taken seriously in her field, but I didn't care for the larger inclusions about her family and personal illness (in this context, at least). To me, these sections distracted from the main focus of the book. I actually would have been interested in reading an autobiography from the author, but as a separate book without the forced parallels she tries to draw between human relationships and natural relationships. There's a case to be made that there are significant parallels in our relationships, I do believe that, but I found the tonal shift between the science talk and the personal talk too jarring to be convincing. The personal/casual writing style in these bits actually didn't work for me on its own, either.
Okay last thing I'll rag on the book for: it falls victim to the pitfalls of "we-let-the-author-narrate-the-audiobook". I talk about this in all my reviews of autobiography/memoir. It's book suicide like >80% of the time. This author even discusses how bad they are at public speaking in the book.
All this said, it's a book I didn't hate. I think, as I mentioned, that some people will be more equipped than I am to take a lot of interesting information from it. I learned some things about trees, albeit some pretty basic things. I'm happy to see that the physical copy of the book has plates with photos - I find these enhance the read. The photo captions are some of my favourite parts of the book. I would have liked to see more (any) diagrams to help illustrate some of the processes described, too. I appreciated the upfront and recurrent acknowledgement of Indigenous knowledges and expertise in this area, too.
I have been on a tree-book kick lately, and I was excited to learn about the relationships between trees in what the title would suggest is an accessible way. Unfortunately, I found a lot of the writing that described these natural relationships to be laden with scientific jargon. I think it may be more easier for folks with even a 101 undergraduate science background, or people who have read more tree-books than I have, to understand, but it left me with my eyes glazing over.
These sections were interspersed between personal autobiographical details. One thing to know going into this read is that these personal sections are not limited to anecdotes or career-specific stories. They actually make up a large chunk of the book. In my opinion, these inclusions were a bit much. I thought it necessary and interesting to learn about how the author's career developed and how she struggled to be taken seriously in her field, but I didn't care for the larger inclusions about her family and personal illness (in this context, at least). To me, these sections distracted from the main focus of the book. I actually would have been interested in reading an autobiography from the author, but as a separate book without the forced parallels she tries to draw between human relationships and natural relationships. There's a case to be made that there are significant parallels in our relationships, I do believe that, but I found the tonal shift between the science talk and the personal talk too jarring to be convincing. The personal/casual writing style in these bits actually didn't work for me on its own, either.
Okay last thing I'll rag on the book for: it falls victim to the pitfalls of "we-let-the-author-narrate-the-audiobook". I talk about this in all my reviews of autobiography/memoir. It's book suicide like >80% of the time. This author even discusses how bad they are at public speaking in the book.
All this said, it's a book I didn't hate. I think, as I mentioned, that some people will be more equipped than I am to take a lot of interesting information from it. I learned some things about trees, albeit some pretty basic things. I'm happy to see that the physical copy of the book has plates with photos - I find these enhance the read. The photo captions are some of my favourite parts of the book. I would have liked to see more (any) diagrams to help illustrate some of the processes described, too. I appreciated the upfront and recurrent acknowledgement of Indigenous knowledges and expertise in this area, too.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer, Misogyny, Sexism, and Medical content
Moderate: Death, Dementia, Grief, Pregnancy, and Alcohol