![]() ![]() ![]() For the characters, the story ends in death, Buddhist-like enlightenment or in Federal Prison for the novel, the story is left unresolved, like life itself, forever asking a question that does not admit an answer. The book is at times discursive, sad, poignant, powerful. The Overstory is a literary re-telling of the Timber Wars in the Pacific Northwest in the 1990s and early 2000s – people protesting, demonstrating and squatting for weeks or months in ancient trees to prevent them being cut down - Earth First and Earth Liberation Front eco-warriors and their persecution for so-called eco-terrorism by the FBI, all in response to environmental degradation and the clear cutting of swaths of old growth forests (visible in Eastern Washington when driving along National Forest roads – the thinly veiled beauty strips of trees to hide the piles of roots, stubble and dirt that is the waste land left behind when a vibrant forest community is fired-bombed aka clear-cut). The book, its title and its sub-divisions, echo the distinct life zones of trees, their ecological niches and their dense web of interconnections – the vast underground networks of roots or above-ground communication avenues - that we now know trees in a forest community are part of (resonant echoes of Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees). The book is a paean to them – creatures taller than a soccer field, wider than a house and older than Christianity. Yes, trees: chestnuts, Sequoias, Oaks, Suicide trees – trees of all varieties, sizes and shapes but, in particular, giant Redwoods. The Overstory by Richard Powers (2018) *****Ī powerful non-fiction novel by a masterful storyteller involving eight (sic) human characters whose lives, eventually, intersect with each other and with trees. I miss him and his brilliant and astute literary-clinical observations. Read in 2019 Everything in Its Place: First Loves and Last Tales by Oliver Sacks (2019) ***Īnother collection of marginalia, personal memories and clinical cases studies from my favorite neurologist a few years after his death. Must appear here for the first time, many are obviously unfinished. I award books that I really enjoyed or that express a point of view particularly well four or five stars. By-and-large, these are books I like otherwise I wouldn't have finished them. 000 Days on Earth (1) 10 Rillington Place.Chronologically arranged list of interesting books - science, philosophy, novels, whatever - I've read. ![]()
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