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jiscoo's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
beautifully written, piercingly emotional: so accessible, so earnest, so intelligent, so lyrical. the prose is top notch and though the content isn't like, groundbreakingly original it is the way it is written, the way that hope and despair and desperation and desire and shame and selfconsciousness are all a part of the story. reading this made me feel the same way reading Braiding Sweetgrass did.
To live in the Anthropocene is to realize that your attention must be broadened far beyond the bounds of your individual circumstance--expanded to encompass people, species, objects, and eras with which you are both utterly unfamiliar and inextricably bound.
((it feels like the synthesis of my fall 2021 semester: dynamic earth plus art of the anthropocene plus beautiful world where are you))
taylorcunning9's review
5.0
This book is exactly what climate lit needs: it is honest, full of grief, hopeful, avoids easy answers, and honors platitudes that contain simple wisdom that have stood the test of time. Somehow, the author managed to discuss every point that is often brought up in my exasperated conversations about climate change with my friends. At each turn, the exasperation I feel was simultaneously honored and challenged through the author’s grappling with his own feelings and thoughts. It was pretty fucking masterful.
Climate change - or, the Problem, as the author calls it - feels so frustrating in part because the overarching truths for individuals feel too simple. We need to notice things; we need to enjoy our lives while facing reality; we need to grieve without giving ourselves over to despair; we need to hope to avoid a cold distance from climate collapse and its devastating impact. This text really honored the simplicity of those “solutions” - coping mechanisms? - without being trite.
I really loved this book. I love that it didn’t offer a new solution but instead held my hand as it navigated through grief, anger, hope, and despair. I love that it challenged me to expand the breadth of my care to accommodate our interdependence. I’ll be buying copies for people I love and passing this around. Grateful for this one.
Climate change - or, the Problem, as the author calls it - feels so frustrating in part because the overarching truths for individuals feel too simple. We need to notice things; we need to enjoy our lives while facing reality; we need to grieve without giving ourselves over to despair; we need to hope to avoid a cold distance from climate collapse and its devastating impact. This text really honored the simplicity of those “solutions” - coping mechanisms? - without being trite.
I really loved this book. I love that it didn’t offer a new solution but instead held my hand as it navigated through grief, anger, hope, and despair. I love that it challenged me to expand the breadth of my care to accommodate our interdependence. I’ll be buying copies for people I love and passing this around. Grateful for this one.
ostrowk's review
5.0
WARMTH is one of the best books I've ever read, able to articulate all of what I've felt "coming of age at the end of our world" — and infinitely more, given that Sherrell's a brilliant climate organizer who's thought deeply about the collapsible tensions between feeling and strategy, then and now, knowledge and realization.
In WARMTH, Sherrell is unselfconsciously earnest and vulnerable in his grappling with what he calls the Problem, a many-sided "hyperobject" he's trying to move from his "brain down into [his] bones" (253). For him, "the chief ethical and political challenge presented by life in the Anthropocence" is to "finally match our obvious and increasing interdependence with an appropriate breadth of care" (80). WARMTH is a clarion call of care, a letter from a father to his unborn child, an absolute "pouring forth" of love and insight (249).
Miraculously, Sherrell's also a musician on the page. Here's a more or less random paragraph, plucked from the middle of an early chapter: "This questioning is far from new. Millions of people before me have had to consider the prospect of a child in a context made hostile by the Dream. They've done this from plantations and refugee camps, reservations and war zones—places far more devastating and dangerous than anywhere I've ever been; places where a world was ending or had ended. And though it may have felt hopeless and reckless and futile, sometimes from out of this grappling there came a child. I still cannot fully understand the depth of love it took to do this, to loft a tiny salvo of life into a death as wide as the sky. It amazes me. So too the other choice, the one we hear less about. Those families who chose to truncate their trees rather than see its branches hacked at and burned" (77-78).
WARMTH helped me to fit the hyperobject of the Problem "into [my] heart without it breaking" (246). Read it, mark up its pages, then pass it hand to millennial hand until it buckles under the weight of your attention.
In WARMTH, Sherrell is unselfconsciously earnest and vulnerable in his grappling with what he calls the Problem, a many-sided "hyperobject" he's trying to move from his "brain down into [his] bones" (253). For him, "the chief ethical and political challenge presented by life in the Anthropocence" is to "finally match our obvious and increasing interdependence with an appropriate breadth of care" (80). WARMTH is a clarion call of care, a letter from a father to his unborn child, an absolute "pouring forth" of love and insight (249).
Miraculously, Sherrell's also a musician on the page. Here's a more or less random paragraph, plucked from the middle of an early chapter: "This questioning is far from new. Millions of people before me have had to consider the prospect of a child in a context made hostile by the Dream. They've done this from plantations and refugee camps, reservations and war zones—places far more devastating and dangerous than anywhere I've ever been; places where a world was ending or had ended. And though it may have felt hopeless and reckless and futile, sometimes from out of this grappling there came a child. I still cannot fully understand the depth of love it took to do this, to loft a tiny salvo of life into a death as wide as the sky. It amazes me. So too the other choice, the one we hear less about. Those families who chose to truncate their trees rather than see its branches hacked at and burned" (77-78).
WARMTH helped me to fit the hyperobject of the Problem "into [my] heart without it breaking" (246). Read it, mark up its pages, then pass it hand to millennial hand until it buckles under the weight of your attention.
amanda_marie's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
3.25
I loved the concept. I loved the first half. It just went on a bit long. A good look at how climate effects our lives every day.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide and Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Suicidal thoughts
meganvolkert's review against another edition
emotional
medium-paced
5.0
A necessary read for millennials and gen z. Cathartic beyond belief and the naming of feelings Ive had no name for. Incredible