deedireads's review against another edition

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hopeful informative inspiring slow-paced

5.0

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.

TL;DR REVIEW:

All We Can Save is a moving, hopeful, and digestible collection of essays on climate activism. It made for an excellent book club discussion and inspired me to join/stay in the fight.

For you if: You want to read more about climate activism with a tone of hope.

FULL REVIEW:

“To see beyond what despair sees—to move from the feeling toward the possibility—calls for things we have in abundance: love, imagination, and a willingness to simply tend the world as best we can, without guarantee of success.”


I was drawn to All We Can Save for its promise of education lined with hope. I picked it up because Kate of @treatyoshelvess (aka bookstagram’s climate queen) hosted a giant buddy read. Our particular group chose to read it slowly, over the course of two months (one of the eight sections per week), with discussion along the way. It was PERFECT for a book club setting.

I have, admittedly, always been a very passive person when it comes to climate change and environmentalism. I’ve always felt like I didn’t have the time or energy to understand or dedicate myself to it fully, so I just skimmed along. This collection, in combination with a few other books I read the last few months, have helped really drive the point home that something > nothing, and small steps > no steps.

These essays are pretty much all excellent. Each one taught me something new, asked me to see something in a new light, and challenged me just the right amount. (Also, the audiobook is great, with a cast of narrators who lent strong voices to the words — including Jane Fonda and America Ferrara!) I’ll be thinking about them for a long time.

If you want to learn more, keep climate change top of mind, and/or feel inspired, pick this one up.

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massivepizzacrust's review

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challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0

A good combination of realism, hopefulness and determination. I can't say that I fully agreed with every essay or poem but I think that's kind of the point, to be able to make space for everyone in this fight and appreciate their knowledge and feelings. Sometimes it feels like the only way you can be an activist is to think and do very specific things, and if you don't know what those things are you might as well not go. But I think this collection really showcases the diversity of people in this fight and the diversity of their ways of fighting, which is inspiring me to reach out more. At the same time, I appreciated the acknowledgment of how hard this is, and how hard it can be to not burn out and become hopeless. It made me feel less alone in my anxiety. All in all, highly recommend for anyone interested in climate change or wanting to connect to a community that's really doing something to fight it. 

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