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ariereads's review against another edition
4.0
I don't know why it took me so long to finish this one. It's beautifully written, informative yet succinct, and even lyrical at times. I found it absorbing, engaging, even read aloud excitedly (to whoever poor sod was nearby at the time) at more than a few points. And then I hit the last few chapters and stalled completely, and it seemed to drag from there. Nothing had changed, maybe it was a case of "it's not you, it's me" - or maybe you truly can have too much of a good thing?
Regardless, it's a fantastic book. I'd actually love to hear it aloud sometime (instead of inflicting my own readings on other people, that is).
Regardless, it's a fantastic book. I'd actually love to hear it aloud sometime (instead of inflicting my own readings on other people, that is).
nytshayde's review against another edition
1.0
One of the most shallow and rambling books I have ever read, which like fairy gold appeared to be deep and resonant but over time turned into nothing but dirt and dust. Perhaps I will write a longer review but for now suffice to say I am deeply disappointed in this book, Maitland's very odd natterings on and the lack of congruity between her re-written fairy tales and the British Forests she visits.
theknitpick's review against another edition
I've given up on this book. The reasons are these:
1. Maitland's view is rather exclusive (read: she has her opinion, it's the right one, anyone who disagrees can leave)
2. The "search" that she goes on is rather more a chronicling of the history of the specific forests she visits with a smattering of how forests used to be treated in the past. Her writing is not at all interesting or though provoking. Dull, dull, dull.
3. I was half interested in this book because of the link to fairy tales. Maitland includes "fairy tales" at the end of each chapter, relating them to the wood she just visited. These are her re-tellings, I suppose because they are worded rather weirdly, some of them are not even the fairy tale at all but a continuation and full of the philosophical matter she has just expounded on in the previous chapter, and some are just skewed in the way she'd like to see the story. It comes off rather as her shoehorning her own opinions into fairy tales so that they match her connecting them to a particular wood.
4. According to Maitland, there's nothing fatally harmful in forests for children. Let your children run wild and free in a forest and for goodness sake, do not give them a cellphone because that defeats the purpose of them being ALONE, the only proper way for children to experience nature. Children need "unsupervised time" where they can wander free without any adults near them. This is, according to Maitland, perfectly safe and, "the number of children murdered by strangers per year has not increased since the Second World War" (p. 98) and that children are more likely to come across harm in their home than wandering free. Forests, according to Maitland, are "relatively safe terrains for exploration," (p. 100) and, though I'm no expert, I feel I should disagree because anything can happen in a forest that could be dangerous. She considers only a snake bite (I guess there aren't that many poisonous snakes in Britain) and even then, not potentially deadly. "There are few cliffs to fall off and small chance of drowning. They present challenges but not, on the whole, serious danger," (p. 100). Maybe it's because I live in America and I know our forests to contain quite a lot more than that, but I feel she's really downplaying the myriad ways someone could be harmed in the forest. I digress. The point is, I think she has a very limited view and I just can't get behind it.
And there you have it. Couldn't finish it, I just had to pass it by.
1. Maitland's view is rather exclusive (read: she has her opinion, it's the right one, anyone who disagrees can leave)
2. The "search" that she goes on is rather more a chronicling of the history of the specific forests she visits with a smattering of how forests used to be treated in the past. Her writing is not at all interesting or though provoking. Dull, dull, dull.
3. I was half interested in this book because of the link to fairy tales. Maitland includes "fairy tales" at the end of each chapter, relating them to the wood she just visited. These are her re-tellings, I suppose because they are worded rather weirdly, some of them are not even the fairy tale at all but a continuation and full of the philosophical matter she has just expounded on in the previous chapter, and some are just skewed in the way she'd like to see the story. It comes off rather as her shoehorning her own opinions into fairy tales so that they match her connecting them to a particular wood.
4. According to Maitland, there's nothing fatally harmful in forests for children. Let your children run wild and free in a forest and for goodness sake, do not give them a cellphone because that defeats the purpose of them being ALONE, the only proper way for children to experience nature. Children need "unsupervised time" where they can wander free without any adults near them. This is, according to Maitland, perfectly safe and, "the number of children murdered by strangers per year has not increased since the Second World War" (p. 98) and that children are more likely to come across harm in their home than wandering free. Forests, according to Maitland, are "relatively safe terrains for exploration," (p. 100) and, though I'm no expert, I feel I should disagree because anything can happen in a forest that could be dangerous. She considers only a snake bite (I guess there aren't that many poisonous snakes in Britain) and even then, not potentially deadly. "There are few cliffs to fall off and small chance of drowning. They present challenges but not, on the whole, serious danger," (p. 100). Maybe it's because I live in America and I know our forests to contain quite a lot more than that, but I feel she's really downplaying the myriad ways someone could be harmed in the forest. I digress. The point is, I think she has a very limited view and I just can't get behind it.
And there you have it. Couldn't finish it, I just had to pass it by.
amalia1985's review against another edition
1.0
I won’t write an elaborate (and boring…) Introduction about how much I longed to read this book. It was one of my most coveted treasures from the moment I bought it and I wanted to savour it and underline the living daylights out of it.
Unfortunately, by the beginning of the fourth chapter, I couldn’t wait to finish it and forget about it. It was a shuddering disappointment, a book I never thought I’d actually hate. But I did and I am thoroughly saddened by this reading experience.
The Forest (I deliberately use a capital ‘’F’’) has played a vital role in the creation of fairy tales since the dawning of time. From Red Riding Hood and Snow White
to obscure tales from every culture in the world, the mysticism, the strangeness, the threat of the Forest have provided ample material for legends of adventures, princesses and princes that are tested, disobedient children that need to learn what is right and what is wrong, impossible tasks that must be carried out and chances for a resolution where the good is rewarded. In this book, Maitland attempts to emphasize the deep connection between forests and fairytales through an interesting, no doubt, journey on 12 forests in Britain. Each month is dedicated to a specific forest. From March to February, we are guided to the influence of the flora and fauna of British nature. The oakwoods, the beech woods, the May beauty of the New Forest, the connection between mining and the dwarves, the mystery of fungi. It sounds quite a blast, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, the only blast is the impossibly rude, authoritative tone of the writer.
Her sources are limited, practically non-existent. For the most part, her descriptions were repetitive and bland. At certain points, all of a sudden, they became so ‘’flowery’’ that my eyes were rolling by the minute. Footnotes after footnotes don’t work when there is no cohesion, when your voice is so abrupt, so authoritative. When you pass judgment on others. When your syntactic and grammatical mistakes are so obvious that even a 10-year-old student would avoid. When your personal and subjective notion on femininity, womanhood, tradition, and religion is shoved down our throats page by page. When you use a loud ‘’We’’ to ascertain and verify your personal beliefs and observations. No. When your retellings of famous fairytales are loaded with sexual connotations and cheap alterations. When you accuse Tolkien of ‘’sexism’’ because there was no female member in the Fellowship (!) This is cheap, uneducated ‘’feminism’’ to the extreme. When a father allows his children to go to the woods provided they have a cell phone with them and you accuse him of ‘’ denying’’ them their freedom and ‘’supervising them from afar.’’ When you don’t even know the origin of the word ‘’Magi’’ or ‘’spinster’’. When you write something like this: I am uncertain where these lepers came from initially.
No. Even references to Merlin, Macbeth and Angela Carter won’t be enough to save this. And if you don’t like beech trees, dear ‘’writer’’, leave them alone.
My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/
Unfortunately, by the beginning of the fourth chapter, I couldn’t wait to finish it and forget about it. It was a shuddering disappointment, a book I never thought I’d actually hate. But I did and I am thoroughly saddened by this reading experience.
The Forest (I deliberately use a capital ‘’F’’) has played a vital role in the creation of fairy tales since the dawning of time. From Red Riding Hood and Snow White
to obscure tales from every culture in the world, the mysticism, the strangeness, the threat of the Forest have provided ample material for legends of adventures, princesses and princes that are tested, disobedient children that need to learn what is right and what is wrong, impossible tasks that must be carried out and chances for a resolution where the good is rewarded. In this book, Maitland attempts to emphasize the deep connection between forests and fairytales through an interesting, no doubt, journey on 12 forests in Britain. Each month is dedicated to a specific forest. From March to February, we are guided to the influence of the flora and fauna of British nature. The oakwoods, the beech woods, the May beauty of the New Forest, the connection between mining and the dwarves, the mystery of fungi. It sounds quite a blast, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, the only blast is the impossibly rude, authoritative tone of the writer.
Her sources are limited, practically non-existent. For the most part, her descriptions were repetitive and bland. At certain points, all of a sudden, they became so ‘’flowery’’ that my eyes were rolling by the minute. Footnotes after footnotes don’t work when there is no cohesion, when your voice is so abrupt, so authoritative. When you pass judgment on others. When your syntactic and grammatical mistakes are so obvious that even a 10-year-old student would avoid. When your personal and subjective notion on femininity, womanhood, tradition, and religion is shoved down our throats page by page. When you use a loud ‘’We’’ to ascertain and verify your personal beliefs and observations. No. When your retellings of famous fairytales are loaded with sexual connotations and cheap alterations. When you accuse Tolkien of ‘’sexism’’ because there was no female member in the Fellowship (!) This is cheap, uneducated ‘’feminism’’ to the extreme. When a father allows his children to go to the woods provided they have a cell phone with them and you accuse him of ‘’ denying’’ them their freedom and ‘’supervising them from afar.’’ When you don’t even know the origin of the word ‘’Magi’’ or ‘’spinster’’. When you write something like this: I am uncertain where these lepers came from initially.
No. Even references to Merlin, Macbeth and Angela Carter won’t be enough to save this. And if you don’t like beech trees, dear ‘’writer’’, leave them alone.
My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/
nickelini's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
vonmonsta's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
2.5
I first read Gossip From The Forest by Sara Maitland around 5 years ago & I adored it, however upon picking it up for some research on a project I'm planning, I didn't connect with it quite as I remembered.
Exploring the role the Forest has played in the creation of fairy tales, Maitland attempts to emphasise the connection between forests & fairytales over 12 forest walks over 12 months, each month dedicated to meandering about a particular forest in the UK, ending each chapter with a fairy tale retelling.
I found her writing a little confusing; one moment it could be rather stilted & overly formal to then suddenly being rather beautiful & evocative, which didn't quite flow together for me. Sometimes the information was incredibly interesting & engaging & I came away with exciting little tidbits of history, environment & landscape which I took with me as I walked my local woodland & at other times, it felt dry & over worked.
The fairy tale retellings themselves I generally enjoyed, & thought some of them particularly lyrical!
Over a few chapters Maitland attempts to make the same points (about those characters that work in the forest being 'good' characters, for example) but she feels as though she's just repeating the same information & not going deep enough & falling short of explaining the symbiosis between fairy tale & forest, where at other times, her connections are really convincingly made & help see the relationship in a new light.
I will say that a lot of what she does write is simple conjecture & opinion & the few sources she does include, tend to come from the same few authors/publications.
There was a rather too casual statement she makes at one point:"efficient slave cultures need open land: it has to be difficult to run away", which, although not a reference to the UK, really could have done with a discussion about Britain's involvement in slavery & colonialism. It felt a gross, insensitive & offhand.
Overall, it's a rather mixed up book, (I think I sound grumpier about the book than I actually am, I did enjoy it very much at times) sometimes lovely & sometimes a little of a drag. I'm going to keep it on my shelves as a reference, but not one that I'll take as an authority.
⭐⭐. 5 /5
Exploring the role the Forest has played in the creation of fairy tales, Maitland attempts to emphasise the connection between forests & fairytales over 12 forest walks over 12 months, each month dedicated to meandering about a particular forest in the UK, ending each chapter with a fairy tale retelling.
I found her writing a little confusing; one moment it could be rather stilted & overly formal to then suddenly being rather beautiful & evocative, which didn't quite flow together for me. Sometimes the information was incredibly interesting & engaging & I came away with exciting little tidbits of history, environment & landscape which I took with me as I walked my local woodland & at other times, it felt dry & over worked.
The fairy tale retellings themselves I generally enjoyed, & thought some of them particularly lyrical!
Over a few chapters Maitland attempts to make the same points (about those characters that work in the forest being 'good' characters, for example) but she feels as though she's just repeating the same information & not going deep enough & falling short of explaining the symbiosis between fairy tale & forest, where at other times, her connections are really convincingly made & help see the relationship in a new light.
I will say that a lot of what she does write is simple conjecture & opinion & the few sources she does include, tend to come from the same few authors/publications.
There was a rather too casual statement she makes at one point:"efficient slave cultures need open land: it has to be difficult to run away", which, although not a reference to the UK, really could have done with a discussion about Britain's involvement in slavery & colonialism. It felt a gross, insensitive & offhand.
Overall, it's a rather mixed up book, (I think I sound grumpier about the book than I actually am, I did enjoy it very much at times) sometimes lovely & sometimes a little of a drag. I'm going to keep it on my shelves as a reference, but not one that I'll take as an authority.
⭐⭐. 5 /5