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storybookvisitor's review
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
mobcob's review
4.0
A different genre than I've ever read, these musings were either enthralling or tedious. I found the author's cries about the Rhino entertaining, reassuringly concrete, and apocryphally understated compared to reality.
ezekielbyu's review
3.0
It's as meandering as the title suggests, although the controlling metaphors (images/symbols, really) of owl and ancient myths, and the more modern one of our current civilization's seemingly infinite progress, help tie all the stray observations together. However, the book really hits its high in Chapter 7, with Ehrenreich's grappling with the work of Jakob Boehme. His attendant descriptions of Las Vegas, there, take on a curious (almost sublime) resonance with the previous insights. And it is a relatively breezy read from that point on.
jazhandz's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
I have thoughts and feelings about this book that are at odds: namely, I’m not sure I liked it, but I think I loved it. This is not a nature or science book, which is what it was shelved as at the store; instead it’s a blend of diary entries, political thoughts from 2018, and cultural and anthropological history.
At its best this book feels like the most engaging academic conference talk you’ll ever hear; at its worst it feels like talking to a friend with undiagnosed ADHD. The first section (~100 pages) is much stronger and more enjoyable than the second (~200 pages), which consists pretty heavily of Ehrenreich complaining about not liking Vegas. (I’m from Vegas and disagreed with a lot of things he said. But I won’t hold that against him.)
On a craft level it’s positively gorgeous: Ehrenreich knows how to write and he writes the hell out of everything, weaving disparate threads together to make a tapestry. The second chapter of this book is easily my favorite thing I’ve read this year. It was personal, clever, and vibrant. The whole thing felt almost literary in its structure, both for better and for worse. It was satisfying to finish the book and see the final product, but the web weaving definitely got tiresome at points.
I’m still not sure if I enjoyed it. But it’s the most I’ve thought about a book in a minute, and so I’ll give that credit where it’s due.
At its best this book feels like the most engaging academic conference talk you’ll ever hear; at its worst it feels like talking to a friend with undiagnosed ADHD. The first section (~100 pages) is much stronger and more enjoyable than the second (~200 pages), which consists pretty heavily of Ehrenreich complaining about not liking Vegas. (I’m from Vegas and disagreed with a lot of things he said. But I won’t hold that against him.)
On a craft level it’s positively gorgeous: Ehrenreich knows how to write and he writes the hell out of everything, weaving disparate threads together to make a tapestry. The second chapter of this book is easily my favorite thing I’ve read this year. It was personal, clever, and vibrant. The whole thing felt almost literary in its structure, both for better and for worse. It was satisfying to finish the book and see the final product, but the web weaving definitely got tiresome at points.
I’m still not sure if I enjoyed it. But it’s the most I’ve thought about a book in a minute, and so I’ll give that credit where it’s due.
swoody788's review against another edition
1.0
I came for the meditations on nature, and left because there were too many unproductive political rants.
prcizmadia's review
5.0
If you try to put this book in a box, you’re letting yourself down. Don’t do that.
Equal parts outdoors narrative, meditation on the nature of writing and communication, and analysis of our shifting conceptions of time throughout human history, this book lives the point that it tries to make: linear time is an artificial construct that serves one particular worldview, and in reality, the curvature of time brings us back around again and again. Naturally, this is difficult to grasp, as our entire conception of history and society is built upon the notion of ‘always forward progress,’ rooted in science and reason, itself rooted in capitalist rationality and control. It’s hard to unlearn that. You can start here if you’re open to it.
There were certain moments where I wasn’t certain where the author was going, and how we were going to get there (that linear thinking again!). I was never bored, but I was lost; but it was easy to get pulled along via digressions into the desert landscape that I love, and the narrative within a desert city. (The boundary between the urban and the frontier is illusory at best, and I appreciate his efforts to smash it further.) But my patience was fully rewarded by a final third that tied it all together.
When you’re ready for this book, it’s ready for you.
Equal parts outdoors narrative, meditation on the nature of writing and communication, and analysis of our shifting conceptions of time throughout human history, this book lives the point that it tries to make: linear time is an artificial construct that serves one particular worldview, and in reality, the curvature of time brings us back around again and again. Naturally, this is difficult to grasp, as our entire conception of history and society is built upon the notion of ‘always forward progress,’ rooted in science and reason, itself rooted in capitalist rationality and control. It’s hard to unlearn that. You can start here if you’re open to it.
There were certain moments where I wasn’t certain where the author was going, and how we were going to get there (that linear thinking again!). I was never bored, but I was lost; but it was easy to get pulled along via digressions into the desert landscape that I love, and the narrative within a desert city. (The boundary between the urban and the frontier is illusory at best, and I appreciate his efforts to smash it further.) But my patience was fully rewarded by a final third that tied it all together.
When you’re ready for this book, it’s ready for you.
chrislatray's review
4.0
I have had an ongoing love affair with the deserts of the American Southwest for nearly two decades now and I take my reading related to it both seriously and critically. With DESERT NOTEBOOKS, Ben Ehrenreich delivers a new contribution to the canon of essential reading about the place and the rest of the world as it relates to it.
Ehrenreich isn't writing a "desert book" per se, but he is writing from the Mojave, and his love for it is deep. As climate change flexes its dark might around him, and Donald Trump (named here as "The Rhino") wreaks his havoc, Ehrenreich delves into histories of the first inhabitants; the history of writing; philosophy, and ... owls. Sounds like a mash-up, and it is, but it works.
Sometimes journalists-turned-authors produce work that simply reads like a collection of reported pieces sewn together with a half-baked attempt at a narrative thread. Ehrenreich avoids that trap; this man is a storyteller. The mix of science, myth, anecdotes, and a profound love for the terrain produces one of my favorite reads of the spring thus far, if not the year.
Ehrenreich isn't writing a "desert book" per se, but he is writing from the Mojave, and his love for it is deep. As climate change flexes its dark might around him, and Donald Trump (named here as "The Rhino") wreaks his havoc, Ehrenreich delves into histories of the first inhabitants; the history of writing; philosophy, and ... owls. Sounds like a mash-up, and it is, but it works.
Sometimes journalists-turned-authors produce work that simply reads like a collection of reported pieces sewn together with a half-baked attempt at a narrative thread. Ehrenreich avoids that trap; this man is a storyteller. The mix of science, myth, anecdotes, and a profound love for the terrain produces one of my favorite reads of the spring thus far, if not the year.