Reviews

Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer

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anneof221b's review against another edition

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5.0

Ok, I'll go buy a moss field guide.

raiju01's review against another edition

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4.0

The natural history part was fascinating, but the author's highlights are the cultural parts, due to her background.

Beautiful, intimate, heartfelt read.

Mosses are carrying human life along with a million other tiny things in this web of reciprocity that we are so cruelly abusing.

judearden's review against another edition

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hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.0

This book was great. Informative, emotional, inspiring. It was so cool to see someone talk with such passion about something, especially something so small and seemingly inconsistent as moss. It made me reevaluate my perspective, both on mosses and on other small things, showing me that they are so much more important than I’d thought previously. For that I am grateful.

This was Kimmerer’s first book, and I will say that at times it definitely showed. It was clear that she was still honing her singular voice that I loved so much in Braiding Sweetgrass. That’s not a bad thing, it happens with every author, but I think especially because I read Braiding Sweetgrass immediately before I read this book, there were times when the writing felt a bit underdeveloped. I also noticed some typos and grammatical errors. Those don’t really bother me but it’s always interesting to find them and think about how they fell through the cracks through all the rounds of editing and publishing they went through lol.

Overall this book was great, and it really helped to change my perspective.

frenchfrybri's review against another edition

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5.0

this book is so beautiful. i loved the emphasis on cultural history as well as natural. HIGHLY recommend the audiobook (it felt like being on a guided meditation forest stroll), although i’ll probably also pick up the print book at some point because i wanna see the pictures