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4.24 AVERAGE
4.24 AVERAGE
DNF because it made me depressed when I generally try to read to escape reality and I have to return it to the library tomorrow. Made it to page 169 though
medium-paced
This was part memoir, part science about climate change, focusing on the water elements (oceans, glaciers, etc.). It also has a multigenerational tone and a view for the future. However, the topics discussed were all over the place, he jumped from meeting the Dalai Lama to his grandfather to the glaciers melting... It lacked focus for me, and I also did not like that it mixed in so much memoir with the facts.
A wonderful inter-weaving of Icelandic culture, climate change, and religion.
"What I’m trying to do in my book is update our sense of time—which is, of course, a very ambitious project—to connect us deeply to dates like 2150 as intimate time and to create just in a short chapter some kind of pancake sci-fi. Sci-fi tends to make us feel like the future is all about technology. The future is all about gadgets or flying cars or AI or whatever. While I think the primal goal of humans is to continue to be human and even more human—not less human—at least to be as human as my grandmother. I would think that I want my daughter to be as human as my grandmother, and I would think that she would expect her grandchild to be as human as she knew her grandmother to be. So that’s pancake sci-fi. The basis is we just want to be able to sit in a kitchen and eat pancakes with a grandmother, and just exchange stories and life experiences and things."
— Andri Snær Magnason, Emergence Magazine
https://emergencemagazine.org/interview/on-time-and-water/
— Andri Snær Magnason, Emergence Magazine
https://emergencemagazine.org/interview/on-time-and-water/
informative
reflective
slow-paced
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
I really hadn't intended to read yet another book on climate change, it just so happened that "On Time and Water" was the March book in my subscription with Open Letter Books so here I am.
Author Andri Snær Magnason (or ASM as he will be henceforth known) is no [a:David Wallace-Wells|18362071|David Wallace-Wells|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1547229080p2/18362071.jpg]. Whereas DWW focused on the science and essentially only the science in his book, [b:The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming|41552709|The Uninhabitable Earth Life After Warming|David Wallace-Wells|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1603323079l/41552709._SY75_.jpg|64830288], the climate crisis serves primarily as a theme around which ASM weaves stories of his ancestors' trek across a glacier, of Iceland's 2008 economic crisis, and, most particularly, of ASM's two meetings with the Dalai Lama.
Let it be known, I love the Dalai Lama (seems like a real nice fellow!) and I'm 100% pro-Tibetan independence, but the sections that feature the Dalai Lama feel like hagiography. Neither of the interviews that ASM conducts with the Dalai Lama appears to be condensed or edited in the slightest, as though ASM felt it would have been blasphemous to do so. As a result, each one goes on far too long and neither has much to do with the climate crisis until at some point toward the end of each ASM remembers what the theme is and lofts some softball along the lines of whether the Dalai Lama believes it's important to take care of the environment.
Writers emulating the great [a:W.G. Sebald|6580622|W.G. Sebald|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1465928875p2/6580622.jpg] seem especially numerous lately, and ASM is no different. ASM is at pains to emulate the great German writer here and includes all of Sebald's trademarks: ruminations on time and memory, many photographs, heaping doses of nostalgia, and unwavering optimism. Well, the unwavering optimism may be ASM's own, but it is jarring after reading "The Uninhabitable Planet" and, indeed, anything else about climate change to read such an upbeat account. I've never read such a tirelessly positive book on the subject, or indeed on any subject.
"Yes, that glacier is now officially dead," ASM seems to be telling us, "but we're going to get this turned around and everything is going to be OK!"
It did take me longer to get through this than it should have. I never really enjoyed picking it up, and as readable as it was, I never made it many pages before finding myself checking how long it was to the end of the chapter.
That said, I can't write too negatively on a book that addresses such an important topic and does so in such a friendly, accessible way. Yes, it may lack the urgency and conviction that the genre is known for, but if that draws in readers who may not have subjected themselves to the horror embodied by the thorough dissection of the numbers that DWW and others give us, then good! This is still an educational read.
But for me, "On Time and Water" felt all too much like the Icelandic glaciers ASM writes about. Impermanent. Slowly shrinking in mind and memory until nothing is left aside from a few photographs and a couple of overly long interviews with the Dalai Lama.
Author Andri Snær Magnason (or ASM as he will be henceforth known) is no [a:David Wallace-Wells|18362071|David Wallace-Wells|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1547229080p2/18362071.jpg]. Whereas DWW focused on the science and essentially only the science in his book, [b:The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming|41552709|The Uninhabitable Earth Life After Warming|David Wallace-Wells|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1603323079l/41552709._SY75_.jpg|64830288], the climate crisis serves primarily as a theme around which ASM weaves stories of his ancestors' trek across a glacier, of Iceland's 2008 economic crisis, and, most particularly, of ASM's two meetings with the Dalai Lama.
Let it be known, I love the Dalai Lama (seems like a real nice fellow!) and I'm 100% pro-Tibetan independence, but the sections that feature the Dalai Lama feel like hagiography. Neither of the interviews that ASM conducts with the Dalai Lama appears to be condensed or edited in the slightest, as though ASM felt it would have been blasphemous to do so. As a result, each one goes on far too long and neither has much to do with the climate crisis until at some point toward the end of each ASM remembers what the theme is and lofts some softball along the lines of whether the Dalai Lama believes it's important to take care of the environment.
Writers emulating the great [a:W.G. Sebald|6580622|W.G. Sebald|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1465928875p2/6580622.jpg] seem especially numerous lately, and ASM is no different. ASM is at pains to emulate the great German writer here and includes all of Sebald's trademarks: ruminations on time and memory, many photographs, heaping doses of nostalgia, and unwavering optimism. Well, the unwavering optimism may be ASM's own, but it is jarring after reading "The Uninhabitable Planet" and, indeed, anything else about climate change to read such an upbeat account. I've never read such a tirelessly positive book on the subject, or indeed on any subject.
"Yes, that glacier is now officially dead," ASM seems to be telling us, "but we're going to get this turned around and everything is going to be OK!"
It did take me longer to get through this than it should have. I never really enjoyed picking it up, and as readable as it was, I never made it many pages before finding myself checking how long it was to the end of the chapter.
That said, I can't write too negatively on a book that addresses such an important topic and does so in such a friendly, accessible way. Yes, it may lack the urgency and conviction that the genre is known for, but if that draws in readers who may not have subjected themselves to the horror embodied by the thorough dissection of the numbers that DWW and others give us, then good! This is still an educational read.
But for me, "On Time and Water" felt all too much like the Icelandic glaciers ASM writes about. Impermanent. Slowly shrinking in mind and memory until nothing is left aside from a few photographs and a couple of overly long interviews with the Dalai Lama.
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Amazing.