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caroparr's review
4.0
Take your time and savor these essays about trees, and nature in general. He's a marvelous observer and writer, and his comments and allusions sent me in search of more information about the artists, places and people he mentions. Highly recommended.
spaceisavacuum's review
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
5.0
Roger Deakin is a Suffolk folk, who loves wood- or anything flora. Travelling far and wide to document various encounters with wood… it’s a fascinating biography about his frolics, his interests… and with a lot of information regarding trees, culture, poetry, artists, even some movies!
Most of lumber is grafted to create things in bulk. For example, a single cedar wood in Tasmania can yield 150,000 pencils. They call them pencil pines. It is the general consensus to use Walnut for gunstocks. On an exhibition through Kazakhstan, Roger treads the Tien Shan Mountains, to discover the “Father of all Apples” (Land of the Silver Apples- Almaty.) Malus, the botanical family to which all apples belong, first evolved about twelve million years ago. Apple pips are poisonous, they contain cyanide. Similarly, Walnut trees release an ether called juglone, that can affect your brain. He travels to Kyrgyzstan, a land full of walnuts! They live in dejected poverty there, but for the price of living, it’s a genuine paradise. White pine contains turpentine, a natural pesticide, which is in great demand in the Japanese building trade.
Naturally, a naturalist is going to appreciate birds as well… and moths! Debunking a few myths, so far as magpies and robins and rooks, etc… so begins an amble through England with a traveling group of Lepidopterists. Nabokov, a well known name, was very much as famous for Lepidoptera as he was his books. He was captivated by the moth’s ability to mimic it’s predators. Greeks named moths by the same name as the soul: Psyche. Greeks named eucalyptus, meaning ‘well covered’. Nabokov was fascinated by the ‘immemorial link’ between overcoming gravity and transcending death. Huh.
Some artists that Deakin knew well, were sculptors and collage artists. He discusses briefly, ‘naive painting’, in which proportions are skewed like a child’s. Margaret Mellis, seems interesting to me. She created collages in ‘the playful spirit of Picasso’. Here is a line from Hamlet, “The time is out of joint, O cursèd spite/That ever I was born to set it right.”
Most of lumber is grafted to create things in bulk. For example, a single cedar wood in Tasmania can yield 150,000 pencils. They call them pencil pines. It is the general consensus to use Walnut for gunstocks. On an exhibition through Kazakhstan, Roger treads the Tien Shan Mountains, to discover the “Father of all Apples” (Land of the Silver Apples- Almaty.) Malus, the botanical family to which all apples belong, first evolved about twelve million years ago. Apple pips are poisonous, they contain cyanide. Similarly, Walnut trees release an ether called juglone, that can affect your brain. He travels to Kyrgyzstan, a land full of walnuts! They live in dejected poverty there, but for the price of living, it’s a genuine paradise. White pine contains turpentine, a natural pesticide, which is in great demand in the Japanese building trade.
Naturally, a naturalist is going to appreciate birds as well… and moths! Debunking a few myths, so far as magpies and robins and rooks, etc… so begins an amble through England with a traveling group of Lepidopterists. Nabokov, a well known name, was very much as famous for Lepidoptera as he was his books. He was captivated by the moth’s ability to mimic it’s predators. Greeks named moths by the same name as the soul: Psyche. Greeks named eucalyptus, meaning ‘well covered’. Nabokov was fascinated by the ‘immemorial link’ between overcoming gravity and transcending death. Huh.
Some artists that Deakin knew well, were sculptors and collage artists. He discusses briefly, ‘naive painting’, in which proportions are skewed like a child’s. Margaret Mellis, seems interesting to me. She created collages in ‘the playful spirit of Picasso’. Here is a line from Hamlet, “The time is out of joint, O cursèd spite/That ever I was born to set it right.”
bradism's review
4.0
I'm a big fan of trees, whether it's the mulberry in my backyard or the towering redwoods of the Pacific Northwest, so the blurb of Wildwood grabbed my attention, indicating it would be full of interesting scientific and botanic non-fiction. I still remember reading Guns, Germs and Steel which taught me that broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts and drumhead cabbage were all descendants of the original wild cabbage plant that grew only on the cliffs of the English coast and I thought that a whole audiobook of that kind of content would be captivating.
This was not the book I expected. It was the poetry quotes that were the first warning sign. Lyrical descriptions about wood, the feeling of wood, the jazz of driftwood, the fifth element. I like trees. Not as much as Roger Deakin likes trees. He really likes trees. There was a paragraph describing how being inside a fully wood building was so augmented by it's elemental nature that it made the taste of a single baked bean orgasmic. And a whole chapter about how satisfying it was to observe different types of moths in an English wood. I'm not judging this lifestyle. In fact, I was envious of how much time and resources Roger Deakin seemed to have available to travel and coppice and write and whittle.
The baked bean was just one example of the anecdotal rather than scientific nature of Wildwood and while it did contain a lot of interesting facts - such as the value of walnut tree burrs and the black market for the biggest of them, and how trees from cold climates make better flooring timber due to tighter grains - they were drowned out by the prep school reminiscing and the chapters about various wood-centric artists. Audiobooks are not the best medium for discussing that type of art.
And yet, perhaps it was Deakin (and the narrator's) passion for wood and woods that kept me listening, but over time the pattern of the book becomes clearer. Each chapter is an essay that starts from a seed - some aspect of wood and trees and how they shape someone's life - and often bloom into touching and interesting stories. The travels through the eastern bloc and visiting the walnut forests and the people living around them, and even tales of the Australian outback complete with handy tips on how to use crows to find your way to water (you just need to kill and salt a wallaby, then watch which direction they go after they eat the salty meat) were lovely, and sometimes fascinating although sometimes they did go on a bit. It really felt like Deakin was a man existing on a different plane; someone who understood trees and plants both scientifically as well as spiritually.
After I finished reading it I learned that he died of a brain tumour shortly after he finished writing Wildwood which was very sad because I'd just spent fourteen hours listening to his thoughts on wood, which ended on a short summary of the pollarding of an outdoor "room" of trees he'd been cultivating for twenty years, and clearly had hopes for maintaining and observing into the future. I don't know if it was done intentionally, but that last chapter was titled "Ash".
What did I learn from Roger Deakin this week? Trees are amazing, and they can bring people who are different together.
This was not the book I expected. It was the poetry quotes that were the first warning sign. Lyrical descriptions about wood, the feeling of wood, the jazz of driftwood, the fifth element. I like trees. Not as much as Roger Deakin likes trees. He really likes trees. There was a paragraph describing how being inside a fully wood building was so augmented by it's elemental nature that it made the taste of a single baked bean orgasmic. And a whole chapter about how satisfying it was to observe different types of moths in an English wood. I'm not judging this lifestyle. In fact, I was envious of how much time and resources Roger Deakin seemed to have available to travel and coppice and write and whittle.
The baked bean was just one example of the anecdotal rather than scientific nature of Wildwood and while it did contain a lot of interesting facts - such as the value of walnut tree burrs and the black market for the biggest of them, and how trees from cold climates make better flooring timber due to tighter grains - they were drowned out by the prep school reminiscing and the chapters about various wood-centric artists. Audiobooks are not the best medium for discussing that type of art.
And yet, perhaps it was Deakin (and the narrator's) passion for wood and woods that kept me listening, but over time the pattern of the book becomes clearer. Each chapter is an essay that starts from a seed - some aspect of wood and trees and how they shape someone's life - and often bloom into touching and interesting stories. The travels through the eastern bloc and visiting the walnut forests and the people living around them, and even tales of the Australian outback complete with handy tips on how to use crows to find your way to water (you just need to kill and salt a wallaby, then watch which direction they go after they eat the salty meat) were lovely, and sometimes fascinating although sometimes they did go on a bit. It really felt like Deakin was a man existing on a different plane; someone who understood trees and plants both scientifically as well as spiritually.
After I finished reading it I learned that he died of a brain tumour shortly after he finished writing Wildwood which was very sad because I'd just spent fourteen hours listening to his thoughts on wood, which ended on a short summary of the pollarding of an outdoor "room" of trees he'd been cultivating for twenty years, and clearly had hopes for maintaining and observing into the future. I don't know if it was done intentionally, but that last chapter was titled "Ash".
What did I learn from Roger Deakin this week? Trees are amazing, and they can bring people who are different together.
nlgn's review against another edition
5.0
"Loved this. Seemed a little under-edited (lots of repetitions, etc.); however, possibly a product of circumstances of production. Brought home how much knowledge and experience is going to be lost in the coming generations, but also reasons for hope, in terms of progressive attitudes towards sustainable management in (e.g.) Central Asian nations. A great encouragement for living authentically and determining your own unique contribution to the world."
baldingape's review
I won't rate this book.
I don't know if my mindset is just wrong for this book right now or if it's as truly tedious as it seems.
I will try again another day. I have faith that the author has written other good books, despite having not read them. And I will try his others probably before I ever get back to this one. Maybe. I don't know.
It's hard to really review a book fairly when you're too ill to notice if it's good or not.
I don't know if my mindset is just wrong for this book right now or if it's as truly tedious as it seems.
I will try again another day. I have faith that the author has written other good books, despite having not read them. And I will try his others probably before I ever get back to this one. Maybe. I don't know.
It's hard to really review a book fairly when you're too ill to notice if it's good or not.
readasaurus_rex's review
Just a little longer than necessary. The travel bits weren’t very interesting
emilyandthewhippet's review
DNF 21% - I gave up after five months of dipping in and out. I'd read in reviews that the first half could drag and the rest was better but even with a massive love of nature, I just couldn't bare with it anymore after months of trying.
rogue_runner's review against another edition
3.0
This took me FOREVER to get through. I think I just expected more of a textbook rather than a memoir, and although the stories were interesting and told with a very mellow tone, they just didn't really grip me overall.