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The Overstory
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
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Publisher's summary
Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2019
A monumental novel about reimagining our place in the living world, by one of our most "prodigiously talented" novelists (New York Times Book Review).
The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fable that range from antebellum New York to the late 20th-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
An air force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits 100 years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another.
These and five other strangers, each summoned in different ways by trees, are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent's few remaining acres of virgin forest. There is a world alongside ours - vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.
Featured Article: How to Celebrate Earth Day in Your New Normal
What a time for a golden anniversary. Celebrated annually since 1970, Earth Day commemorates its 50th year of existence as the world faces an unprecedented global crisis. While this particular Earth Day won't be filled with parades, communal beach cleanups, and school field trips to plant trees, fear not: when there's a will to honor the environment, there's a way. Inspire your inner environmentalist by listening to some of our favorite earth-loving audio.
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- Unabridged
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Lauren Groff’s acclaimed debut novel The Monsters of Templeton was short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Arcadia opens in the late 1960s with a group of young idealists forming a commune in western New York State. Into this group is born Bit, who grows into a quiet, distant man. Over the course of 50 years, Bit witnesses the utopia crumble and the world change in unimaginable ways.
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Luscious prose, intimate and realistic
- By Kathleen on 03-22-12
By: Lauren Groff
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The Hawley Book of the Dead
- A Novel
- By: Chrysler Szarlan
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Revelation "Reve" Dyer grew up with her grandmother’s family stories, stretching back centuries to Reve’s ancestors, who founded the town of Hawley Five Corners, Massachusetts. Their history is steeped in secrets, for few outsiders know that an ancient magic runs in the Dyer women’s blood, and that Reve is a magician whose powers are all too real. Reve and her husband are world-famous Las Vegas illusionists. They have three lovely young daughters, a beautiful home, and what seems like a charmed life. But Reve’s world is shattered....
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It sounded like something I could really love.....
- By Andrea on 10-01-14
By: Chrysler Szarlan
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Zombies: More Recent Dead
- By: Neil Gaiman, Carrie Vaughn, Caitlin R. Kiernan, and others
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt, Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 20 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The living dead are more alive than ever! Zombies have become more than an iconic monster for the 21st century: They are now a phenomenon constantly revealing as much about ourselves - and our fascination with death, resurrection, and survival - as our love for the supernatural or post-apocalyptic speculation. Our most imaginative literary minds have been devoured by these incredible creatures and produced exciting, insightful, and unflinching new works of zombie fiction.
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A well blended mix
- By The Lone Mopper on 07-30-15
By: Neil Gaiman, and others
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Halcyon
- A Thriller
- By: Rio Youers
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
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Halcyon is the answer for all Americans who want to escape, but paradise isn't what it seems. A beautiful island in the middle of Lake Ontario - a self-sustaining community made up of people who want to live without fear, crime, or greed. Halcyon is run by Valerie Kemp, aka Mother Moon, benevolent and altruistic on the outside, but hiding an unimaginable darkness inside. She has dedicated her life to the pursuit of Glam Moon, a place of eternal beauty and healing. And she believes the pathway there can only be found at the end of pleasure.
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Intense and mesmerizing
- By Andrea on 09-25-18
By: Rio Youers
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A Death in Kitchawank, and Other Stories
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: T. C. Boyle
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Few authors write with such sheer love of story and language as T. C. Boyle, and that is nowhere more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and always entertaining short stories. Here are 14 new tales previously unpublished in book form. By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, Boyle's stories have mapped a wide range of human emotions. The stories here reflect his maturing themes.
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Mixed Bag
- By AuntGert on 09-22-20
By: T. C. Boyle
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The Enchanted
- A Novel
- By: Rene Denfeld
- Narrated by: Jim Frangione
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
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The enchanted place is an ancient stone prison, viewed through the eyes of a death row inmate who finds escape in his books and in re-imagining life around him, weaving a fantastical story of the people he observes and the world he inhabits. Fearful and reclusive, he senses what others cannot. Though bars confine him every minute of every day, he marries visions of golden horses running beneath the prison, heat flowing like molten metal from their backs with the devastating violence of prison life.
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Ink Blot Test
- By Mel on 03-05-14
By: Rene Denfeld
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American War
- A Novel
- By: Omar El Akkad
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, that unmanned drones fill the sky. And when her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she quickly begins to be shaped by her particular time and place until, finally, through the influence of a mysterious functionary, she is turned into a deadly instrument of war.
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Best listen in years
- By odin on 04-08-17
By: Omar El Akkad
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Love, Africa
- A Memoir of Romance, War, and Survival
- By: Jeffrey Gettleman
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
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A seasoned war correspondent, Jeffrey Gettleman has covered every major conflict over the past 20 years, from Afghanistan to Iraq to the Congo. For the past decade, he has served as the East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times, fulfilling his teenage dream of living in Africa. Love, Africa is the story of how he got there - and of his difficult, winding path toward becoming a good reporter and a better man.
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Loved this book!!!
- By Benjamin on 05-26-17
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The Great Spring
- Writing, Zen, and This ZigZag Life
- By: Natalie Goldberg
- Narrated by: Natalie Goldberg
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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What does it take to have a long writing life? Drawing on her years of writing, teaching, and practicing Zen, Natalie Goldberg shares the experiences that have opened her to new ways of being alive - experiences that point the way forward in our lives and our writing. The "great spring" of this book title refers to the great rush of energy that arrives when you think no life will ever come again - the early yellow flowering forsythia, for example.
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An enjoyable insight
- By Leigh A on 05-22-23
By: Natalie Goldberg
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The Fisherman
- By: John Langan
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In upstate New York, in the woods around Woodstock, Dutchman's Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked, fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true. When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other's company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumors of the Creek, and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss it as just another fish story.
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The Horror of Loss
- By Jim N on 04-20-17
By: John Langan
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Poor performance
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In Orfeo, Powers tells the story of a man journeying into his past as he desperately flees the present. Composer Peter Els opens the door one evening to find the police on his doorstep. His home microbiology lab - the latest experiment in his lifelong attempt to find music in surprising patterns - has aroused the suspicions of Homeland Security. Panicked by the raid, Els turns fugitive. As an Internet-fueled hysteria erupts, Els - the "Bioterrorist Bach" - pays a final visit to the people he loves, those who shaped his musical journey.
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On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, 27-year-old Mark Schluter flips his truck in a near fatal accident. His older sister, Karin, returns to nurse Mark back from a traumatic head injury. But when he emerges from a coma, Mark believes that this woman is really an impostor who looks just like his sister. Shattered, Karin contacts the cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber, who eagerly investigates. What he discovers in Mark slowly undermines even his own sense of being.
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Too much time for a boring story
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After several years living abroad, the fictional protagonist of Galatea 2.2 - Richard Powers - returns to the US as Humanist-in-Residence at the enormous Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There he runs afoul of Philip Lentz, a cognitive neurologist intent upon modeling the human brain. Lentz involves Powers in an outlandish and irresistible project: to train a neural net on a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the device grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own name, sex, race, and reason for existing.
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Complex verbiage with a very self-centered focus
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Poor performance
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Too much time for a boring story
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After several years living abroad, the fictional protagonist of Galatea 2.2 - Richard Powers - returns to the US as Humanist-in-Residence at the enormous Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There he runs afoul of Philip Lentz, a cognitive neurologist intent upon modeling the human brain. Lentz involves Powers in an outlandish and irresistible project: to train a neural net on a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the device grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own name, sex, race, and reason for existing.
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Complex verbiage with a very self-centered focus
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Brilliant
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Prisoner's Dilemma
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Something is wrong with Eddie Hobson Sr., father of four, sometime history teacher, quiz master, black humorist, and virtuoso invalid. His recurring fainting spells have worsened, and with his ingrained aversion to doctors, his worried family tries to discover the nature of his sickness. Meanwhile, in private, Eddie puts the finishing touches on a secret project he calls Hobbstown, a place that he promises will save him, the world, and everything that's in it. A dazzling novel of compassion and imagination, Prisoner's Dilemma is a story of the power of invalid experience.
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DEEP AS THE FOREST
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The Gold Bug Variations
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Stuart Ressler, an up-and-coming molecular biologist, finds his career sidetracked by the turmoil of the '60s, and a young couple of the 1980s tries to discover why the biologist abandoned his scientific pursuits.
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Great Expectations, Bigger Disappointments
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Generosity
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What will happen to life when science identifies the genetic basis of happiness? Who will own the patent? Do we dare revise our own temperaments? Funny, fast, and magical, Generosity celebrates both science and the freed imagination. In his most exuberant book yet, Richard Powers asks us to consider the big questions facing humankind as we begin to rewrite our own existence.
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All About Fiction
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By: Richard Powers
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Ordinary Grace
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Award-winning author William Kent Krueger has gained an immense fan base for his Cork O’Connor series. In Ordinary Grace, Krueger looks back to 1961 to tell the story of Frank Drum, a boy on the cusp of manhood. A typical 13-year-old with a strong, loving family, Frank is devastated when a tragedy forces him to face the unthinkable - and to take on a maturity beyond his years.
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Wonderful Wonderful - In Every Way
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Study Guide: The Overstory by Richard Powers
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SuperSummary, a modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, offers high-quality study guides for challenging works of literature. This guide for The Overstory by Richard Powers includes detailed chapter summaries and analysis covering 12 chapters, as well as several more in-depth sections of expert-written literary analysis. Featured content includes commentary on major characters, 25 important quotes, essay topics, and key themes like environmentalism and the value of human sacrifice.
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On Easter day, 1939, at Marian Anderson's epochal concert on the Washington Mall, David Strom, a German Jewish emigre scientist, meets Delia Daley, a young Philadelphia Negro studying to be a singer. Their mutual love of music draws them together, and - against all odds and better judgment - they marry. They vow to raise their children beyond time, beyond identity, steeped in song. But their three children must survive America's brutal here and now.
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Undigested Erudition
- By Dr. Blue Jacaranda on 11-11-20
By: Richard Powers
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The Road
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America is a barren landscape of smoldering ashes, devoid of life except for those people still struggling to scratch out some type of existence. Amidst this destruction, a father and his young son walk, always toward the coast, but with no real understanding that circumstances will improve once they arrive. Still, they persevere, and their relationship comes to represent goodness in a world of utter devastation.
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ARE YOU CARRYING THE FIRE?
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The Grand Hotel: A Novel
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The Grand Hotel is a horror novel by esteemed best-selling author Scott Kenemore ( Zombie, Ohio) that takes the reader on a thrilling ride through an interconnected series of stories narrated by the desk clerk and the residents of the hotel itself. And while it is not known whether or not the desk clerk is actually the devil incarnate, it is strange that so many visitors who come for a tour of the hotel have a way of never leaving.
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So glad I found The Grand Hotel...
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Beware the Past
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When Matt Ballard was starting out his career, three boys were murdered in the same area, the remote and bleak Gibbet Fen. When the main suspect was killed in a hit-and-run, the killings stopped. But Matt was not satisfied that the real murderer had been caught. Over 25 years later, Matt gets a photo in an unmarked envelope. It's of the Gibbet Fen crime scene. And the picture was taken before the murder took place. More photos arrive, relating to the historic murders, as well as intimate pictures of Matt's very secret private life.
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Author Joy Ellis knows how to build suspense!
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Pile of Bones
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When a storm reveals a mysterious cave behind a waterfall, the young mystic’s apprentice and her wolf investigate. Inside, she discovers a secret place containing a pile of human bones and the young girl makes what could be a fatal mistake. In this Legends of the First Empire prequel, we witness the events that helped shape the woman who would one day become Suri the Mystic, the first Rhune Artist, and a hero to a generation
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Good preview, unsatisfying story
- By Samuel Hudnet on 01-11-20
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Finding the Mother Tree
- Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest
- By: Suzanne Simard
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- Unabridged
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Suzanne Simard is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence; her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million people worldwide. In this, her first book, now available in audio, Simard brings us into her world, the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths—that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complicated, interdependent circle of life.
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Couldn't finish, will try the hard copy
- By primrose on 07-22-21
By: Suzanne Simard
What listeners say about The Overstory
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Michael Stansberry
- 05-23-18
eye opening
I'm a fuel guzzling truck driver but this book made me wanna pull my semi to the side of the road And hug a tree
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634 people found this helpful
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- Alexandria Dancey
- 04-18-18
Astonishingly powerful writing.
Where does The Overstory rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
It’s up there with the top three.
Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?
As a book of short stories some resonate more than others. HOWEVER, you would just listen for the exquisitely skillful writing, it’s really quite beautiful.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
No. Well yes, I wanted to but the beauty of the short story is you can try them on in different moods, times of day, it’s in bite size pieces. There is an overarching narrative where each story reveals its connection to its neighbors. But, the skill of the writer is such that the spirit of each tale stays with you. You can stop and start and never risk missing the culmination. Most impressive book I’ve read in the past year, maybe longer.
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192 people found this helpful
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- Max and Kimmy
- 05-10-19
Loved the first half, struggled with the second
The first 12 hours or so of this book were marvelous. I loved learning about trees and their meaning to us and the world around us, by following 7 (think...) storylines and their interaction with trees. One note was I wished this story could have taken place all over the world instead of just the United States, I feel like that would have been really empowering. One of my favorite parts was learning about a Banyan tree in Laos, however we were only there momentarily because an American pilot fell out of a plane.
If the book had ended around the middle mark - as seven short stories of people learning how amazing trees can be - it would have been one of my favorite reads in awhile. It did not. It kept going, and going, and going. The group of characters whose stories intertwined became less and less realistic, their decisions and relationships with each other became so entirely un-human that I couldn't really take any of them seriously. Eventually most of them started truly irritating me. I think this was in part due to the narrators voices for all the characters, while the distinction between each was good, I began associating my distaste for them every time she would speak in their tone.
The last 7 hours were brutal. Not only because I had started to truly despise half the characters, but I also started to hate myself and all of mankind. I think this was probably the point but the author kept repeating several lines so often that I began to roll my eyes. Yes, I get it, we are destroying the planet by cutting down trees. Yes, I get it, humans are ruining everything. Yes, I get it, humans are hopeless. The end didn't really leave me with much other than being relieved at its being over.
The one thing I will say is that we (humans) are remarkable creatures too and are capable of doing amazing things, and it's time we put that power and creativity to good use and save our home. I think mankind is capable of living in a sustainable world, we just need to pull our heads out of our butts and make it happen. I wish this book could have given us a little more of that instead of the nothing that 'we will destroy our ability to live on this planet, and then we will be gone and the planet will be better for it.'
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166 people found this helpful
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- Ellen L.
- 06-21-18
Mind blowing
If we could send one book into orbit to tell whomever else it out there who we are (or were) and why we messed things up so badly, this one might be it. One of the best pieces of fiction I've ever read. Highly recommended.
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166 people found this helpful
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- Christina
- 01-24-19
Great book, iffy narration
Great story, mostly good performance, but the narrator does an excruciatingly cringe-inducing "deaf accent" for one character as well as a very poor Chinese accent. This book would have been an ideal candidate for a multi-cast narration.
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139 people found this helpful
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- Vince Reardon
- 05-04-18
We Are a Part of Nature
This majestic novel reminds us that we are not apart from Nature but are a part of Nature, and our survival may depend on our collective realization of that reality. Divided into four parts: Roots (which introduces the nine main characters), Trunk (which shows how the characters are related to one another, although several never actually meet), Crown (which catches up with the characters 20 years later), and Seeds (which shows you how each ends up). Powers creates a group of lively and believable characters, most born in the '50s and '60s, who emerge slowly and lushly over time, much like a stand of trees.
Perhaps the most interesting and riveting of characters is Dr. Patricia Westerford who conducts original research proving that trees are social creatures that "must have evolved ways to synchronize with each other." Rejected and ridiculed by the scientific establishment, she leaves academia to become forest ranger. Another character Adam Appich, a grad student in psychology, also fascinated me. He discovers that "humans need good stories to be persuaded by scientists' alarms." Late in the novel he concludes, "Humankind is deeply ill. The species won't last long. It was an aberrant experiment." I am not, however, certain that that is Powers' opinion.
While listening to "The Overstory," I felt the spirits of Thoreau and Muir nearby. Also nearly were: James Lovelock whose Gaia hypothesis postulates that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system, Donald Peattie's "Natural History of North American Trees," and German forester Peter Wohlleben's "The Hidden Life of Trees." It is interesting that Patricia Westerford shares the same initials as Peter Wohlleben.
This is one of Powers' finest works. I heartily recommend it to those who love Nature, especially trees and forests, and are worried about the fragile state of the environment around the world. This novel will draw you deeper and deeper into that complex, shimmering and often invisible world.
Finally, the Audible narrator Suzanne Toren is superb. A great novel requires a great narrator. Toren fits the bill. She brings "The Overstory" to life.
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- Chels Alexandra
- 02-28-19
Awe-inspiring writing but annoying narration
The writing: an exciting story interwoven with fascinating, true science about nature. An urgently important perspective. I felt elevated to another plane with a different sense of scale and time.
The audiobook: the narrator over-does it with the ethnic accents and a main character’s speech impediment. All the men’s voices are raspy and brash; all the women’s voices are lilting and soft. It gets a bit annoying once you notice that her voices are so stereotyped; I would have preferred a more subtle performance. So I’ll be (re?)reading the text to fully enjoy the book.
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- Margaret
- 03-16-19
A Masterpiece
Now THIS is a book.
I read this epic, stunning novel right after finishing two other very-hyped novels that just didn't deliver (Washington Black and Asymmetry.) It was a good reminder that publicity for new fiction is not always proportionate to that magical combo, story quality plus writing.
In The Overstory, Richard Powers scratches every possible itch a demanding reader might bring.
-Imaginative story that a regular person couldn't possibly have invented? Check.
-Superb character development with a cast of believable, fully-drawn characters, each able to inspire feelings in the reader? Check.
-Character arcs that lead the main characters through real change and development? Check - and not for one protagonist but for a whole troupe of interesting characters, each with their own arc, all intertwined. The partially-deaf scientist, a lonely soul ahead of her time. The half-Chinese executive with millions of dollars of undiscovered art on her walls. The artist descendant of an Iowa farm family and a chestnut tree. The college girl who can speak to trees after she's electrocuted. The psychologist with asperger's who becomes a reluctant activist. The Vietnam vet who becomes a drifter for positive change. The flower children amateur thespians who survive every challenge to create a perfect marriage.
-Perfectly crafted language that makes the reading experience special without ever neglecting to be in service of the narrative? Check.
-A narrative structure that mirrors the books key themes. Check. Powers' story starts at the roots, the story nutrients flowing upward and branching outward until all of the disparate parts that appeared as though they could never be related are integrated into a full ecosystem. Brilliant
-A highly entertaining, can't-wait-for-the-next-page experience that also has something profound to say about the human condition in general? Check. Check. Check.
And for lagniappe, Powers also delivers us characters that aren't even human: Trees, unique characters by species, many individuals with their own hero's journey. Forests, interdependent neural systems that act and react with each other and the insatiable human consumption all around them.
It's all completely believable, totally current. There's no science fiction or speculative fiction in this book - just a contemporary novel that takes all sentient beings into consideration rather than humanity's usual, navel-gazing focus on just ourselves.
The Overstory leaves the reader pondering a bunch of interesting questions. What if we could harness the powerful logarithms behind Facebook and Google to drive behavior change for a healthier planet instead of driving consumption? What if humans could rediscover the skills our ancestors had to communicate in interdependence with nature? What are the opportunities and limits that an individual scientist, artist, empath, tech guru, warrior can bring to create systemic change?
One of this book's gifts I'm especially grateful for is that although it deals with an overwhelming and deeply distressing subject - the impact of humanity's expansive consumption on our biome - Powers does not collapse into the easy lure of dystopia. I'm so tired of all these authors dressing up in black and painting clever, apocalyptic visions of the near future. Powers instead rolls up his sleeves and creates something beautiful. He is not naive about the challenges ahead of us, and he doesn't spare the reader from real tragedy when it's warranted. But at the end, the reader remembers the beauty and takes away inspiration.
Read this book. You'll never look at a tree the same way again.
A note on the narration: Suzanne Toren does a decent job, but I wasn't fully on board with her choice to use accents and a speech impediment for particular characters.
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- Diane
- 06-01-18
Brilliant, life-changing
I seldom write reviews, and I very rarely give Five Stars, much less three of them. For me, a book has to be brilliantly written and address real issues of human life amidst the changes of world or planetary history. This has those traits. The last book I rated this highly was "The Book Thief," several years back. This book has me seeing trees differently, seeing our present dilemmas differently, and wondering on about the richly drawn characters Powers offers us. Suzanne Toren delivers a performance of a lifetime as the many individuals who make up this story, voicing them with a sympathy and knowledge of the character's traits that I doubt could be equalled. Bravo! and Brava! to author and narrator.
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- Criticalthinker
- 10-30-19
Hated both novel and reader, with a passion
I made a great effort to slog through this interminable mess of a book, even ramping up the listening speed to 1.75 to get past the most tedious parts. But I found myself feeling angry about the minutes of life this was stealing from me. I gave up after many chapters of hoping that it would get better. Powers may be considered a shining star in the literary universe, but I don’t care for his writing style. His characters are thinly drawn, their dialogue stilted. His portrayal of Chinese and ethnic Indian characters borders on offensive stereotype (and narrator Toren’s imitation of accented speech is horrific, particularly her painful Charlie Chan voice). Powers’s story threads meander and tangle and don’t always come back together. The tree-as-metaphor thing comes cross as trite, and tenuous. It’s been done before. And — oh, dear God — trees talk.
After giving up, I feared that I must have missed something in this much lauded work. So I went Googling for reviews, to see what others thought. Barbara Kingsolver drooled over the book in the NYT. Really? Why? Then I happened upon the hilarious, panning review in (British newspaper) The Guardian, which made me feel better, knowing that I was not alone among readers. The reviewer makes much use of the word “daft.” And daft this certainly is. If you have a moment, the review is worth looking up.
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