Litsy

The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial | David Lipsky

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This book was fascinating. The author thoroughly explained the history of climate science and what goes into the campaigns to discredit it. Everyone should read this

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Eva_B

Juice | Tim Winton

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Wow! This book was amazing! Had me 100% hooked. I love Tim Winton but I was reluctant to read this one because I thought it might be too depressing. I‘m sooo glad I did read it! Set in a futuristic Australia where climate change has wreaked havoc and humanity is adapting in order to survive. Gritty and frightening the main character tells his life story to a suspicious stranger in order to survive. Well worth reading.

BarbaraBB Great review! 1w

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Hilary427

Playground | Richard Powers

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This book will stay with me for a long, long time. I really liked the first 75% of The Overstory, but then it lost me. This book is not like that. I can‘t really articulate all the things it made me think, and feel. And the vote at the end? Every point was valid, and true! So good. (But I do think Rafi kinda sucked). (20)
⭐️: 4.5/5

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SaraBeagle

Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon | Melissa L. Sevigny

Favorites from April ☔️💐

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Robotswithpersonality

Playground | Richard Powers

This post contains spoilers

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so-so

Well, I just found out the thing I'm even less prepared for than an ending which seems to offer no hope or redemption, is one that makes you think it will be somewhat happy and then turns out to be a lie.
If you felt blank after Death of the Author, if you felt angry after Atonement, I don't think you're going to like this ending. 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? I can see how Richard Powers wanted this to be a powerful statement about how racism is deleterious to all of humanity, how colonialism and capitalism continue to contribute to global environmental destruction, the current crisis our oceans face, and the threat posed by AI unfettered and managed by those with primarily profit-seeking motives.
Unfortunately, this kind of statement can easily be demoralizing rather than galvanizing, and that's 2w

Robotswithpersonality 3/? where I'm landing in overall tone.
Powers, you made me care about people that you then kind of threw away:
Maybe Ina managed a full life with her adopted kids though in retrospect there's only one paragraph of a letter to prove it; Evelyne's queer identity is shuttered while she exists in a hetero-platonic marriage that leaves her eternally guilty and her ambition is historically accurately hampered by decades of sexism in her field of (edited) 2w

Robotswithpersonality 4/? science, only to see her more successful efforts at outreach pale in comparison to the steady decline of oceanic conditions, though I guess she did get to die in a dive as she wished; Rafi is first nearly totalled by the tragedies of his youth and then, likely unable to maintain the connection with lover and friend because of that trauma, dies alone?!, and Todd, so far astray from that lonely 10 year old, with no clear notion whether his 2w

Robotswithpersonality 5/? life's work had damned mankind, asks an AI to tell him a bedtime story while still missing yet separated from his only friends, in a state of swift decline that is heart-wrenching to read if you've ever had a loved one diagnosed with dementia.
While there's an emotional impact to the way this story is told, how well it is written, now that it has come to that conclusion I just feel sort of hollow. (edited) 2w

Robotswithpersonality 6/6 This is my second Powers. I was undecided after The Overstory. I think my mind's made up after this one. I hope his writing continues to be beautiful and gets in the hands of those who will take his messages to heart, without simultaneously suffering EMOTIONAL DAMAGE. 😭 I'm done.
⚠️Detailed descriptions of experiences with Dementia with Lewys bodies, domestic abuse, child abuse, child death, mention of miscarriage, animal death, racism 2w

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Robotswithpersonality

Playground | Richard Powers

And this is why I always eventually find my way back to poetry, because there are those that make me “feel like a comet had just screamed across the sky“...“

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Robotswithpersonality

Playground | Richard Powers