Welcome to Litsy!

This book affected me so deeply. It's about trees, and the interconnected lives of several people, but that is such an inadequate description. It evoked memories of the woods of my childhood, sense memories from a time when I had a profound emotional connection to nature. The author brilliantly reflects the growing sense of despair about the future of our natural world, but balances it with enough love and hope to inspire action. A new favorite.

Michele - Thank you SO much for my holiday swap gifts. 💚 I‘m so excited for all of the books!! Love everything! So thoughtful. 🤗🎄🎁

#bookhaul
#nashvillemeetup
#nashvillelittens
#meetup

I went to return library books and couldn‘t walk out without books. Then I had to kill time before a meeting so browsed a bookstore and don‘t know how it happened but bought the tagged book😎

“What you make from a tree should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down.”

My #top10ofthedecade #fictionedit is 12 books I admit but if you ask me to trim any of them I‘ll cry. These books published this decade have all made a big impact on me. The Overstory is a strong contender for my favourite book of all time, I only read it two years ago but like with love at first sight I guess sometimes you ‘just know‘. I‘m excited for what writers will have to tell us in the next decade.

#SundaySentence

Book store browsing in Georgetown today. I loved browsing in a good book store :) I bought The Overstory and ate in a French Bakery @JulietteGF @Faibka ;)

A superb book. Thought-provoking, it‘s a call to action but more importantly it‘s beautifully written, with interesting characters & a great story. It builds in a tree structure: ‘roots‘ for characters‘ beginnings & in ‘trunk‘ they‘re established & go on a journey. Changed how I look at trees & reminded me of the joy & awe in nature when we‘re young. Warmth in tone & whimsy give hope rather than depress. Vivid scenes - I wanted to go there! 🌳

#MOvember #HumanNature I read this recently, so good ! This is my favorite cover of the book. Humans & trees 🌲 Humans & Nature ❤️💔

“You can‘t see what you don‘t understand. But what you think you understand, you‘ll fail to notice.”

Reading ‘The Overstory‘ is making me see trees in a whole new light 🌳. This avenue and our street were planted with English Oak and English Elm trees in memory of our fallen soldiers after WW1. 🌺

“ Something in the air‘s scent commands the woman: Close your eyes & think of willow. The weeping you see will be wrong. Picture an acacia thorn. Nothing in your thought will be sharp enough. What hovers right above you? What floats over your head right now- now? Trees even farther away join in
The pine she leans against says : Listen. There‘s something you need to hear. “
5⭐️

I love walking with my dogs in the woods even more now 👍🏻❤️

My children building a tree-house this morning. Very on-point with my current read! 😝🌳

#BookReport Still reading & still in love with The Overstory.... hopefully finish this week. A pure pleasure to read 👍🏻❤️

My flight read (en route to Sydney this morning). I am loving this! 📖🥰

How do you review this giant of a book. At first it seems it is short stories. Unconnected except that the overarching subject is the tree. But as the book unfolds you realise that like the trees themselves they have rooted and branched connections. Characters who are the same. The same causes to be fought for, the same trees in different places and times. It is the best book I have read in a long time. Very pertinent too with mass extinctions.

OVERSTORY ❤️ She takes his shaking hand in the dark. It feels good, like a root must feel, when it finds, after centuries, another root to pleach to underground. There are a hundred thousand species of love, separately invented, each more ingenious than the last, and every one of them keeps making things.

This book is blowing me away. ❤️💔
( Pic of a tree on our dog walk)

This book is due back at my library tomorrow and 4 people have holds on it behind me. I can't say I'll be rushing to get back in line for it. I love the idea- reimagining the relationship between humans and trees, a new understanding of trees- but after 250 pages, I have become quite bored with the multiple virtually indistinguishable human characters and their stories and there are still another 250 pages to go. Just not a good fit for me. Bail.

Almost finished with this beautiful book. I am more in love with trees than ever before.

I've been struggling with this one for a while. I haven't given up, but it's not getting any easier. The writing is good and the concept is very appealing- trees communicating with humans and whatnot- but it's just not drawing me in by the halfway point.

#WeeklyForecast
Plan A : The Overstory, I‘ve started & it‘s very good & it‘s long .. it will take me at least the week ... if I get into it.
Also , look over The Testaments for Friday night Bookclub - when we will be dressing up as Handmaids ( or whichever character we want ) 👍❤️excited !

Plan B : I‘m not sure 🤔

⭐️⭐️⭐️
I thought the first part was really good. The introductions to the characters and how trees played into their individual histories had me like 😍🌲 But then the rest was very up and down for me. After their great set up, I thought the characters felt pretty meh after that and things moved at a pace that felt too slow in some places and too fast in others. ⬇️

A magnum opus, it is brilliant, heavy, complex, and long, written in dazzling prose. Powers pours his tree-soul into this novel. Sprawling, spanning centuries, entangled, wild, resigned, like old growth forests. Leafing in too many directions, but each branch is complex, living, breathing, poetic, and beautiful. Metculously drawn characters, their passions, trees and humans - which will survive? Grief of death but also hope. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Reading Envy Podcast Episode 169: Simulacrum with Jon Sealy.
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Jenny sits down in the Reading Envy Pub with author and publisher Jon Sealy. After we talk about the state of publishing and Jon's current projects, we also discuss books we've read and liked recently. Some books are just better in audio, some are necessarily dark, while others clear away the gloom.
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https://tinyurl.com/ReadingEnvy169

When you think you made a lot of progress on an ebook and then you get the physical copy and realize you‘re not even halfway through 🤨

1. The Overstory (Powers)
2. Lanny (Porter)
3. Confessions (Minato) Technically, I gave it 4.5 stars, but I‘ve been pretty stingy with my 5 stars this year (only 2 so far).
#weekendreads

London Review Bookstore was an excellent stop. Has an adorable cafe attached (though we‘d just snacked at the nearby British Museum). A definite must shop if you‘re in the area!! I‘m very fortunate that my other half understands that visiting local bookstores is a must while on vacation. #london

I didn‘t finish this by the time it was due back at the library, so my hold finally came through and we‘re picking up where I left off! 🍂

I've been getting most of my books through the library, which I think is a good thing, but today I had the urge to buy The Overstory. A local shop is holding a book discussion on it in November and this seems like the kind of book I would like to discuss.

“You know, you look at those mountains, and you think: Civilization will fade away, but that will go on forever. Only, civilization is snorting like a steer on growth hormones, and those mountains are going down.”

Discussion Question Number Three.

Discussion Question Number Two.

Discussion Question Number One.

For most of this book, I considered it a borderline pick, but in the end I‘m going with so-so because it just did not live up to my expectations after all those pages. I enjoyed the early story portions and time in the giant tree the best. Some parts were beautiful and fascinating, but other parts came across to me as long winded and sometimes unclear. Pieces I hoped to see build and connect in great ways lost their intensity.

#LitsyBookClub

We hope you‘ll join us for our live discussion of The Overstory by Richard Powers tomorrow at 2pm ET. Here is the link to join our discussion:
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/2104086391

#7covers7days #covercrush #lastday

Yes explanation! When a dear coworker enthusiastically recommends a book, you put it on your #TBR list immediately.

Tag yourself if you want to play along.

With our #LitsyBookClub discussion coming up quickly, I gave in and added the audio along with my Kindle copy. This morning was a beautiful time to listen, but I think I like reading this book better than listening so I‘m still going back and forth when I can.

#audiobook

There is little that I can say about The Overstory that wouldn‘t, ultimately, spoil something interesting. I loved the characters. I loved that trees and living things are front and center.

I was enlightened about trees (and I did not think I was unenlightened to begin) and grew to know and admire the characters. Big and American and ultimately powerful...

Another Overstory cover, especially for @Caroline2 🙂

I couldn‘t choose a final book for day 7 of #7days7covers #covercrush so here‘s 4 and I still need to read them all. 🤦‍♀️ I‘ve really enjoyed this challenge! So lovely to see everyone‘s beautiful books! 💖

Just started this and whilst the prologue had me a little worried that the language would go over my head, I was thoroughly invested in the first chapter. It's a good start!

There are nine major human characters in this novel. Plus countless trees and forests, which became also characters for me. The narrator tackles all of it herself, and is excellent. The story made me sad, angry, hopeless, hopeful, and did make me laugh occasionally. Mostly I was captivated by the way all of the humans are changed by the trees in their lives. And how they go on after.

Full review http://www.TheBibliophage.com
#thebibliophage2019

I'm only on page 27 so I need to keep giving this a chance but I'm feeling a bit bored by this book at the moment...

I am still enjoying this book!

Our neighbor just had a row of tall pines taken down today. I‘m especially sad because I‘ve spent the week immersed in Richard Powers‘s incredible novel. It‘s making me hurt for these missing pines.

“This is not our world with trees in it. It's a world of trees, where humans have just arrived.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

Listening to a book about trees on my walk through the woods today. So far, I am very much enjoying this month's #litsybookclub pick

@SoniaC @Graciouswarriorprincess @Bookworm83 @tpixie @Daisey @Theresa

Life changing.

So I have been reading a lot, but I have also been so busy with work, school, and wedding planning that I have not posted anything on Litsy in forever. This was one of my favorite summer reads and I particularly enjoyed this quote; “To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs.” #summerreads #quotes

This is our September IRL book club pick.
I applaud Power‘s for making me look at trees in a completely new light but I would have been just as impressed, maybe even more so, if he saved the planet from paper consumption and kept the novel at 350 pages. This book could have been brilliant if it was whittled down by about 200 pages. Beautiful language and strong ideas but preachy overtones & drawn out conclusion left me feeling meh 😞