Greenwood | 
My #august selection for #12booksof2024. I feel like this is the Canadian equivalent to All the Light We Cannot See, but without the hype of All the Light simply because it‘s a Canadian book. This was my second reading of the book and I just love this book.
pickThe bulk of the story followed Harris and Everett and that‘s what I liked the best. Have to admit it took a short bit for me to get interested and to figure out what was happening and who the different characters were as we went back in time. I liked the way this one was done: we actually started in 2038, and gradually made our way to 1908 through the generations, then moved forward again back to 2038.
pickWell this was a surprise.
Told backwards, and then forwards, this is a family saga where the bloodlines are more complicated than most.
Woven between the decades, the tress grow strong, a life force of their own.
When I read the blurb I really didn't think this would work, but it does beautifully.
As the people in a small village in Canada would say, it could have gone either way.
Four stars.
#12Booksof2023
On the second day of Christmas, my reading gave to me...a saga of family growing like the rings of a tree... 🎶
I picked up Greenwood when it was selected as a Canada Reads finalist and I absolutely fell in love with the multidimensional family saga, boomeranging through the rings of time and nature.
@Andrew65
so-soI thought this would be a 5 star read for me. A generational story set from 1908 and 2038 in Canada, focused on timber, trees & forests. A family‘s relationship to them as timber barons, forest protection activists, carpenters. Beautiful writing, some characters I loved. But a little too much telling than showing. Some actions by characters not believable. Some forest science totally off the mark. Did he not read Finding the Mother Tree?
so-soI thought this would be a 5 star read for me. A generational story set from 1908 and 2038 in Canada, focused on timber, trees & forests. A family‘s relationship to them as timber barons, forest protection activists, carpenters. Beautiful writing, some characters I loved. But a little too much telling than showing. Some actions by characters not believable. Some forest science totally off the mark. Did he not read Finding the Mother Tree?
Everyone else is still asleep. I‘m enjoying this novel that I just started. Watching the sparrows and hummingbirds while my border collie Action Jackson stands guard at the end of the driveway to thwart squirrel interlopers on the bird feeder. My sweet dog who requires no fence or leash.
so-soThere's a technical proficiency here that I think deserves acknowledgement: writing primarily in the historical past (mostly 1930s) and still gripping the modern reader, writing characters that a reader becomes invested in, is a challenge, as is segueing through multiple time periods without losing the reader. Obviously reminiscent of The Overstory and a bit of Cloud Cuckoo Land: different people's lives and timelines feeding into each other. 1/?
pickReminiscent of Richard Powers "The Overstory" in that both books express the notion, taken directly from "Greenwood", "to look upon nature with reverence." I spent my youth in Northern Michigan woods at a cabin my dad built, walking through the woods to the Au Sable River where we fly fished. The smell of the forest was intontoxicating, the feel of the earth, walking on fallen leaves & branches, and the moss underfoot is still a distinct memory.
Nuanced sympathy for the hipster millennial, kind of refreshing.
Otis and I are celebrating #RespectYourCatDay by catching up on the first two days of Canada Reads debates. (Yes, he is a ridiculously long cat!) His sister prefers to cuddle on top of a blanket pile on the other couch.
When it comes to cake, I give thumbs down to Black Forest Cake, but thumbs up to most others. I like the classics and stick to my grandmother's rule: vanilla cake gets chocolate icing, chocolate cake gets vanilla icing 😋 🎂
so-soI think I mostly liked it. The female characters were much weaker than the males, which I never love. I liked the way the book was organized and the way the story unfolded.
pickI LOVED this book, in which Christie gives us the history of the Greenwood family from the beginning of the 20th century until well into the 21st, slightly into a sad future in 2038, in which large parts of the natural world have died off after the Great Withering, which killed off most of the trees. Plus, kidnapping, the Great Dust Bowl, flying libraries, and opium. Highly recommended.⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
pickHoly forking shirtballs, y‘all.
GREENWOOD is about how families are constructed; how families fail; the cyclical nature of history; the cyclical nature of nature; hope in hopeless times; what we hold tight to; what we leave behind. It drew me deep into itself and gave me that bone-felt THRILL I spend my reading life chasing.
I want it to win Canada Reads 2023. I want it to win EVERYTHING.
It‘s fucking amazing, is what I‘m saying. 5 stars.
Casey and I are back together for a few days! Gotta enjoy my time with my own particular fluffball.
I‘ll admit, I wasn‘t super-duper excited to start GREENWOOD—not because it looked dull but because I hate reading larger hardcovers. I avoided it all day yesterday, but when I finally sat down with it I fell hard. This multigenerational saga is worth the format‘s many annoyances. I feel like it could even emerge as my Canada Reads 2023 pick.
pickLoved it. Utterly engaging from the first page to the last. I loved the boomerang style narrative, beginning in the near future in a time post- environmental collapse, then heading backward 100+ years before swinging back to the future along the opposite trajectory. A story of family born and found, nature, and what we owe to ourselves, our families, and the world itself.
pickThis started out as 5 ⭐ and slowly worked it's way down to 3 ⭐. I was disappointed in the ending.
#CanadaReads
@NataliePatalie
Here‘s this week‘s library haul, plus three Sara Douglass novels I found at the thrift store on my way home. I don‘t read Americans in February and this lot should give me a nice jumpstart!
I‘m especially glad I was able to get GREENWOOD, which is one of this year‘s Canada Reads contenders. I‘ve already read two of the others (STATION ELEVEN and MEXICAN GOTHIC), but it looks like I won‘t get my hands on DUCKS or HOTLINE in time. Poop.
#12booksof2022 It was a month that I didn‘t read that much, but of the two books that I read during September, this one stood out for me. Not only was the physical book fascinating, but the story was incredibly compelling. I probably should read more Canadian fiction, but I don‘t know how much of Canadian is compelling that isn‘t by Louise Penny or Margaret Atwood.
pick4.5⭐️ I really liked it and for a 500 pg + book it was surprisingly quick to read. I really liked the edge of the pages and the cross-cut of a stump. It was also sort of strange to see Estevan, SK take such a prominent position in the book, as my paternal grandpa grew up about 4 hours west in Main Centre. Love the story and how trees are central to the Greenwood story. #2022 #bookclub #fiction #historicalfiction #canadian #bookreview
pickThis was a fascinating book! It‘s a family saga covering generations, starting in the future and working backwards in time then reversing course and finishing the stories of each character. This family, the Greenwoods, have all built their lives around trees, each in their own way. It‘s a very compelling story written in a unique format. The book is long but worth it. 🌳
pickI loved this book. Starts in the year 2028 and proceeds backwards until it then again moves through time to finish where it began. A family story that entangles the lives of some that where aware and some that are not, just like the roots of trees. Just a great story. Please read this one and thank a TREE later.
This one has been on my TBR for some time. I'm intrigued by the combo family story and eco- dystopia (including future #ecotourism). And I'm a sucker for a gorgeous cover, and this has so many!
#LitsySpringBreak @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks
Decisions...
Check out this beautiful book!!! Gorgeous cover and the wood grain edge! 😻 I love it when publishers put in that little extra effort!
#tbr
pickEco fiction & family saga, spanning a time period from 1908 to 2038, this kept me enthralled for 16 hours. 5 #audiobook narrators read the multiple voices, which include lumber tycoon, maple syrup tapper, carpenter, dendrologist & eco warrior. Some women choose trees above all else. Is a family line “just capitalist colonialist brainwashing, designed to sequester power in the hands of a few”? Chosen family reigns here. #CanadianAuthor #LGBT
If it‘s true that the United States was born of slavery and revolutionary violence, she muses while watching them working, then surely her own country was born of a cruel, grasping indifference to its Indigenous peoples and the natural world.
Time is not an arrow. Neither is it a road. It goes in no particular direction. It simply accumulates, in the body, in the world, like wood does, layer upon layer, light then dark, each one dependent upon the last. Each year impossible without the one preceding it. Each triumph and each disaster written forever in its structure.
There‘s a 1930s Depression-era library in an old church near Estevan, Saskatchewan in the tagged novel. Reminds me of the library I encountered in Keno, Yukon (population 20) in 2018 (pictured).
Pity is a sentiment long lost to Everett Greenwood, extinguished by those ruined men he‘d carried during the war, by his brother‘s betrayal, by the scrabbling nature of life, like a bright coin dropped into a black lake. But here it is again, back from the muddy bottom, shining in his palm.
#audiocrafting today
pickCorona read number 4, 4.5 stars, I loved how trees and family and the interesting time structure, very awesome book!
pickI read Greenwood because it was comped to Richard Powers‘ The Overstory, which I loved. The story follows the lives of 3 generations of the Greenwood family & the old growth forest on the island which bears their name, one an industrialist timber magnate, one a hippie activist, and one an forest scientist. While it doesn‘t rise to the epic level of literary achievement of The Overstory, it was a solid & satisfying “forest fiction” follow up.
pickTwo boys who did not come into this world as brothers but became the Greenwood brothers...their love of trees, their passions which fueles their actions....130 years of the Geeenwood lineage. Couldn't put this book down til the end. Now I'm hesitant to start another for I just want to hold these charaters close to my heart a bit longer.
pickGreat old-fashioned epic storytelling! This is both a bit science fiction set in the near future after environmental collapse and a sweeping historical story taking place over the course of the 20th century. Fascinating flawed characters and beautiful des descriptions of trees. The theme that resonated most for me was found family. Audiobook narration was great, with different actors voicing each character. #CanLit #AwesomeAudiobooks
