Birthday Book Recs 32/50 : The Overstory by Richard Powers
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Birthday Book Recs: 32/50
The Overstory by Richard Powers
How could I not select this RAWTS, aka Read Along with The Sheldons, title for these birthday recos?! (Which, thanks to a friend who is now reading No. 13 from these, may heretofore be called RAWAFR — as in, Read Along with Amy’s Fiftieth Recs.)
The Overstory won the Pulitzer in 2019. But in 2020, this novel about the forest ecosystem, how trees communicate with each other, and a disparate slate of interconnected characters was recognized for something even more distinguished: The inaugural selection for the lil’ Book Club for 2 that my non-reading husband Matt and I experimented with in the midst of Covid. (We’ve also read The Nix by Nathan Hill.)
Aside from personally loving this book bc of the fond memories of reading and then discussing this with my husband, this novel is brilliant. I read an article the other day about a proposed data center in Bessemer, Alabama and the community members who are upset about it because it will replace “as pristine a forest that you’ll find in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains” with a facility the size of 18 Walmarts. EVERYTHING about this story screamed “Richard Powers” to me because nothing is ever as simple as AI = bad or Financial Incentives = Good or whatever. Life — like a tree canopy (#tiein) — is complex, multi-faceted, linked.
And as someone who, in an ideal world, would be totally extricated from Amazon, I loved this quote about an unnamed fulfillment center in Amazon’s birthplace of Bellevue, aka my hometown: “The product here is not so much books as that goal of ten thousand years of history, the thing the human brain craves above all else and nature will die refusing to give: convenience.” ZING.
(The Overstory is long at ~500 pages. If you’d like to try some Richard Powers before committing to this tome, how about Bewilderment, which was an Oprah pick a few years ago?)
(Yes, I know what it’s shelved next to. And btw you would [maybe not?] be amazed at how often it’s donated to the ReStore and then quickly sold. #artifact)
You can find all my 50th Birthday Book Recommendations HERE.
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