elizlizabeth's reviews
226 reviews

I feel that Powers is an excellent short story writer. I really loved the first part of this book because of how engaging and emotive the character introductions were. The concept of the book is pretty cool: Roots has the introductions, Trunk where they all meet, Crown where they split, and Seeds as a sort of epilogue. However, in the execution the plot felt overly dramatic and the author kept either repeating or negating the character arcs to introduce conflict. This is a book I would've loved if nothing of substance happened, but in its effort to be jaw dropping it became trite and dated.
I was expecting a well-reaearched ode to trees and the inextricable paths that join us to them and the first part IS that. I am just disappointed that it didn't continued in the same vein. Roots is so good that it can even stand on its own, so I will cherish those stories and forget the rest.

This started great but then it became so melodramatic for no reason. I ended up hating Amir and his plot armor; everyone around him keeps suffering so that he can learn "a lesson" and yet he never does!

Very informative and interesting memoir. Whacky to read about the kind of technology they used not too long ago, and also how the attitude towards women divers was (is?) at the time.
I would've appreciated a glossary of terms and maybe maps and diagrams across the book, but other than that it was a very enjoyable read.

Little glimpse of what Tolkien was doing outside his more "serious" work. I didn't dislike it but I hardly think it will interest anyone who is not a die-hard Tolkien fan already.

This was a bit dissapointing since I read Technopoly and liked the insights on that one a lot. Here I feel like he takes strong arguments and somehow manages to get to the wrong conclussions. Most of the last half had me dying with laughter at how immature and superficial it was, but I would eventually like to annotate and dissect this book further because there's definitely something if I can only get behind the reactionary attitude and the USAmerican occidentalism.
Despite the arguments practically leading him to it, Postman refuses to acknowledge how the socioeconomic patterns dictate social constructs like CHILDHOOD which he spent so many pages proving to be one. At one point he concludes that "American culture is [the enemy of childhood] but it's not a forthright enemy in the sense that one might say for example, that America is against communism". Dude. My brother in christ I'm begging you to see what the opposite of communism is.

Lovely collection of short, slice of life stories. I felt very at peace reading them, albeit a little melancholy.
This is my second read of this after some years. Will definitely be reading again in the future as I feel you get something different out of it everytime.

Very compelling story, a mix between true crime and dark academia in its themes. Do heed the warnings though.

The main ideas were very interesting to me as an educator and definitely gave me food for thought. I'm surprised at how current the critic is given the time this was written and the one we live in now.
I felt that it was very US centric at times and even laughed at some of the more nationalist notions. I would love to read someone picking at this specifically, but it wasn't a big enough problem to me. I enjoyed the writing style and would definitely read this again and look for more books by this author.

Legit laughed out loud in public transport reading this. I was expecting it to lean heavily on the romance but I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't.
I can definitely see myself re-reading this in the future.