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Laddar... The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed (2005)av John Vaillant
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Gå med i LibraryThing för att få reda på om du skulle tycka om den här boken. Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken. Some VERY beautiful writing early on, and an interesting story. I found it a bit hard to get into, but somewhere around page 100 I was hooked. I know it's being compared to Into the Wild and other wilderness-meets-madness stories, and I don't think that this tale compares favorably. However, if this is the author's first book, I am excited to read more. ( ) There were times in Vaillant's narrative when I thought, "Aren't we going kind of far afield here?". For indeed, the book covers broad swathes of history, including compressed histories of the lumber industry, Native American history, oceanography of the Pacific Northwest, and more. And yet Vaillant always brings the story back around and you find that the diversions do enrich the tale. [Audiobook Note: Edoardo Ballerini does a first-rate job here.] The writing in this book is beautiful. I really love big trees and I love stories about the Northwest. This was an interesting story intertwined with the history of logging in the area, and a general commentary on humanity. It is pretty depressing to show the repetition in history of us consuming resources till they are gone, and how our free market economy makes it difficult to stop the vicious cycle. Pertinent quotes:
Replace wood with oil, and you have our current situation.
I love books like this. Stories about man vs. nature. In this case, on one level is “social” man, in the form of the logging companies attempting to harvest as many old growth trees as is possible (and it’s always more and more possible, given technological advances), regardless of the effects on the natural world and local cultures. And on another level is “individual” man, overcoming the physical challenges presented by living and working in the challenging environments where these trees grow. Vaillant is a superb storyteller. His story starts before Europeans arrived in this part of the world (the North Pacific coast, specifically British Columbia) and builds inexorably. From the opening pages, while communicating facts about the natural world and the history of the area in a factual manner, he nevertheless manages to convey an undercurrent of menace. For thousands of years the Haida Gwaii (aka Queen Charlotte) islands, rich in wildlife, supported a dynamic indigenous population, a culture of fierce warriors, skilled canoers, and gifted carvers. They, like their forests, were dominant until those sailing ships arrived and the downward spiral began. That feeling of unease climaxes with the actions of Grant Hadwin, a man from a wealthy Vancouver family who went from prep school to logger to environmentalist. An unusual combination of superb athleticism, intellectual acuity, and mental health disorders, Hadwin undertook a spectacular act of vandalism in an effort to call attention to the negative effects of logging. In the immediate moment his act was a disaster, although it may have resulted, indirectly, in positive long term changes. For those listeners out there - actor Eduardo Ballerini’s narration was brilliant, capturing the cadence of Vaillant’s sentences perfectly. inga recensioner | lägg till en recension
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Nature.
Nonfiction.
HTML: A tale of obsession so fierce that a man kills the thing he loves most: the only giant golden spruce on earth. When a shattered kayak and camping gear are found on an uninhabited island in the Pacific Northwest, they reignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest. Five months earlier, logger-turned-activist Grant Hadwin had plunged naked into a river in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chainsaw. When his night's work was done, a unique Sitka spruce, 165 feet tall and covered with luminous golden needles, teetered on its stump. Two days later it fell.As vividly as John Krakauer puts readers on Everest, John Vaillant takes us into the heart of North America's last great forest. .Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
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