Amelia Halgren > Recent Status Updates

“Yet still this tree has a secret tucked into the thin, living cylinder beneath its bark. Its cells obey an ancient formula: Keep still. Wait. Something in the lone survivor knows that even the ironclad law of Now can be outlasted. There’s work to do. Star-work, but earthbound all the same.”

I was a little put off by the new age mysticism of the opening. My first experience hearing of someone ‘communing with trees’ was in a conversation with a coworker. His job as a Wildland Fire Investigator lead him to a lady who improperly doused her illegal campfire while ‘communing with trees’ and was responsible for burning thousands of acres of forest. (Left me a little skeptical.)

“That’s what I dislike most of all in people – cold irony. It’s a very cowardly attitude to mock or belittle everything, never be committed to anything, not feel tied to anything. Like an impotent man who can’t experience pleasure himself, but will do all he can to ruin it for others...”

“But what science cannot understand, it dismisses.”

🙄🤯😡Does the author even understand how the scientific method works!!?!?

I keep finding aspects of this book that just irritate me. I think this might be the moment I quit this book.

This isn’t really grabbing me...

Omg I’m loving this!

Going to abandon this one. My library loan is up.

So far the most memorable stories in this collection are ‘Charles’— an amusing little tale about kids and parenting, and the two stories stories ‘After You My Dear Alfonse,’ and ‘Flower Garden,’ two stories about race and community that are still pertinent today.