The Overstory
Richard Powers's Pulitzer-winning novel in which trees turn out to be the main character
Richard Powers's 2018 novel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which follows nine characters whose lives are shaped by trees and slowly makes the trees themselves the main character. It runs to about 500 pages and moves at its own pace on purpose. Readers report walking outside afterward and noticing the natural world differently, which is the effect the book is built for.
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Does it: documented as part of their own routine. Recommends: explicitly advises other people to do it. Discusses: covered it substantively without clear personal adoption; this can include criticism or disagreement.
- Hugh JackmanRecommends
Actor · Wolverine and The Greatest Showman
Gifted to him by Senator Gary Hart, and the most affecting fiction he has read in years. It breaks his own short-book rule, so his advice is to stick with it: the misdirection pays off when you realize the book is about trees, and he promises you will notice things in your own backyard you never saw.
Source: The Tim Ferriss Show #444 transcript
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