Review: Damnation Spring

Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel took me a long time to read..I first started it while I was reading Barkskins and the subject matter was too similar. And then the emphasis on miscarriage was a lot. I finally pushed through and felt like it was worth it, and overall it has a strong ending.

It takes place along the Klamath River, a river that ends at the Pacific Ocean, and the forests that were so heavily logged in the 1960s and 1970s on both sides, so southern Oregon and northern California..the novel looks at the effects of overloading and herbicides before those things were better regulated. The two central characters - Rich and Colleen - have had hard lives, but it's what they know, and they come to it through several generations.
 

Thanks to the publisher for providing access through NetGalley. I was a bit delayed in reading it, only because there are so many tree books and I didn't want them confused in my head.

View all my reviews

Reading Envy 232: Barkskins Readalong

I am joined by Nadine, Vinny, Laurie, and Bryn to discuss Barkskins by Annie Proulx. We bring in some of the discussion in Goodreads as well as some fresh eyes on this text.

Download or listen via this link:
Reading Envy 232: Barkskins Readalong

Subscribe to the podcast via this link: Feedburner
Or subscribe via Apple Podcasts by clicking: Subscribe
Or listen through TuneIn
Or listen on Google Play
Or listen via Stitcher
Or listen through Spotify 
Or listen through Google Podcasts

Books discussed: 

Barkskins by Annie Proulx

Other mentions:

Love Medicine series by Louise Erdrich
Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd
London by Edward Rutherfurd
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
First Americans Museum
Thirty Nine Restaurant
Meridian by Alice Walker
Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea by Sarah Pinsker
The Actual Star by Monica Byrne
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya, translated by Jamey Gambrell

Related episodes: 

Episode 090 - Reading Envy Readalong: East of Eden
Episode 099 - Readalong: The Secret History
Episode 118 - Reading Envy Readalong: To the Bright Edge of the World
Episode 137 - Reading Envy Readalong: The Golden Notebook
Episode 157 - Joint Readalong of Gone with the Wind with Book Cougars
Episode 185 - The Loyal Swineherd (Odyssey readalong)
Episode 193 - And I Feel Fine (Ducks, Newburyport READALONG)
Episode 221 - Joint Poetry Readalong with the Book Cougars
Book Cougars - Joint Readalong of Sapphira and the Slave Girl
Book Cougars - Joint Readalong of Braiding Sweetgrass
Books on the Go - Ep. 121 - American Sunrise with Jenny Colvin 

Stalk us online:

Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy
Reading Envy Readers in Goodreads


All links to books are through Bookshop.org, where I am an affiliate. I wanted more money to go to the actual publishers and authors. I link to Amazon when a book is not listed with Bookshop.

Reading Envy 133: To Understand the World with Lauren Weinhold

Just in time for Non-Fiction November, Lauren and Jenny get together to talk about their reads for Science September (#scienceseptember) and the reads we envied from other people. The title of the episode comes from Carl Sagan, referring to taking children to the library to help answer their questions: "Every question is a cry to understand the world."

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 133: To Understand the World.

Subscribe to the podcast via this link: Feedburner
Or subscribe via Apple Podcasts by clicking: Subscribe
Or listen through TuneIn
Or listen on Google Play
Listen via Stitcher
NEW! Listen through Spotify

Pictured: Only some of the fantastic science books read in September

Books Discussed:

Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks
The Great Quake by Henry Fountain
The Song of Trees by David George Haskell
The Forest Unseen by David George Haskell
The Hidden Life of Trees: What they Feel, How They Communicate - Discoveries from a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben
1997 article in Nature about mycorrhizal fungal networks
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the art of growing a backbone by Juli Berwald
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush
Galileo's Middle Finger by Alice Dreger
Darkness in El Dorado by Patrick Tierney (not linking because this has been debunked and should be considered shenanigans)
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
Waking Up Podcast #135: Navigating Sex and Gender (Sam Harris)
Light of the Stars by Adam Frank
How to Tame a Fox by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut
The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson
Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean by Jonathan White
The World is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One by Sylvia A. Earle
Sex, Drugs, and Sea Slime: The Oceans' Oddest Creatures and Why They Matter by Ellen J. Prager
The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery
The Particle at the End of the Universe by Sean M. Carroll
The Physics of Everyday Things by James Kakalios
The Theoretical Minimum: What You Need to Know to Start Doing Physics by Susskind
Totally Random: Why Nobody Understands Quantum Mechanics by Tanya Bub and Jeffrey Bub
Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith
How We’ll Live on Mars by Stephen Petranek
Your Kids Might Live on Mars. Here's How They'll Survive. (Stephen Petranek TED Talk)
Mars (tv series on NatGeo)
The Poetic Species by Edward O. Wilson and Robert Haas
Machines of Loving Grace by John Markoff
The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World by Edward Dolnick
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Science and Power of Dreams by Matthew Walker
Descartes’ Error by Antonio Damasio
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong
The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science is Still a Boys’ Club by Eileen Pollack
It’s All Relative by A.J. Jacobs
Unthinkable: An Extraordinary Journey through the World’s Strangest Brains by Helen Thomson
Dead Men Do Tell Tales: The Strange and Fascinating Cases of a Forensic Anthropologist by William Maples
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative by Florence Williams
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
Seeds by Thor Hanson
The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman
The Seabird’s Cry by Adam Nicolson
H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald
No Turning Back: The Life and Death of Animal Species by Richard Ellis
The Beauty in the Beast: Britain’s Favourite Creatures and the People Who Love Them by Hugh Warwick (not available in the USA)
The Coming Storm by Michael Lewis


Thanks to the following readers in Instagram for sharing their #scienceseptember reads!

@loreofbooks @reallifereading @rhode_reads @madeoflightandsound @books_and_biology @shatterlings @dinsdalekep @greenteareads @unwildrumpus @books.and.beers @wynreads @dryapyapi @readmorescience

And thanks to @conservio in Litsy


Related episodes:

Episode 093 - Spewing Science with Jeff Koeppen
Episode 097 - Blank Spaces with Lauren Weinhold
Episode 123 - Godlets and Forests with Lauren Weinhold
Episode 131 - Tartan Noir and More with Claire Duffy


Stalk us online:

Lauren at Goodreads
Lauren is @end.notes on Instagram
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy