soledad penadés

I heard about the book somewhere, made a note of it, and kept going to bookshops and never finding it. Eventually I sort of gave up the hope of ever seeing it in person. Why did I want to do such a thing? Because I had looked online and saw that the book featured pictures but I did not know what quality they were, so I wanted to see them first hand.

Finally one random day, which happened to be my birthday, I casually browsed a bookshop and surprise! there it was the book! So I browsed through it, and decided to get it: it looked so interesting!

I learned a lot about rainforests with this book, but not only that, I also learned a lot about forests in general, and how to make sure they keep alive (and how to kill them faster). I think this should be read by way more people (and certainly anyone who's in charge of any land). E.g. how pernicious indiscriminate grazing can be for forests being able to renew themselves. How just planting trees does not solve the problem, the lifespan of typical trees, etc. Lots of well researched knowledge here.

I very much enjoyed this book, although I had to keep consulting a dictionary for many of the botanical and geographical feature terms used! (Likely not a bad thing).

And what about the pictures? The picture inserts are also very good, although I wish they had been bigger (perhaps a picture per page rather than two) so we could see more detail of the truly fascinating views and drawings the author selected. Those mosses and ferns deserve more detail!

Even then, I look at them and it's a peaceful sight.