Reviews

I'm normally not one for slower paced books but this one was excellent. It's a very interesting mix between philosophy and adventure and science. The imagery in this book is stunning. You can really feel that places he's going and its beautiful. The author references a lot of different literature as well (most of which has been added to my TBR). It's a very complex book, not in the concepts it discusses, but in the format, writing and the blending everything the author is trying to convey.

It'll require some patience but it is very much worth it.

This book left me truly inspired.

whispersharp's review against another edition

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informative reflective slow-paced

5.0

tophat8855's review against another edition

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4.0

A beautifully written nonfiction book about the world under our feet: the mythical, the geological, the burial. It covers spelunking, graves, early humans and humanoids, the ghosts of the Holocaust, the melting of the permafrost of the arctic circle, drilling of oil, the burial of nuclear waste, etc. It's wide-reaching for a topic that seems very small, but only because we don't think about what's under us.

It's a warning of climate change and the harm humans do to each other, but also an dive in humanity's sense of exploration. I would recommend if you're looking for an easy-to-listen-to nonfiction book.

Listened via Hoopla

katiechu's review against another edition

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adventurous informative reflective slow-paced

4.25

hewlettelaine's review against another edition

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5.0

Absolutely adored this book. Profound writing about the world beneath our feet - cave systems, water courses, glaciers, catacombs and living systems. It's also about the distortion of time under the ground and how that impacts on us - the discussion about plans on how to communicate the hazards of deeply buried highly radioactive waste to long-distant future generations was especially sobering. Highly, highly recommend!

suebrownreads's review against another edition

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4.0

I had a hard time deciding a 3 or a 4 for this book. I listened to it, and it would probably have been better if I had read a hard copy. The first three hours were not very enjoyable as I really had no interest in caving exploits, and I had already read Suzanne Simards work as well as Robin Kimmerer. Once he got into the Catacombs of Paris, it got more interesting and I enjoyed the rest of the book. I do have a complaint about the author going off on tangents and then coming back to wherever he was before he went off in another direction. Overall, it is informative, and covers global warming in the area of glaciers and he also covers the storage of nuclear waste which is terrifying to me.

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