Customer Reviews

Bedrock: Writers on the Wonders of Geology

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I originally ordered this book because of a recommendation in the Wall Street Journal. While it was not what I expected, it was still a good read. Various writers from the last 2000 years (Pliny the Younger is the oldest) are gathered in this volume, discussing the various aspects of Earth geology. Mountains, Oceans, Rivers, Volcanoes; all have various small essays or excerpts from books illustrating that topic. While some are pure science, there are poems, native Americans describing their relationship with the land, a 12th century description of a Japanese earthquake, and much more. While I can't say it was a page-turner, the articles were definitely thought-provoking.

Bedrock is unlike any book I have read - It is elegant, ethical, and educational. It's beauty ultimately comes from its ability to pierce the shields we often hold up against the bedrock of geology. For many of us, geology is a foreign tongue. Yet with these readings it becomes a part of who we are. Take this opportunity to share in the wonders of the earth. You will be pleased.

Bedrock is a wonderful collection of literary pieces. Often, we think of the influence of the global climate change and what we can do to live in sustainable ways. Bedrock educates the reader that landscapes and the geology that underlies them has had a profound influence since the beginning of time. While the influence is subtle, Bedrock's anthology format brings this subtle influence front and center for the reader.

From Bedrock:

Wide enough to keep you looking
Open enough to keep you moving
Dry enough to keep you honest
Prickly enough to make you tough
Green enough to go on living
Old enough to give you dreams

- Gary Snyder, "Earth Verse"
in Mountains and Rivers Without End (1996)

I loved this book in a subtle way - the way that you can only love a compilation. Not every piece of writing contained strikes a cord with me, but most do, and most give me something deeper to think about.
Even if it was the way they employed a new metaphor about earth, or a new way of looking at wind, something I had never considered, yet found, on a literary level, beautiful.
Basically this book is a collection of excerpts from ~60 different authors, each describing, in one way or the other, geology. It ranges from pieces of poetry, to excerpts from scientific papers, with fiction and non-fiction prose thrown in between. It was rather nice to read in context where such quotations as, "no vestige of a beginning - no prospect of an end" came from, without having to drag through more than a few pages of Hutton's writing.
I loved this book as a step back from geology, and a look at the geo-poetics that draw us to the land in the first place. I, much more than most, have a deep sense of place, and for me, this book, hit the nail on the head of conveying the sense of place which so richly throughout all time, seeps into our literature. I recommend this book, not only to geologists, but to geologist and others alike that love the land for it's beauty and can visualize the land from the written word. After reading many of these excepts I was left longing to go to the mountains, the desert, any place uninhabited where the land hangs out exposed.

"To a naturalist nothing is indifferent; the humble moss that creeps upon the stone is equally interesting as the lofty pine which so beautifully adorns the valley or the mountain: but to a naturalist who is reading in the face of the rocks the annals of a former world, the mossy covering which obstructs his view, and renders indistinguishable the different species of stone, is no less than a serious subject of regret." -Hutton

On another note I was introduced to a bunch of new authors that I likely would never have picked up on my own. 4.5 starts overall. I only dock it half a star based on the fact that it's a complication, and you can't love all the writing selections the same.