Seedtime

I couldn’t finish this, so I hope that what I have to say isn’t too biased. Think of this post as a sort of open letter. I hate to write a bad review, but if I’m going to keep up with this, there’s always the chance that not everything I read will be good. Right from the prologue, it seemed to me like the author was a bit impressed with himself as a writer, but I tried to give the book a chance, and made it through the first four chapters. I hoped his experience as a ‘sower’ would support it all, and I was expecting more natural history, but it’s more like random poetry, which was disappointing. I had a hard time thinking of just seeds, and not the plants they grow into, and it was never really clear to me what they mean by “seedtime”. The author’s own experience as a farmer would have been more interesting – I’m sorry if I missed that in the other chapters, but what I did read felt like it wasn’t saying much, and couldn’t hold my interest or patience. I do read a lot of this kind of writing; maybe I was getting tired of seeing some patterns (or even clichés) emerge again and again. I might have enjoyed it more at another time; or, someone who doesn’t read as much nature writing as I do might prefer it. 

One of my biggest issues with the book, aside from the flowery language (forgive the pun), is that so much of it is in quotation marks. Clearly he is well-read, but it would be a better reading experience if he used more of his own words. Another book I read, James Owen’s “Trout” in Reaktion’s Animal series, is another example of quoting others too much. In my opinion, that approach should be avoided, or minimized. Maybe I have become too critical as a reviewer. I’m not an expert, I’m a reader first, and I’m open to suggestions for improving my reviews. This has been an exercise for me, since I am usually hesitant to share my thoughts. In general I prefer to focus on the positive, so here I hope I’ve offered some constructive criticism.