Imatge de l'autor

Richard Powers (1) (1957–)

Autor/a de The Overstory

Per altres autors anomenats Richard Powers, vegeu la pàgina de desambiguació.

20+ obres 17,621 Membres 628 Ressenyes 85 preferits

Sobre l'autor

Richard Powers was born on June 18, 1957 in Evanston, Illinois. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After graduation, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts and worked as a computer programmer and freelance data processor. One day mostra'n més he saw August Sander's 1914 black-and-white photograph of three Westerwald farm boys heading to a dance at the Museum of Fine Arts. This photograph inspired Powers to quit his job and try writing a novel. Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance was published in 1985. His other works include Prisoner's Dilemma, The Gold Bug Variations, Operation Wandering Soul, Galatea 2.2, Plowing the Dark, The Time of Our Singing, and Generosity: An Enhancement. He received numerous awards including the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction for Gain, the National Book Award for The Echo Maker, and Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Overstory: A Novel. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra'n menys
Crèdit de la imatge: salon.com

Obres de Richard Powers

The Overstory (2018) 5,349 exemplars
The Echo Maker (2006) 2,588 exemplars
Bewilderment (2021) 1,482 exemplars
The Time of Our Singing (2003) 1,354 exemplars
Galatea 2.2 (1995) 1,323 exemplars
The Gold Bug Variations (1991) 1,227 exemplars
Orfeo (2014) 886 exemplars
Generosity: An Enhancement (2009) 667 exemplars
Plowing the Dark (2000) 656 exemplars
Gain (1999) 617 exemplars
Operation Wandering Soul (1993) 438 exemplars
Prisoner's Dilemma (1988) 377 exemplars
Genie (2012) 13 exemplars
Ways of Hearing: Reflections on Music in 26 Pieces (2021) — Col·laborador — 10 exemplars

Obres associades

The Orphan Master's Son (2012) — Epíleg, algunes edicions3,940 exemplars
The Future Dictionary of America (2004) — Col·laborador — 627 exemplars
The Best American Short Stories 2009 (2009) — Col·laborador — 363 exemplars
The Best American Short Stories 2011 (2011) — Col·laborador — 350 exemplars
Granta 90: Country Life (2005) — Col·laborador — 159 exemplars
Granta 108: Chicago (2009) — Col·laborador — 141 exemplars
Read Hard: Five Years of Great Writing from the Believer (2009) — Col·laborador — 79 exemplars
The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks (2017) — Col·laborador — 16 exemplars
The Paris Review 167 2003 Fall (2003) — Col·laborador — 12 exemplars
Monkey Business: New Writing from Japan, Volume 03 (2013) — Col·laborador — 11 exemplars
Black Clock 21 (2016) — Col·laborador — 4 exemplars
Black Clock 3 — Col·laborador — 1 exemplars

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Ressenyes

So many people recommended this book to me but I just didn't love it. It took me a long time to get through the first 1/3 of it. Interesting story lines and fun to see how they connected, but I'm sorry to say this one just didn't hold my interest. Too sprawling? I finished it, but it was a tough read for me.
 
Marcat
rocketshackgirl | Hi ha 243 ressenyes més | Mar 13, 2024 |
If you want your next book to be a challenge, look no further. This is a book of big ideas, too many to list. It is unusually dark and very heavy on the reader. The central theme is environmentalism, but it is a lot more than that.

While reading this my brain made a weird connection to Terrence Malick's Tree of Life. Not only because of the tree as the prevalent motif, but there is just something grandiose about these two works of art, something that will partly always remain unreachable to the audience, but you can sense that it is there. It is art pushed to the extreme, profound, but also insufferable at times. A lot is left to the interpretation of the reader.

Overstory touches on all the topics I love to read about, but it was still a hard work. It feels much longer than it actually is (around 500 pages). After the first part (Roots) that is a collection of stories through which we get to know the ten (!) main characters, things get a little complicated.
In the remaining parts of the book there are many superfluous descriptions, redundant characters and general lack of direction. Moreover, some ideas were really pushed too hard onto the reader through a black and white lens.

However, some paragraphs were so profoundly beautiful that it almost seems worth it. I kept rereading some sentences and have highlighted more paragraphs than in all the books I've read this year so far.

If the book had been edited and cleaned up a little more, I would have enjoyed it much more. It is a book you want to root for, you want everyone to read it. But, it is very inaccessible and I would be reluctant to recommend it to more casual readers.
… (més)
 
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ZeljanaMaricFerli | Hi ha 243 ressenyes més | Mar 4, 2024 |
This was probably my favourite book of 2021. After my struggle with epic, but difficult and unpolished [b:The Overstory|40180098|The Overstory|Richard Powers|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1562786502l/40180098._SY75_.jpg|57662223], I'm so glad I gave Powers another chance.
The story follows an astrobiologist struggling to raise his son after the death of his wife. Giving away any more of the plot would take away from the joy of reading this, so I'll keep it there.

Powers is again on a mission here, dealing with his usual topics (environment, climate change), but unlike in The Overstory, he seems to be a lot less moralizing and is more compassionate and focused on human relationships. The message is loud and clear as ever. This is a book everyone should read.

Thoughts about "antiscience" in this novel:
Many reviewers call this book anti-science because Theo didn't want his son to take drugs to control his behaviour. While I get this is controversial, I believe in this book it just served to show how dysfunctional our society is and how just because someone is not neurotypical they shouldn't be medicated just to get numb and fit in. Robin would immediately get better surrounded by nature which was just another symptom of a sick society that lost touch with the environment.

It often seems to me that drugs are too often prescribed to people who would not need them if our society was more functional and everyone had the support they needed. This is definitely not the same kind of anti-science the anti-vaxers would support.
… (més)
 
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ZeljanaMaricFerli | Hi ha 74 ressenyes més | Mar 4, 2024 |
The book that got me into trees, which goes to show you the wondrous things that books can do. The Overstory seems to ask the reader to accept that trees have consciousness and can even make moral choices, and while I fully submit to the idea that life and reality are far, far more mysterious and wondrous than humans can yet understand, God bless us for trying so hard, I have my rather strong doubts about the claim. But still. Still. This novel shows us something big and true that most of us do not tend to see and that isn’t all that bad a description of great literature, it seems to me.

I feared for a long stretch of the second half of this doorstop novel that Powers was, after starting out so brilliantly with a series of character sketches linking his human creations to the natural world in ways seen and unseen, sending me off on Google searches to learn more about chestnuts and banyans and mulberries and elms, well, I feared he was descending into heavy handedness and mind closing didacticism. Jack booted police psychopaths operating in the service of corporate capital and state power may be a thing but it makes for an eye rolling scene in literature. And it seemed he was heading for a grand finish of nihilistic doomsdayism. But no, he branches off away from that future, sends out a bud of new life, that left me rising out of my chair in gratitude for this mighty work.

Might should be a 5 star then, but considering my enthusiasm for it hit a drag for a couple hundred pages, it gets a 4. For now.
… (més)
 
Marcat
lelandleslie | Hi ha 243 ressenyes més | Feb 24, 2024 |

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Estadístiques

Obres
20
També de
14
Membres
17,621
Popularitat
#1,254
Valoració
3.9
Ressenyes
628
ISBN
334
Llengües
17
Preferit
85

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