What do you think?
Rate this book
Forest: A Journey Through Wild and Magnificent Landscapes
Forest celebrates the diverse ways in which trees and forests are as magnificent, economically relevant and profoundly enchanting today as they ever have been.
Journeying across the continents, Matt Collins and Roo Lewis tie together both the historical context and modern-day applications of some of the world's most fascinating and iconic trees.
Forest is a celebration of the diverse ways in which trees and forests are as magnificent, economically relevant and profoundly enchanting today as they ever have been.
Journeying across the continents, writer Matt Collins and photographer Roo Lewis tie together both the historical context and modern-day applications of some of the world's most fascinating and iconic trees. They explore the heritage of woodlands from around the world and meet those whose lives are inexplicably bound to them.
The book is divided into 10 main chapters, each of which explores a tree from a particular genus – Pine, Juniper, Oak, Hornbeam, Cherry, Beech, Birch, Chestnut, Douglas-fir and Poplar. Each chapter provides the reader with a short introduction to the tree, followed by a journalistic account of its relevance to modern day-life (from gin making on Isle of Islay to a truffle farm in Spain), and concludes with an account of the tree in its native forest (from hornbeams in the Ironwoods of Ontario to firs on Vancouver Island).
Captured on medium-format film, Roo’s stunning, rich colour images are the perfect companion to Matt’s engaging storytelling and botanical knowledge. Forest crafts a captivating interpretation of the story of the forest through the trees.
Journeying across the continents, Matt Collins and Roo Lewis tie together both the historical context and modern-day applications of some of the world's most fascinating and iconic trees.
Forest is a celebration of the diverse ways in which trees and forests are as magnificent, economically relevant and profoundly enchanting today as they ever have been.
Journeying across the continents, writer Matt Collins and photographer Roo Lewis tie together both the historical context and modern-day applications of some of the world's most fascinating and iconic trees. They explore the heritage of woodlands from around the world and meet those whose lives are inexplicably bound to them.
The book is divided into 10 main chapters, each of which explores a tree from a particular genus – Pine, Juniper, Oak, Hornbeam, Cherry, Beech, Birch, Chestnut, Douglas-fir and Poplar. Each chapter provides the reader with a short introduction to the tree, followed by a journalistic account of its relevance to modern day-life (from gin making on Isle of Islay to a truffle farm in Spain), and concludes with an account of the tree in its native forest (from hornbeams in the Ironwoods of Ontario to firs on Vancouver Island).
Captured on medium-format film, Roo’s stunning, rich colour images are the perfect companion to Matt’s engaging storytelling and botanical knowledge. Forest crafts a captivating interpretation of the story of the forest through the trees.
- GenresNatureNonfictionScience
189 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 31, 2020
12 people are currently reading
214 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 15, 2022
I'm from Portugal which is known for its beaches. Yet as beautiful as they are, in terms of natural landscapes I've always been much more enchanted by forests.
I saw this book displayed near the checkout section of a book store, and like a kid seeing candy, I couldn't resist. I was impressed how by its beauty as a hardcover, with the entire book being green, including the edges of the page, and its photography aspect also drew me in.
It's a fairly unusual book for me. It's non-fiction, but it doesn't have a serious tone like most of the books I buy. I planned to have it as a break from heavy reading, and it has sitting on my shelves for months. I've lately been burned out from so much neuroscience, and it felt like the perfect moment.
The book is written by Matt Collins, a freelance garden and Nature writer. It's divided into 10 chapters, each exploring a particular tree of a specific genus (taxonomic category above species). They cover Pine, Juniper, Oak, Hornbeam, Cherry, Beech, Birch, Chestnut, Douglas-fir and Poplar.
I loved that each chapter had two parts. In the first, they cover the tree as an individual. But the second they cover a specific forest with that tree. I found the latter much more interesting and engaging.
What immediately hit me after I started reading was that despite reading English, sometimes it felt it was something incomprehensible altogether. First because of the language itself. While English, some terms were pretty specific to British English which went over my head. But there was also a cultural element as well.
While I do love forests, my knowledge of them, and nature in general, is pretty close to zero. Collins often explains the tree he is describing by comparisons. But if you're completely ignorant like me, that's not very useful because you don't know what he's comparing it to. That the leaves are very similar to a Cherry tree is a good reference only if you know what they look like.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the book was how diverse it was. I expected to be somewhat technical at times about specific features of the trees, but rather it is more like story-telling of events that are related to the trees. One of my favourite examples is when he talks about truffles and oak trees. Truffles in some areas are disappearing because oak trees, with improper wood management, block too much sunlight from getting to the ground, and thus the truffle suffers.
In fact, the whole aspect of wood management was very new to me and I found it very valuable. I would have expected that the right way to manage a forest is to just leave it be and not touch it, but it's fairly more complicated than that and it highlights the connection between preserving nature and also using modern knowledge and modern technology to make that preservation efficient.
The writing itself is also very pleasant to read. It is fairly casual, but at times it was fairly poetic that I wanted to read the same sentence several times to soak it in. Yet this poetic aspect is very mild. It never felt forced or out of place.
It's certainly a book that renews your appreciation for trees, and wood in general which I did not expect to be covered and I'm glad it was. Learning more about trees gives another layer of cherishing to forests. And while beauty is certainly a heavy tree throughout, some unexpected factors appear as well. For instance, the juniper tree isn't precisely the most elegant, but one can appreciate its incredible resilience in a variety of harsh environments.
There were two major problems with the book for me. The first was that while I enjoyed a lot of content, I expected it to be a little more descriptive of the trees themselves. While it's certainly not very poetic, more focus on the actual anatomy of each tree would have been useful. I found it disappointing to read a chapter on a tree, enjoy learning more about it, and yet the next time I picked up the book, I had already forgotten that tree because it was covered so little. At times it felt pointless to learn about trees that I can't actually identify in real life.
It feels like almost a basic starting place. It allows a kind of geographical and ecological mapping that allows more technical knowledge to be endowed with romantic significance in the real world whenever such trees are encountered.
The second major problem was the photos. Loving both photography and forests, both combined are a delight. I liked the photos themselves, but the paper they were printed on is very non-photography friendly. I was so captivated by the premium feel of the hardcover that I didn't bother to check the quality of the photos, and it's very disappointing that they are so bad. If the light is not perfect and the photo happens to be a bit dark, it's very hard to understand the image. Good paper for the photos feels like it should be such a basic feature in this type of it, it's incredibly disappointing how badly that was handled.
I finished the book with an odd feeling. There was certainly no grand lesson learned, unlikely many of the books I generally read. But it certainly served its original purpose: it allowed my mind to have a break from more technical suspects, and it certainly enriched my love for trees and forests.
I particularly liked how unpredictable some of the stories were, and the personal journey of Collin's going to each location and getting to know the context surrounding the trees and the forests were great.
I saw this book displayed near the checkout section of a book store, and like a kid seeing candy, I couldn't resist. I was impressed how by its beauty as a hardcover, with the entire book being green, including the edges of the page, and its photography aspect also drew me in.
It's a fairly unusual book for me. It's non-fiction, but it doesn't have a serious tone like most of the books I buy. I planned to have it as a break from heavy reading, and it has sitting on my shelves for months. I've lately been burned out from so much neuroscience, and it felt like the perfect moment.
The book is written by Matt Collins, a freelance garden and Nature writer. It's divided into 10 chapters, each exploring a particular tree of a specific genus (taxonomic category above species). They cover Pine, Juniper, Oak, Hornbeam, Cherry, Beech, Birch, Chestnut, Douglas-fir and Poplar.
I loved that each chapter had two parts. In the first, they cover the tree as an individual. But the second they cover a specific forest with that tree. I found the latter much more interesting and engaging.
What immediately hit me after I started reading was that despite reading English, sometimes it felt it was something incomprehensible altogether. First because of the language itself. While English, some terms were pretty specific to British English which went over my head. But there was also a cultural element as well.
While I do love forests, my knowledge of them, and nature in general, is pretty close to zero. Collins often explains the tree he is describing by comparisons. But if you're completely ignorant like me, that's not very useful because you don't know what he's comparing it to. That the leaves are very similar to a Cherry tree is a good reference only if you know what they look like.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the book was how diverse it was. I expected to be somewhat technical at times about specific features of the trees, but rather it is more like story-telling of events that are related to the trees. One of my favourite examples is when he talks about truffles and oak trees. Truffles in some areas are disappearing because oak trees, with improper wood management, block too much sunlight from getting to the ground, and thus the truffle suffers.
In fact, the whole aspect of wood management was very new to me and I found it very valuable. I would have expected that the right way to manage a forest is to just leave it be and not touch it, but it's fairly more complicated than that and it highlights the connection between preserving nature and also using modern knowledge and modern technology to make that preservation efficient.
The writing itself is also very pleasant to read. It is fairly casual, but at times it was fairly poetic that I wanted to read the same sentence several times to soak it in. Yet this poetic aspect is very mild. It never felt forced or out of place.
It's certainly a book that renews your appreciation for trees, and wood in general which I did not expect to be covered and I'm glad it was. Learning more about trees gives another layer of cherishing to forests. And while beauty is certainly a heavy tree throughout, some unexpected factors appear as well. For instance, the juniper tree isn't precisely the most elegant, but one can appreciate its incredible resilience in a variety of harsh environments.
There were two major problems with the book for me. The first was that while I enjoyed a lot of content, I expected it to be a little more descriptive of the trees themselves. While it's certainly not very poetic, more focus on the actual anatomy of each tree would have been useful. I found it disappointing to read a chapter on a tree, enjoy learning more about it, and yet the next time I picked up the book, I had already forgotten that tree because it was covered so little. At times it felt pointless to learn about trees that I can't actually identify in real life.
It feels like almost a basic starting place. It allows a kind of geographical and ecological mapping that allows more technical knowledge to be endowed with romantic significance in the real world whenever such trees are encountered.
The second major problem was the photos. Loving both photography and forests, both combined are a delight. I liked the photos themselves, but the paper they were printed on is very non-photography friendly. I was so captivated by the premium feel of the hardcover that I didn't bother to check the quality of the photos, and it's very disappointing that they are so bad. If the light is not perfect and the photo happens to be a bit dark, it's very hard to understand the image. Good paper for the photos feels like it should be such a basic feature in this type of it, it's incredibly disappointing how badly that was handled.
I finished the book with an odd feeling. There was certainly no grand lesson learned, unlikely many of the books I generally read. But it certainly served its original purpose: it allowed my mind to have a break from more technical suspects, and it certainly enriched my love for trees and forests.
I particularly liked how unpredictable some of the stories were, and the personal journey of Collin's going to each location and getting to know the context surrounding the trees and the forests were great.
March 15, 2022
A very beautiful book with great photos. However, the stories were a little too lengthy and out of focus, the font size was too small for my eyes...
August 30, 2020
3-3.5
So this is less about information about the trees in particular and more just stories involving these trees that the author has experienced
Amazing photography, but I wish the photos had descriptions.
So this is less about information about the trees in particular and more just stories involving these trees that the author has experienced
Amazing photography, but I wish the photos had descriptions.
April 6, 2023
This was a semi-DNR. I read several chapters throughout the book, but found the stories rather disinteresting so I skipped through many sections. I expected more of a wilderness guide and wished that there were stories told (or at the very least, descriptions) of the photos in relation to the text. I'm unsure if the photos were relevant to each sections of the text or if they were placed in a certain order.
Overall, in some ways I wanted more from this book, but I also wanted less. I can tell that the author writes with passion and from words that come directly from their heart. However, I found that the stories were bland or overall unsatisfactory. The 3 stars are accredited to the amazing photographer. I wish that they collaborated their artistic gifts in a way that involves the other person.
I craved reading this book thanks to the magical photography (which was absolutely wonderful), but it feels like an unfulfilled craving. Perhaps I will pick up this read again in the future when I have more patience to read through the dry text.
Overall, in some ways I wanted more from this book, but I also wanted less. I can tell that the author writes with passion and from words that come directly from their heart. However, I found that the stories were bland or overall unsatisfactory. The 3 stars are accredited to the amazing photographer. I wish that they collaborated their artistic gifts in a way that involves the other person.
I craved reading this book thanks to the magical photography (which was absolutely wonderful), but it feels like an unfulfilled craving. Perhaps I will pick up this read again in the future when I have more patience to read through the dry text.
July 16, 2024
I loved the writing in this book. The descriptions are informative and make me want to go to all the forests. Unfortunately, I do not feel the photographs do the book justice. Most of them look dull and dark and uninteresting. No captons on the photos, which at times, would have answered my question of « what am I looking at here? ».
March 27, 2021
I fell in love with this book just by seeing the cover. Such a beautiful coffee table book, the photos inside are very calming and serene. Honestly just breathtakingly beautiful overall.
September 17, 2024
A lovely wander through local and abroad forests. A nice table read and appreciation for what we have in the UK.
January 29, 2022
I skipped all the tedious writing.. 3 stars for the amazing pictures
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews