Something in the Woods Loves You

Name: Something in the Woods Loves You
Brand: Hachette Audio
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.5 (1 reviews)
Author: Jarod K. Anderson
ISBN: 9781668643556

Author: Jarod K. Anderson

Narrator: Jarod K. Anderson

Unabridged: 11 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Timber Press

Published: 09/10/2024

Categories: Nonfiction, Nature, Biography & Autobiography, Memoirs, Self-help, Mood Disorders, Depression

Synopsis

An inspiring blend of nature writing and memoir that explores nature’s crucial role in our emotional and mental health

Bats can hear shapes, plants can eat light, and bees can dance maps. When his life took him to a painfully dark place, the poet behind The CryptoNaturalist, Jarod K. Anderson, found comfort and redemption in these facts and the shift in perspective that comes from paying a new kind of attention to nature.

Something in the Woods Loves You tells the story of the darkest stretch of a young person’s life, and how deliberate and meditative encounters with plants and animals helped him see the light at every turn. Ranging from optimistic contemplations of mortality to appreciations of a single mushroom, Anderson has written a lyrical love letter to the natural world and given us the tools to see it all anew.

Cover image copyright the Artist (Tuesday Riddell), reproduced with grateful thanks to MESSUMS ORG. Photo: Steve Russell.

About Jarod K. Anderson

Poet and podcaster Jarod K. Anderson (creator of The CryptoNaturalist podcast) has built a large audience of social media followers and podcast listeners with his strange, vibrant appreciations of nature, ranging from contemplations of mortality to appreciations of single-celled organisms. His work can be found in places like Asimov's, Daily Science Fiction, Escape Pod, and in his collections of poetry and writing prompts. He lives in Ohio, in a white house between a forest and a cemetery.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Nathan on December 13, 2024

If I could very quietly send all of my depressed friends this book with a hand written note that says, “love you. I hope we can go for a walk soon,” I would. I think they need this one. I did. It’s exactly what I needed.......more

Goodreads review by Jane on September 19, 2024

"Take time to acknowledge the monsters you defy, the storms you weather. There are those walking this earth to whom your life would seem an uninhabitable rock jutting from an angry sea, yet here you are, stringing together days like flowers in your crown." I wish I could give this a higher rating be......more

Goodreads review by liv ❁ on March 14, 2025

“Kindness won’t make you rich, but it will make you whole.” This is one of those books that I finished listening to and immediately bought a physical copy of because I know that I will be lending it out. In a world that (especially for men) is so for “the grind” and so against emotions and taking a......more

Goodreads review by tig :3 on January 18, 2025

i feel so completely and terrifyingly seen, devastated by my own vulnerability and the authors. my heart is full.......more

Quotes

"Trees are medicine, Jarod Anderson tells us in this vivid memoir, and so are great blue herons, lightning bugs, racoons, mice, bats, and all of the twenty or so wild creatures he celebrates in these pages. They cannot cure his depression, but they can ease it, for they do not judge him or shame him. As they go about their lives, free of the anxiety, ambition, and guilt that often afflict our own species, they inspire the author to imagine how he might live with less pain and more meaning. Readers may find the book a balm for their own aches."—Scott Russell Sanders, author of The Way of Imagination

"Something in the Woods Loves You is a marvel of a book, blending unexpected wisdom with occasional whimsy, offering vivid observations of herons, hawks, trillium, and our human search for meaning. Jarod Anderson doesn’t shy away from the pain of mental illness and depression, but his utter honesty and love of the natural world offers all of us a rich, earthy experience of hope."

—Dinty W. Moore, author of To Hell With It

"Just as the trees make the forest, vulnerability, honesty, and hard-earned wisdom make shimmer Jarod K. Anderson’s Something in the Woods Loves You. At once both delicate and direct, irrepressible and resilient, Anderson’s memoir is a stunning debut in the genre."—Amy Butcher, author of Mothertrucker