Cover Image: Wilder Journeys

Wilder Journeys

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Member Reviews

Loved this book so much i bought it in Hardback so i could always have a copy. I love nature and live in the countryside so it really appealed to me on every level.

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Thank you. NetGalley for sending me the advanced reader copy of Wilder Journeys by Laurie King and Miriam Lancewood. The collection of essays and short stories about being human in this world. Some stories were a hit and others were a mess with me, but overall a decent book.

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I really enjoyed the varied stories in this book and feel it will sit well in both our travel writing and outdoors sections.

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I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked this up but it certainly wasn't a collection of short essays where people had pushed their bodies to the limits in the wilderness. It does go to show that human beings are strong and being in nature can bring us back to our roots, so to speak. An interesting collection of short essays and poetry.

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What a refreshing and lovely book. Each author has different experiences in nature but have similar views of living in nature. I recommend this.

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Thank you, NetGalley, Laurie King, and publishers for gifting me a copy of Wilder Journeys in return for my honest opinion.

3.5/5 stars

This is a book of short stories that go into the human connection to nature. These true stories share the wisdom they gained on their wilderness journey.

I love short stories, due to the fact that you can find lots of new authors. One of the aspects that I don't like is that you might love one story but hate the next which can hurt a rating. Which happened to me with this collection. Another aspect that I found off-putting was when the authors blatantly told us what each of their messages was. The stories were great and we were able to get the message ourselves. This could also be that I'm assuming, that these are adventurers first and writers second.

If you enjoy short stories based around adventures and the great outdoors, I would highly recommend this collection.

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This is a really neat idea for a collection, but the actual pieces weren't cohesive in quality or theme. There are some really outstanding pieces, and some that seemed slapdash to me.

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I love books about people going into nature to find themselves (Wild, Into the Wild, etc.). When I requested this book, I was expecting to read a book along those lines. Sadly, what I ended up getting was very different than I expected. Instead of a comprehensive story, this book is a collection of essays, As a result, I ended up DNFing it.

Special thanks to Netgalley and Watkins Publishing for allowing me to read this book in exchange for my honest feedback.

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I read Wilder Journeys by Laurie King and Miriam Lancewood by kind permission of #NetGalley. This book is packed full of hints and tips for gardening all year round. It has a lovely style created by the writers’ enthusiasm and the use of vivid descriptions and personification of plants that brings them to life. I really liked the inclusion of environmental stories suggestions to support the readers’ awareness of how to protect the wider environment.

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Unfortunately, I put this book down and haven’t picked it back up for some time. What I did read was good, but I was disappointed the longer pieces were excerpts of longer works.

I loved the poem interspersed with the longer essays, and the imagery and connection with nature is deeper than most people attempt.

I will return to this book, with better expectations.

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I very much enjoyed this collection of nature / wilderness themed poems and extracts from memoirs by a range of interesting people, all of whom have spent significant time in wild places. I found it inspiring reading.

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A beautiful collection of adventures and personal journeys through wilderness. From jungles to mountains and landscapes in between. Different voices and lessons learned made this a very interesting read. There were times that there was an obvious political lean which gets annoying, but the stories were beautiful nonetheless.

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I should start by saying I am probably not the intended audience for anthologies. The short story is not my preferred literary work and I often want the collections to be more cohesive than they are. That said I did find many of the stories shared a similarity inherent in the vein of deep awe that comes from being in extreme nature. Some of the stories were better written than others, some were better edited, but they all had something that will appeal to a nature lover. A good book to toss in your pack and ponder while in the outdoors yourself. Thank you NetGalley and Watkins Publishing for providing me with an ARC and a chance to review this anthology.

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If you’re planning adventures in 2023, this book should be at your bedside. Compiled by writers Laurie King and Miriam Lancewood, this is a unique compendium of travel tales with one thing in common: all the featured stories document extraordinary encounters with the natural world and share the wisdom gleaned from the individuals’ wild adventures. You’ll follow a family of sea eagles in Scotland with filmmaker and Strictly winner Hamza Yassin: spend a day hunting and gathering in New Zealand’s wilderness with Miriam Lancewood, or experience the slopes of Everest with Sophie Sung-Bin Hilaire – all these adventures and more are contained within this fabulous book that’s great to dip in and out of, or submerge into for a longer reading session.
Featuring extracts from longer stories, standalone shorter tales, poems and illustrations, this is a gorgeous book and a must-buy for anyone who loves the great outdoors – or a perfect gift for someone in need of spending more time with nature.

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It's a mixed bag with some very interesting food for thought and some parts just so-so.
I think it must be read a bit at a time.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

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A collection of essays and poems about the connection of humans to the natural world. I found the quality of the different stories too varying for me, some of them I really couldn't enjoy. That's a logical problem in a collection like this, but in this one it is really off-putting. I couldn't really relate to most of the stories either. Three stars for the stories I did resonate with.

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The majority of the stories in this anthology were wonderful and inspirational, a few I found were less so but still worth a read.

I was especially touched by the short stories by Hamza Yassin and Gregory Smith. I was impressed by the way the human spirit can be enhanced by an intimate relationship with part or all of the natural world. This really came across in these particular stories.

Overall the book is definitely worth reading because the good stories are very good indeed.

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A very pleasant collection of essays, easy to read from the comfort of your own home while these incredible adventures go out and explore every corner of the planet. Some beautiful writing and some wild experiences.

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The natural world as a healing power with the ability to bring us back to our true selves. This collection of writings is inspiring and well put together

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Within the pages of Wilder Journeys, you will find a series of non-fiction essays and poems about the human connection with nature, assembled by Laurie King and Miriam Lancewood.

Recently Strictly Come Dancing winner Hamza Yassin has his own chapter, in which he describes the season in which he watched and photographed a family of sea eagles in Scotland. Other, more extreme, chapters describe the experiences of those who survived in the wild for years or crossed the Australian outback.

Inevitably, some of these stories fired my imagination more than others. I found most too extreme to identify much with, even though I’m at my happiest outdoors.

Not a book that particularly resonated with me, but likely to inspire other lovers of the nature and outdoors.
Thank you to NetGalley and Watkins Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review

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