What are interludes between crisis events? They are moments for contemplation - for recollection, and for storytelling. Here, Freeman collects voices from across the world at the moment between events generated by climate change. Much is valuable here, in particular for the illustrative dialogue between the politics of equitable development and lifestyle matching and the politics of environmental action that combats climate change. Some pieces are better than others, and some of the poetry is be...

Freeman, as always, does an excellent job curating. I was hoping for a bit more optimism in this one, or at least some surprises--Tahmima Anam's being the rare exception, and probably my favorite in the collection--but it's still a worthy addition/extension to the "Tales of Two" series.

This book was recommended by Genevieve Padalaski's Book Club. This book is a collection of articles from different authors from around the world. Most of us live in a very nice bubble. We are aware of the disparities between "3rd World Countries" and our modern countries, but I don't we really give it much thought. Now, I know there are those that due, some more than others, but in general when it's out of sight, it's out of mind. These articles show that other side, and it is eye opening to rea...

Freeman continues to bear witness to the geography of inequality in this anthology, where he assembles some of the best writing under our polluted skies to assess what happens when disenfranchised people meet up with environmental stress. In “The Funniest Shit You Ever Heard” by Lebanese writer Lina Mounzer, the dark forces of greed and resource pilfering are laid bare in this story about real estate developers who overtax the sewer system in Beirut. It’s a metaphor, really, for what we do in ou...

My personal favorite:N64 35.378, W16 44.691 by Andri Snær MagnasonA chilling journey to explore her grand-parents “legacy”. “The glacier vanishes slowly, like a silent spring. It just melts, retreats slowly, calmly.” 😢Survival by Sayaka MurataA thought-provoking black mirror-ish dystopian fiction. The Funniest Shit You Ever Heard by Lina MounzerIt’s provocative and hilarious (?)And of course!The Well by Eka KurniawanNuff said. It’s what you expect from Eka Kurniawan!

Generally not a big fan of anthologies, but this is so thoughtfully constructed, with an excellent selection. And collectively the effect is to really show, not just tell, the inequities and realities created and reinforced by climate change and global capitalism.

Essential reading. All of it. All of you. All of us.Spoiler alert: your destruction of rivers, lands, other animals, and other humans has also destroyed you. But! The legacy of literature IS the ecology that saves us, or anything. Just read the damn book, everybody.

3.5-some of the stories in this book were really shitty and had no depth at all. Cheers to Atwood, Danticat, and the international authors that truly gave me some perspective.

TALE OF TWO PLANETS⁣⁣I read this book (like so many others) because Kate said it was important and accessible + she was (of course, unsurprisingly, unflinchingly) correct.⁣⁣To be honest, climate change often feels unfathomably menacing. Here are some stats:⁣⁣- The UN projects ~200 million climate refugees by 2050. Do I know what a crowd of even 10,000 looks like? Can I multiply that image by 20,000? Our brains aren't capable of picturing it + that makes it hard to grasp.⁣⁣- The current goal to “...

“We are swimming in facts, but a fact does not fully obtain the depth of a fact….until it becomes part of a story.” It's tricky to generalise about this bleak, eclectic mix of stories, essays & poems from around the world on the effects of climate change on - usually the most vulnerable - individuals. The quality and relevance vary wildly but the overall effect is overwhelmingly depressing with a (on some occasions quite literally) shit stream of drought, famine, disease, pollution, pestilence,

This book was published a few days ago and I hope it becomes a bestseller. What is the "tipping point" of our species, after which recovery is impossible? When does the "climate change" of yesterday move through the "climate crisis" of today and become the climate catastrophe? Really, the only sane thing to do is for every one of us to reassess our values and reorganize our lives to make the issues discussed in this book a priority. When I was in third grade I stood up in class and interrupted m...

A month after reading “Tales of Two Planets”, a collection of 36 texts on climate crisis (change sounds neutral, or even positive, but in this day and age we are talking about a crisis) and inequality edited by John Freeman, my opinion about this book is less positive than it initially was. Probably due to connections, Freeman was able to engage world known authors to contribute - sadly many delivered mediocre essays, stories or poems (especially poems are very weak) with no point whatsoever.The...

Finished this great anthology of climate destruction when a storm is hitting the coasts of Mozambique. As the Author says in his introduction, we can dither, argue and be in a denial mode but it is ( The Climate Change) happening all around us. With the tipping point reached we can only try to mitigate the evils so that our next generation ( No future for the forthcoming generations) can live peacefully. It is a poignant collection of 36 pensive and factual literary pieces including fiction, ess...

** Books 85 - 2021 **This books to accomplish Tsundoku Books Challenge 20213,3 of 5 stars! I am curious about this books since there was Makassar Writers Festival 2021 and also two my favorite author between Sayaka Murata and Eka Kurniawan wrote their short fiction about climate change. These books consist of short collections, essay and also poets that comes from 36 authors in different country. They really speaking out loud their worry about environment and also climate change that more than w...

A must-read. A kaleidoscopic look at climate change throughout the world through a very human lens. I loved how all encompassing this was not only in the places it looked at, but the styles of writing. Poems, short stories, essays, journalistic pieces, even photography. Highly recommend.

The aptly named Tales of Two Planets is a diverse collection of short stories showcasing the effects of the climate crisis in different countries. Reading so many international authors truly gives the necessary perspective for us to accept and understand the planet's crisis embodied in different economic backgrounds. Some of the stories really resonated with me and I don't mean just the ones from my country or countries I visited, but all the ones that show the slow deterioration of the environm...

As an anthology, there were some stories I liked in here and many that didn’t resonate with me. About 20% of them I had no idea why they were included in this collection outside of a brief mention of the climate. I struggled to get through this towards the end after reading a few of the more strange short stories (spoiler alert: the one with the woman in a cave who masturbated to a picture of Jesus threw me for a loop...) I did like the concept though of telling the stories about how climate eff...

Should be required reading for everyone.

"Part of writing, the best part of it, is to wake a reader up into the present, by transporting them into a dream -one vivid enough to reorient how they see things upon waking." "How do we live within dire forecasts, how do we breathe? How do we create a space to imagine both the coming destruction and the life that remains? How to go about one's daily life while knowledge of something awful hovers right there? These questions come up over and over again in these essays, poems, and stories." Th

As someone said below, some stories are damn good, others are just meh. But the 4 stars are because overall, the collection is filled with a variety of tales and styles that make you see climate change through the lenses of people who live not only in first world countries, but in places that are being the first affected by this. Getting to know the day-to-day life and the environmental struggles in lands like Argentina, Burundi, Lebanon, Bangladesh and Libya (just to mention some) was both fasc...