Very enlightening! Books likes these are hard for me to rate and review because they are not one of my typical genres. But I appreciated the contents with in the book and enjoyed it even more than I thought I would.

This book is more geared for Australians. Despite that I liked reading about living more off the land and less city and tech

Did not work for me - DNF'd it. A it preachy which is not the best way to get someone interested in this kind of issue.

It is almost story like of how she writes about this adventure. It is an interesting read and I am glad I read it, but am unsure of picking it up again.

Thank you to the author, Scribe UK and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The conversational memoir explores what it means to incorporate nature into our daily lives. Lots of great thoughts, information and inspiration about getting/staying connected to nature and how that influences and helps us to thrive. It wasn't quite what I expected, but I enjoyed this a lot - with one very big exception: the last chapter which includes a lot of blood and guts, and so little respect for nature. That kind of left a bad taste in my mouth, after what was otherwise a great book.

This is not at all what I expected but I really enjoyed this book. Claire Dunn is moving to Melbourne after a yearlong residency (the Independent Wilderness Studies Program) that she spent in the bush, learning survival skills and foraging for her food, building her own shelter, making her own clothes... Now that she's moving to the city she is desperate to keep that connection to nature and the book documents that search for the connection. It's full of interesting anecdotes and ideas - her sit spot where she observes nature, her time swimming in the river, excursions foraging with friends and experts, time spent teaching children about the outdoors... It's pleasantly written - a thoughtful memoir with a lot of nature, adventures, friendships; at times maybe too spiritual and hippy-ish for me, but that could be just me. I am also not convinced by the last chapter (SPOILER ALERT) where one of her friends kills two foxes so she can make herself a coat... As they learn how to build a trap from YouTube videos, it's a disaster and the friend ends up having to finish off the job after the fox has been screaming for hours in his backyard. I understand hunting for food; but if you've accepted civiilzation enough to live in a proper house, buy a gym membership and rent a share office space with a treadmill... maybe you could buy a coat?
The epilogue on Covid was lovely and refreshing.
Overall I would recommend it still - it's imperfect but it was enjoyable, informative and at times even inspiring.

Rewilding the Urban Soul is a compelling look at the connections to nature which humans need to thrive and connect with their surroundings presented by Claire Dunn. Released 1st June 2021 by Scribe, it's 336 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

There have been so many studies and research showing that living a life divorced from nature and wildness increases stress and has a negative effect on mental and physical health. The need for nature connection has led to movements to change the way we educate (more wilderness and outdoor time for preschoolers through university students), green spaces in our workplaces, even "prescriptions" for outdoor and nature/wild time for everything from stress to depression to physical issues such as autoimmune flare-ups.

This book does a good job of showing how (and why) we can and should incorporate more nature into our daily lives and through multiple conversational essays and encounters with naturalists, enthusiasts, friends, housemates, and others, she makes a compelling argument - when we are removed from our natural environment, we lose something essential to ourselves and we are the poorer for it.

The book includes a lot of rumination about how a paradigm built on barter and foraging can change the entire system from a cash/credit-based society. There's also valuable epilogue written during the early-to-middle pandemic, showing how the author and her friends and housemates were impacted and coped with the enforced isolation and restrictions.

Although there's quite a lot of good information here about foraging, wildcrafting (not a how-to manual, but learning about it), mentoring, our interconnections and more, there's also some information which might be potentially distressing to some readers. The last chapter was difficult for me to read in some ways, since it contains a fair bit of blood and guts (in the author's words), and also because I personally felt there was some lack of respect one aspect of her description of skinning a fox (to be used for fur).

Five stars, with the codicil that it's not a happy fuzzy book for vegans. This would be a good choice for public or school library acquisition, fans of natural history and nonfiction, or the home library.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.