Book Finished:
DEADLY Beautiful VANISHING KILLERS OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM
Liana Joy Christensen
20/8/2016
I am not above checking to read what others have to say about a book before I write about it, but in this case I found only a single one-line comment. This might be an indication of the book's importance.
I found the experience of reading this book similar to finding myself whiling away a bit of time browsing through one of those click-bait web pages with names like "25 Amazing Events That Changed History". You know you will probably have heard of all of them, but there just might be something interesting, if not exactly amazing. I am sure it is well-researched and accurate, but I felt I had learned little new by the end. I felt it was a pity there wasn't a nice set of tables to reveal the relative significance of the same measures across the species covered. Instead there are so many disconnected facts and statistics scattered through the text, that comparison would be a chore of flipping back and forth to see if the same stat is even mentioned about each species. This is to me an indicator that the book is not intended as a reference, but simply as a light read. Unless you have, say, a younger relative with a budding interest in the natural world which needs stimulating, I would suggest you could do better with your book dollars. Perhaps you could content yourself with an 11' 37" interview with the author on the Radio New Zealand series Our Changing World, from 24 November 2011. |