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2.7 AVERAGE
2.7 AVERAGE
I can only describe this book as exhausting. Desperately in need of an editor that could rip the heart out of this book and cut out all the fatty tissue. I'm a birder and yeesh, this thing is seriously some word soup. What really gets me is that I happen to live near where this book takes place so all these birds are super familiar to me and I can conjure them in my mind's eye without a problem. The reason for this is that I'm a nerd, anybody who isn't able to imagine these birds would be bored to absolute tears and even I fell asleep multiple times trying to read this book on my bus ride before I decided to DNF and stop torturing myself.
Also as said, I'm a birder, I enjoy solo birding and group birding and twitching (responsibly) and birding with ebird and birding with a journal of field notes and birding with a spotting scope and digiscoping and recording birdsong and all that incredibly lame birder stuff. That being said, oh my god, this book comes off so pretentious. Elite white birder culture absolutely is a thing and the way Blas is clearly just the writer's self-insert in a way is just kind of annoying. Like omg, sir, you mention in the back of your book about how you saw a Swainson's hawk that was rare in your area and then Blas does the exactly same thing in the book and gets shit for it, WE GET IT, YOUR'E HIM. Did an old woman also call you a liar or are you making up a person to get mad at in your head?
Maybe the moderators of ebird (as mentioned in the back of the book by the author) are real asshats but I cannot remember the last time I went birding and had somebody get on my ass about not having the right gear or not birding properly or lying or anything. I went twitching for a summer tanager for the first time a while ago and everybody I met there was super nice, talked birds with me, and a lot of people were young and there was multiple birders of color who came to see & photograph the bird without using any calls or otherwise harassing the animal. Maybe I'm just lucky and have really good experiences but you certainly won't foster good inclusive birding spaces by only birding alone, encouraging others in your book to just bird alone, and not helping create these spaces.
Anyway enough about birding, this book also is just a mess. Too much description that just becomes jumbled and sentences of almost unwavering length which made it hypnotic to read. Not hypnotic in a magical way but in a super sleepy way.
Maybe even more criminally: WEEWOO WEEWOOO GROWN MAN WRITING FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF TEENAGERS ALERT! Teens do NOT write or think like this at ALL, I now because I was once a teenager, perhaps this man has not had the honor/horror of being one. Furthermore: WEEWOO WEEWOO NON-JAPANESE PERSON WRITING JAPANESE CHARACTER GONE WRONG ALERT! Somebody already mentioned it but the line "I'm seventy-five and falling apart. My body, not my womanhood, nor my Japanese Americanness." is genuinely an all-timer bad line. Also I was born in the body of a woman and uh. Yeah women aren't sitting around having thoughts about like "wow, my womanhood is so intact at my age!" especially when so many women struggle with going through menopause and the complex emotions that surround it and the forced institution we call "womanhood". It's not like an adult man can't write about these things but it's just so obvious it just becomes a bit embarrassing.
I am probably going in way too hard on this book but I think it's simply because I'm offended that a topic as good as eco-horror and pollution causing strange phenomenon is so good and then you waste it by adding some stupid cult and passages that are so transparently your own gripes with culture as opposed to an actual commentary on it. I can only pray your students are not forced to read this in class.
Also there is a playlist for this book on this guy's website and what does Taylor Swift have to do with this book even.
Also as said, I'm a birder, I enjoy solo birding and group birding and twitching (responsibly) and birding with ebird and birding with a journal of field notes and birding with a spotting scope and digiscoping and recording birdsong and all that incredibly lame birder stuff. That being said, oh my god, this book comes off so pretentious. Elite white birder culture absolutely is a thing and the way Blas is clearly just the writer's self-insert in a way is just kind of annoying. Like omg, sir, you mention in the back of your book about how you saw a Swainson's hawk that was rare in your area and then Blas does the exactly same thing in the book and gets shit for it, WE GET IT, YOUR'E HIM. Did an old woman also call you a liar or are you making up a person to get mad at in your head?
Maybe the moderators of ebird (as mentioned in the back of the book by the author) are real asshats but I cannot remember the last time I went birding and had somebody get on my ass about not having the right gear or not birding properly or lying or anything. I went twitching for a summer tanager for the first time a while ago and everybody I met there was super nice, talked birds with me, and a lot of people were young and there was multiple birders of color who came to see & photograph the bird without using any calls or otherwise harassing the animal. Maybe I'm just lucky and have really good experiences but you certainly won't foster good inclusive birding spaces by only birding alone, encouraging others in your book to just bird alone, and not helping create these spaces.
Anyway enough about birding, this book also is just a mess. Too much description that just becomes jumbled and sentences of almost unwavering length which made it hypnotic to read. Not hypnotic in a magical way but in a super sleepy way.
Maybe even more criminally: WEEWOO WEEWOOO GROWN MAN WRITING FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF TEENAGERS ALERT! Teens do NOT write or think like this at ALL, I now because I was once a teenager, perhaps this man has not had the honor/horror of being one. Furthermore: WEEWOO WEEWOO NON-JAPANESE PERSON WRITING JAPANESE CHARACTER GONE WRONG ALERT! Somebody already mentioned it but the line "I'm seventy-five and falling apart. My body, not my womanhood, nor my Japanese Americanness." is genuinely an all-timer bad line. Also I was born in the body of a woman and uh. Yeah women aren't sitting around having thoughts about like "wow, my womanhood is so intact at my age!" especially when so many women struggle with going through menopause and the complex emotions that surround it and the forced institution we call "womanhood". It's not like an adult man can't write about these things but it's just so obvious it just becomes a bit embarrassing.
I am probably going in way too hard on this book but I think it's simply because I'm offended that a topic as good as eco-horror and pollution causing strange phenomenon is so good and then you waste it by adding some stupid cult and passages that are so transparently your own gripes with culture as opposed to an actual commentary on it. I can only pray your students are not forced to read this in class.
Also there is a playlist for this book on this guy's website and what does Taylor Swift have to do with this book even.
medium-paced
DNF 47% which was 40% too much.
2 points for an interesting concept and obviously we'll researched, but I just didn't get it.
2 points for an interesting concept and obviously we'll researched, but I just didn't get it.
adventurous
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I could not get past the dense, repetitive writing. I was absolutely in love with the concept. The writing was no.
DNF @ 50% - I so desperately wanted to like this book because of its premise but the tense switches every chapter and the list of birds every other sentence I really cannot...
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No