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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
I really love books that meld personal stories and natural history, which is why I enjoyed H is for Hawk so much. This book was so enlightening that I went from not really thinking about eels all that much to thinking about eels nearly every day. The book has also absolutely convinced me never to eat eel again, even though the Japanese eel that I typically eat aren't the primary focus of the book. We really need to do all we can to help preserve eels.
informative
reflective
Fantastisk bok. Enkel att hänga med i och intresseväckande. Blir inte tråkig en enda sekund trots mycket information. Väldigt bra upplägg.
adventurous
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
En så fin läsupplevelse! Jordnära och ändå filosofisk i sina stycken. Full av fakta som bara gör hela läsningen än mer intressant. Trots att ål är bland det mest osmakliga jag någonsin ätit!
This book could not make up its mind what it was. The first part was science book plus memoir about the authors father and eel fishing. The second part had less science and a whole lot more musing on philosophy and religion. This could have worked but mostly ended up a mess. I went in expecting more science of eels and got a meandering history of eels in popular imagination and literature and memories of fishing with my dad more than science. It also took me 3 months to read this, which is never a good sign.
Finally, and this is my soap box, this would be a three star book had it used footnotes. It had a list of main sources by chapter but not enough for all the eel facts cited and if they were all, then a few chapters relied on a very few number of sources and readers should know that. Second, especially, when discussing research that people have spent most of their lives on this work, it needs to be cited. This is the second time I have written this in a review today, but it is unethical to do otherwise. I will continue to hold this belief on all popular science books that without footnotes, there is no ability to judge the quality of the sources and it fails to give credit to the hard work that went into the research that is being used for the book.
Finally, and this is my soap box, this would be a three star book had it used footnotes. It had a list of main sources by chapter but not enough for all the eel facts cited and if they were all, then a few chapters relied on a very few number of sources and readers should know that. Second, especially, when discussing research that people have spent most of their lives on this work, it needs to be cited. This is the second time I have written this in a review today, but it is unethical to do otherwise. I will continue to hold this belief on all popular science books that without footnotes, there is no ability to judge the quality of the sources and it fails to give credit to the hard work that went into the research that is being used for the book.
A favorite read this year. Svensson does a great job of presenting science on the status and plight of eels and sharing his personal experiences growing up and relationship with his father. A winner on my booklist; left me wanting to hear more. I haven't enjoyed micro-subject nonfiction since Kurlansky's Cod which pioneered the genre. Am I biased? Having fished in the Sargasso Sea and enjoyed smoked eel on the Baltic Coast, quite possibly. Would I feel guilty eating eel at this point, most definitely.
reflective
medium-paced
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
It was definitely interesting to learn about the eel, and all of the things we still don’t know about them. I had two gripes with this book though. 1) i was not at all interesting in the rambling philosophical bits, and 2) i was confused by the Eurocentricity of the book. At the end, they talk a little bit about American and Japanese eels. But the book mostly focuses on European eels without ever clearly specifying that those are the only eels they are going to talk about. I’m still confused about which elements of eels discussed in the book apply to non-European eels. For example, other than Europe, Japan, and America, where do eels live? The book spends a lot of time talking about eels breeding in the Sargasso Sea, but are those only the European and American ones that breed there? The book makes reference to the eel cousin of the moray eel - where does that one live? Are the lessons about eel life, travel, and reproduction universal to eels all over the world, or only the European ones? It also didn’t become clear until the end of the book that the author is from Sweden and all of his childhood stories about eel fishing are set in Sweden. This book would be much more satisfying if it addressed which eels it’s talking about and where.