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386 reviews for:
The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World
Riley Black
3.94 AVERAGE
386 reviews for:
The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World
Riley Black
3.94 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
informative
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
informative
slow-paced
informative
mysterious
fast-paced
The Last Days of the Dinosaurs by Riley Black. Dinosaurs have captivated the imaginations of millennials since Steven Spielberg adapted Michael Crichton‘s Jurassic Park and slapped it onto our lunchboxes before they even knew what they had. Some of my earliest memories involve dinosaurs - my parents taking me to museum exhibits to look at fossils, buying me encyclopedias of dinosaurs I combed over, and so many plastic toys. I have carried on the tradition, filling the bedroom of the closet child I have to a nephew with dinosaurs books and toys of his own. So, as the decidedly target audience for this book, I’m sad to say that this one just didn’t land for me. My issue is not the subject matter - not withstanding my love of dinosaurs, I have spent the summer reading about extinction events and climate catastrophe - but the writing itself. While I’m here for a thorough examination of the minutes, centuries, and millennia that have passed since dinosaurs roamed the earth, this book is extremely, at times painfully, repetitive. A judicious editor should have cut forty pages from this because so few pages tread new ground after the first chapter. It reads like blog posts, written in isolation of each other, strung together. It’s also disappointing that the conclusion, where the author opens up about their own relationship with dinosaurs and how they hold these creatures in their life, is relegated to the close of the book rather than sprinkled across it where it might have helped hold my attention. This book was exhausting and felt like an albatross around my neck. Not Recommended.
informative
reflective
informative
reflective
medium-paced
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
The first half of the book looks at the state of the world on the day the asteroid hit. The second half digs into the hours, days, weeks, and millennia that follow. It talks about how the earth recovered and how the species on it changed as a result.
The epilogue was a beautiful touch. The author talks about her own personal trauma and rebirth and how the history inspired her. It was heartwarming and touching. I really appreciated that.
With Kay Eluvian doing the narration, I was a bit worried that my brain would keep slipping into the Starship Teapot universe. But the tone was different enough that it didn’t happen.
The epilogue was a beautiful touch. The author talks about her own personal trauma and rebirth and how the history inspired her. It was heartwarming and touching. I really appreciated that.
With Kay Eluvian doing the narration, I was a bit worried that my brain would keep slipping into the Starship Teapot universe. But the tone was different enough that it didn’t happen.
