Soundings: Journeys in the Company of Whales: A Memoir by Doreen Cunningham

3.83 AVERAGE

allisaurus's review

3.5
adventurous inspiring reflective slow-paced

veronica91's review

4.0
adventurous challenging emotional informative reflective slow-paced

lar_iiious's review

4.0
In the beginning I found the skipping back and forth between different timelines quite disrupting and I was a little annoyed at the tone in which the journey trying to keep up with the whales was told (it was a bit whiney). But other than that it was quite interesting and somehow told in a gentle manner that I enjoyed. I couldn't understand how a vegetarian who has always felt a spiritual connection to whales could suddenly go whale hunting and actually eat whale meat - but I suppose that could be due to my own (narrow) cultural background. All in all I still enjoyed this audiobook - maybe because it seemed so very honest and unafraid to even reveal less appealing sides of the author.

syoung76's review

2.75
emotional reflective sad slow-paced

thekot's review against another edition

4.75
adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective sad slow-paced
folded_between_pages_of_books's profile picture

folded_between_pages_of_books's review against another edition

4.0
adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced
bleudeciel's profile picture

bleudeciel's review

4.75
adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

sarahnm's review against another edition

4.0
adventurous informative reflective slow-paced
mono_dreams's profile picture

mono_dreams's review against another edition

3.0
adventurous hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced
The book is separated into two different timelines: the one taking place in Utqiagvik and the one in which she and her son travel thousands of kilometers in search of the grey whales that Doreen is very fond of. I have to admit that I didn't like the storyline around her travels with Max as much because I didn't really like reading about Doreen's thoughts on motherhood and her childhood. Overall, I prefered the paragraphs in which she talked about whales or climate change over the paragraphs containg personal stories.  It sometimes felt like I was reading her autobiography rather than a book about whales. I mean, of course, whales were mentioned plenty but oftentimes, Doreen Cunningham connected the mention of whales to her own life which I found to be rather boring. I also didn't like the way she would sometimes humanize the whales and try to compare them to human beings. That felt very unnatural and kind of frustrating to me. Although she told the reader she's aware that you can't humanize whales, she kept doing so in certain parts of the book which really confused me. 
Idk, I enjoyed learning about whales and reading about her time in Utqiagvik but there were some themes and stories within the book that either I didn't care for or was actually annoyed by.

grumpygoat's review

4.5
emotional reflective sad medium-paced