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plantybooklover's review against another edition
3.0
I read this mostly while suffering with the flu, so my Meh feeling could be due to the flu. There were some turns of phrases that really caught me, but overall I felt that the author was suffering from ADD. He would start to spin a story and then interrupt it, as if I was in conversation with the author and he was going off on a tangent. This really didn't work for me. This is on NPR's best books of 2015, so I surmise that I am just not bright enough to "get it'
Not a bad read, but not a great one either.
Not a bad read, but not a great one either.
nicksbooknook's review against another edition
2.0
An interesting book that I grabbed just walking by it in the library. The book was much less about the author's life than it was about Renee Malaise, a famous entomologist, but it was still very cool to learn about entomologists.
It was a very easy read; I feel that I am coming away from reading this and not knowing as much as I would like though, not that I had huge learning goals when I started this book or anything. I think I am the wrong audience for this type of novel...or maybe I'm simply burnt out on nonfiction nature novels right now lol
It was a very easy read; I feel that I am coming away from reading this and not knowing as much as I would like though, not that I had huge learning goals when I started this book or anything. I think I am the wrong audience for this type of novel...or maybe I'm simply burnt out on nonfiction nature novels right now lol
towardinfinitybooks's review against another edition
4.0
Read Harder 2016 task: Read a nonfiction book about science.
chiamatemi_rebbs's review against another edition
4.0
Alla fine siamo (per davvero) tutti un po' dei collezionisti di mosche!
multilingualism's review against another edition
3.0
I was honestly so confused because I thought this book was about the author, but no, it was about a different entomologist. I was saddened by this. I also didn't learn anything about bugs!! I read this to learn more about insects.
brandur's review against another edition
2.0
Kind of an unusual stream of consciousness style of prose that touches shallowly upon a variety of different subjects and that's good for light and mildly interesting reading. Contains very little depth, structure, or cohesive narrative, and doesn't cover much about flies for that matter either.
jar7709's review against another edition
5.0
You know I love the odd ones, the experimental ones. This lovely little pseudo-nature-memoir has earned a place in my re-read someday pile. Like the scattered, unpredictable flight of his beloved hoverflies, Mr. Sjoberg flits from childhood to life and obsession on his 15 square kilometer Swedish island, and back again. Yes it is about those things, but it is also about what drives the collector of tiny, unusual things and the perfection of short, defined timescales. He also stops along the way to explore his dissatisfaction with travel...a lovely antidote to the Cult of Travel currently infecting my media and social feeds. It does take concentration to find the point in some of Mr. Sjoberg's anecdotes, perhaps like it takes concentration to determine one rare species of hoverfly from another, and casual readers perhaps will find that tiresome; but I share in some of the authors habits, I suspect, and therefore found this quite enjoyable. I highlighted many passages throughout for their wry humor and or insight, but I think this one sums up the effort in explaining his writing motivation: "Against all odds, some poor presbyopic chump takes a shot at it, maybe so he won’t make himself ill by sensing a truth no one else sees. And he falls flat on his face, of course, his truth as incomprehensible and strange as it was to begin with. But at least he’s tried." I'm glad he tried.