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3.32 AVERAGE
3.32 AVERAGE
Maybe it's just not the right timing, but I just couldn't get into it. I was hoping for something like [b:Prodigal Summer|14249|Prodigal Summer|Barbara Kingsolver|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1426308771s/14249.jpg|718772] but this one just didn't draw me in.
Well, I liked this book more in concept than in its execution. The section of the book written about the ants was interesting but I couldn't help but be irritated with the anthropomorphizing...
This is a hard book to review; it was kind of unusual. It is the story of a man's quest to protect a tract of southern forest that he loves. The story, though, goes ALL the way back to his childhood to explain his experiences there and how he came to love it and what all his experiences were there, then follows him to Harvard so we could follow as he became a lawyer in order to save the land (and also details his first romantic experiences, which are kind of tangential to the plot), then back home again, where religious fundamentalist thugs try to kill him for no apparent reason except that they think environmentalists are working against God's ultimate plan. There was a digression into the main character's senior paper on ants, which was informative and interesting but something I've never seen inserted into a novel. Also, if it really was supposed to be a biological research paper it was probably lacking in scientific observation and data; it was more an artistic description of the ant colony, but his professors were all describing the paper as brilliant, which seems a bit unlikely to me. But I suppose inserting a realistic scientific paper would lose a lot of readers!
First fiction novel from the Pulitzer Prize winning author. E.O. Wilson is a Harvard (I think) professor of entomology (sp?)-he studies bugs. He has written numerous non-fiction on bugs, and ants are his favorite. The book is described as a modern day Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn novel.
I loved this book. I don't know about the whole Mark Twain angle, but it was very original. It may just spawn a new genre of fiction...Environmental. It's 3 stries in 1. first, a young man who loves exploring the southern wilderness of Alabama and keeping up family honor in an old southern family. 2nd, the epic struggle for survival and battles between rival ant colonies. 3rd, the young man as he enters the world of real estate developers and environmentalists. who's side is he on?
I loved this book. I don't know about the whole Mark Twain angle, but it was very original. It may just spawn a new genre of fiction...Environmental. It's 3 stries in 1. first, a young man who loves exploring the southern wilderness of Alabama and keeping up family honor in an old southern family. 2nd, the epic struggle for survival and battles between rival ant colonies. 3rd, the young man as he enters the world of real estate developers and environmentalists. who's side is he on?
Such an eminent scientist has no business being such an evocative novelist. In part of the book, he tells the story of some ant colonies from the ants' point of view.
Interesting detail of ant community life. The story took a rather weird turn toward the end. Worth reading, but it could have ended sooner and been just as effective.
Couldn't get through it. Wanted to like it, tried really hard, but without success.
I'm not sure what it was I just read and I never thought I would be mesmerized by ants. Just found the rather rushed ending a bit random.
I had to give up on this one half-way through. It's not that it's a BAD book, it's just that I don't care enough about ants.
Such an eminent scientist has no business being such an evocative novelist. In part of the book, he tells the story of some ant colonies from the ants' point of view.