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3.47 AVERAGE
3.47 AVERAGE
This is not a nature book. It is a poorly written philosophy notebook that uses man-made tide pools as a vehicle for waxing poetic on every pseudo-profound thought that comes to the author’s mind. Topics include: Heidegger, winkles, crabs, Virginia Woolf, Heracles, and rocks—I’m not kidding, there is a whole chapter that is titled “Rocks”…which would be fine if it was actually about rocks but it wasn’t!!!!
Spare yourself the slog and read literally anything else. The best thing about this one are the illustrations on the cover.
Spare yourself the slog and read literally anything else. The best thing about this one are the illustrations on the cover.
slow-paced
I really enjoyed The Seabirds Cry. This book would have been better focusing on individual fauna and flora in each chapter. This book goes off on too many tangents for me.
This book is not what I thought it would be. I wanted to learn facts about the biology and maybe geology of the intertidal zone. There was precious little of that. Rather these topics were primarily an excuse for the author to start philosophizing pretentiously but vacuously about abstract notions. The following is typical of many other passages:
It [the author's artificial tidepool] represented a curiously true relationship to the natural. Making it would be a human act but with a natural outcome. It could both enclose and fail to enclose; its fractal spirals could spin off into the sea itself. It would be a model of Socrates's aviary, and in that inadequacy the explicit transience of its containment would be a kind of perfection--perfect because imperfect.
Really enjoyed his book about sea birds, but this book just spent much too long musing on philosophy and other topics that just came across as a bit pretentious to me.
informative
medium-paced
Life Between the Tides is an in-depth exploration into the life and death in tidal pools in the beautiful Oban/Mull area in Scotland as water ebbs and flows. The author includes natural science information about many sea creatures themselves, refers to related myths and legends with cultural perspectives, gives philosophical viewpoints on humans and our relationships with nature, discusses Darwin's natural selection, knock-on effect and fractal lines, to name a few.
Examining tidal pools is like observing another world entirely. I often do this when at the sea and am always amazed at what I see and experience. As the author says, we enjoy the peace and calm of the sea. But for the tiny creatures living in tidal pools it is anything but! Tiny creatures jump and scatter to avoid capture. Heat can melt others. Sandhoppers are capable of shredding plastic, inadvertently adding to pollution. That limpets can detect danger two feet away while stuck onto a rock is amazing to me. Conches can jump! And I had no idea that is how crabs copulate. For ages I have wondered whether these animals have emotions or sense pain...yet another topic in this book.
My favourite aspects of this book are the location (I know that area of Scotland) and the information on the habits of hermit crabs, winkles, whelks, anemones, coralline, various wracks, dabs, sandpipers, shrimps and kelp and others. The writing is beautifully descriptive, as I had hoped.
My sincere thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the privilege of reading this absorbing book. I learned a lot!
Examining tidal pools is like observing another world entirely. I often do this when at the sea and am always amazed at what I see and experience. As the author says, we enjoy the peace and calm of the sea. But for the tiny creatures living in tidal pools it is anything but! Tiny creatures jump and scatter to avoid capture. Heat can melt others. Sandhoppers are capable of shredding plastic, inadvertently adding to pollution. That limpets can detect danger two feet away while stuck onto a rock is amazing to me. Conches can jump! And I had no idea that is how crabs copulate. For ages I have wondered whether these animals have emotions or sense pain...yet another topic in this book.
My favourite aspects of this book are the location (I know that area of Scotland) and the information on the habits of hermit crabs, winkles, whelks, anemones, coralline, various wracks, dabs, sandpipers, shrimps and kelp and others. The writing is beautifully descriptive, as I had hoped.
My sincere thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the privilege of reading this absorbing book. I learned a lot!
while i did enjoy reading this, i ended up powering through the majority of it over a 2 day period and feel that definitely impacted my enjoyment.
Hm. So good in so many ways. But.
This is the first book by Adam Nicolson that I’ve read, with a couple more on my shelf. The title is intriguing and, just back from exploring the shoreline of Vancouver Island, I was open to any book that explores life in tidal pools.
I loved learning about the denizens of Nicolson’s rock pools; sand hoppers, winkles, prawns, sea anemones, and the different weeds that allow creatures to live through daily and seasonal tidal change. I loved learning how the lives of everything in the rock pool are interconnected. The book goes deep into the history of coastal geology. Much of the book is beautifully written and extends from biology to something larger through the history of how we have come to understand and account for tides. I even enjoyed learning about the philosophy of Heraclitus and how his ideas can inform our understanding of the interconnectedness of life.
Then we go sideways into a history of people from the area, which involves starvation and over-fishing, and the history of Scottish clan warfare and waaaaay too much information on how they are featured in the mythology and lore of the area.
I seriously wondered if I had somehow missed the book’s conclusion and had purchased a ‘two-books-in-one’ edition of the author’s work.
We gradually made our way back to the rock pool for a well-written conclusion, but for me, the spell was broken and the book fell from a five-star read to 3.5. Honestly, disappointed.
This is the first book by Adam Nicolson that I’ve read, with a couple more on my shelf. The title is intriguing and, just back from exploring the shoreline of Vancouver Island, I was open to any book that explores life in tidal pools.
I loved learning about the denizens of Nicolson’s rock pools; sand hoppers, winkles, prawns, sea anemones, and the different weeds that allow creatures to live through daily and seasonal tidal change. I loved learning how the lives of everything in the rock pool are interconnected. The book goes deep into the history of coastal geology. Much of the book is beautifully written and extends from biology to something larger through the history of how we have come to understand and account for tides. I even enjoyed learning about the philosophy of Heraclitus and how his ideas can inform our understanding of the interconnectedness of life.
Then we go sideways into a history of people from the area, which involves starvation and over-fishing, and the history of Scottish clan warfare and waaaaay too much information on how they are featured in the mythology and lore of the area.
I seriously wondered if I had somehow missed the book’s conclusion and had purchased a ‘two-books-in-one’ edition of the author’s work.
We gradually made our way back to the rock pool for a well-written conclusion, but for me, the spell was broken and the book fell from a five-star read to 3.5. Honestly, disappointed.
It was a scattered passion read and an abrupt spray of the tide.
(Recommend if you enjoy naturalist guidebook style and history museums for an all-encompassing ancestral view of 'life' between the tides to persuade a strong sense of place.)
(Recommend if you enjoy naturalist guidebook style and history museums for an all-encompassing ancestral view of 'life' between the tides to persuade a strong sense of place.)