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4.04 AVERAGE
4.04 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
Ongoing.
hopeful
informative
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
informative
hopeful
informative
slow-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
5/5
I first saw Otherlands in Waterstones whilst visiting my brother earlier this year and was intrigued by the premise. Pretty much everytime I visited a bookshop since I looked for it, picking it up and wishing it would come out in paperback soon. My best friend took pity on me and bought me the hardcover for my birthday. And so my journey through the worlds of the past began.
- Each chapter is dedicated to a time period of the past. The Cenozoic is has more attention paid to it than earlier time periods but it works in the context of this book and it not being insanely long. The worlds are varied. We are shown the Mammoth steppe, ancient Antarctic forests, Jurassic seas, the paleozoic coal swaps that provided our modern day fuel and the early beginning of multicellular life in the sea. Each setting is like a flowing documentary, taking a moment to document several species, the interactions between lifeforms, the landscape, the weather. It is all beautifully described and amazingly well referenced.
- The emphasis put of the complexity of life is wonderful. The author takes time to make sure that the reader is aware that life and ecosystems are complex and multidimensional, every element impacting multiple others. There's no linear producer-consumer-consumer plotlines here.
- The epilogue of this book is both reflective and forward looking. It walks the line between doom and hope we'll when discussing the future of life on earth and the impact humans will have and may continue to inflict. It makes the reader consider the choices our species has to make and the action we will have to take if we want to prevent catastrophic levels of destruction on our planet.
Perfect for me and other paleontology nuts. If you like ancient life and well referenced narrative nonfiction, give this treat of a book a try.
I first saw Otherlands in Waterstones whilst visiting my brother earlier this year and was intrigued by the premise. Pretty much everytime I visited a bookshop since I looked for it, picking it up and wishing it would come out in paperback soon. My best friend took pity on me and bought me the hardcover for my birthday. And so my journey through the worlds of the past began.
- Each chapter is dedicated to a time period of the past. The Cenozoic is has more attention paid to it than earlier time periods but it works in the context of this book and it not being insanely long. The worlds are varied. We are shown the Mammoth steppe, ancient Antarctic forests, Jurassic seas, the paleozoic coal swaps that provided our modern day fuel and the early beginning of multicellular life in the sea. Each setting is like a flowing documentary, taking a moment to document several species, the interactions between lifeforms, the landscape, the weather. It is all beautifully described and amazingly well referenced.
- The emphasis put of the complexity of life is wonderful. The author takes time to make sure that the reader is aware that life and ecosystems are complex and multidimensional, every element impacting multiple others. There's no linear producer-consumer-consumer plotlines here.
- The epilogue of this book is both reflective and forward looking. It walks the line between doom and hope we'll when discussing the future of life on earth and the impact humans will have and may continue to inflict. It makes the reader consider the choices our species has to make and the action we will have to take if we want to prevent catastrophic levels of destruction on our planet.
Perfect for me and other paleontology nuts. If you like ancient life and well referenced narrative nonfiction, give this treat of a book a try.
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
slow-paced
Thomas Halliday takes us on a stroll back in time, 550 million years to be exact, leading us through the incredible landscapes of the Earth’s different epochs. Halliday’s beautifully immersive writing made it so easy to visualise the fauna and flora of each epoch, learning how different species would have interacted, what they would’ve eaten and where they would’ve lived.
In the introduction Halliday says he wanted the book to be read as a ‘naturalists travel book’ & he definitely achieved that much. It was as if he was writing as a time traveller, describing what he saw on his field trips to the Creataceous or the Silurian.
It was wonderful to feel totally immersed in a world that has always felt so alien to me. I usually struggle reading books of this genre as they usually start at the beginning of life as we know it, the Ediacaran, working their way forwards to the present day. Otherlands however, goes in the opposite direction and I found that much easier to follow & visualise.
I think the magic of this book is how much detail is described about each species Halliday talks about, and the variety of species too. He talks of all forms of life, in all types of habitats. Mammals, insects, fish & marine mammals, birds, fungi, plants - even ferns, mosses, liverworts & lichens!
I must say it took me quite a long time to get through this book. I found it very slow to read, purely because of how much detail there was in each chapter. I wanted to take everything in and get the full experience, and it was definitely worth it - even though I had to speed read the last 90 pages before it was due back to the library…
On another note, reading this book led me to rewatching ‘Primeval’, the ITV series that aired in 2007. If you’ve seen it, let me know it is one of the best, most nostalgic British TV shows I watched as a kid - and if you haven't seen it, watch it, you will not be disappointed. Primeval was one of the things that first got me interested in dinosaurs & prehistoric creatures.
challenging
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced