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4.04 AVERAGE
4.04 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Really a 4.5, but in the end even though the book had its slow points, I had to give it a 5 just because it's given me a bit of an existential crisis.
This book does not pull any academic punches. It's a serious science book, and probably requires a solid science background. And...it's about deep time. Geological time. Evolutionary time. Billions and billions of years. Numbers of years so big that my brain can't really wrap itself around the timescales we're talking about. This book forces you to think about how glaciers actually flow, about how continents move and bash into each other, and then move apart again. About how bacterial activity can change the atmosphere over long enough time periods. How the inconceivably huge number of generations of animals have led to an incomprehensible number of different creatures. It's changed my perspective on life on earth, it's safe to say.
Interestingly, the book STARTS with the more recent times and then delves backwards, as if digging down into the fossil record. At first this was hard for me to follow, as it's kind of backwards to the way we tell stories, right? But in the end I liked it for how much it DE-EMPHASIZED humanity. We're not a final product. We're one of many consequences, and life will go on around and after us.
The chapters generally focus around a particular strategy or adaptation, and talk about a particular place and time: what it looked like, what lived there, what the weather was like and how it shaped the earth. What the Earth itself looked like at the time, since very quickly the continents just wandered willy-nilly away from what you see on the modern globe. This was a very cool style for the book. Some of the chapters were more boring than others, with longer lists of names and less description, but the best of them picked a few index species and really dug into what we know about them. Along the way you also learn about the myriad of extinction events and cataclysms that the Earth has survived, which is awe-inspiring, too and several times just left me staring off into space going, "...wow."
This book needed way more pictures, though. Be prepared to go google up some of the creatures, because usually only one or so is actually pictured per chapter, which is not nearly enough.
This book does not pull any academic punches. It's a serious science book, and probably requires a solid science background. And...it's about deep time. Geological time. Evolutionary time. Billions and billions of years. Numbers of years so big that my brain can't really wrap itself around the timescales we're talking about. This book forces you to think about how glaciers actually flow, about how continents move and bash into each other, and then move apart again. About how bacterial activity can change the atmosphere over long enough time periods. How the inconceivably huge number of generations of animals have led to an incomprehensible number of different creatures. It's changed my perspective on life on earth, it's safe to say.
Interestingly, the book STARTS with the more recent times and then delves backwards, as if digging down into the fossil record. At first this was hard for me to follow, as it's kind of backwards to the way we tell stories, right? But in the end I liked it for how much it DE-EMPHASIZED humanity. We're not a final product. We're one of many consequences, and life will go on around and after us.
The chapters generally focus around a particular strategy or adaptation, and talk about a particular place and time: what it looked like, what lived there, what the weather was like and how it shaped the earth. What the Earth itself looked like at the time, since very quickly the continents just wandered willy-nilly away from what you see on the modern globe. This was a very cool style for the book. Some of the chapters were more boring than others, with longer lists of names and less description, but the best of them picked a few index species and really dug into what we know about them. Along the way you also learn about the myriad of extinction events and cataclysms that the Earth has survived, which is awe-inspiring, too and several times just left me staring off into space going, "...wow."
This book needed way more pictures, though. Be prepared to go google up some of the creatures, because usually only one or so is actually pictured per chapter, which is not nearly enough.
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
informative
reflective
slow-paced
After being off sick I found really difficult reading, and so I was glad to be offered the opportunity by @penguinukbooks to listen to #otherlands by Thomas Halliday.
This #audiobook has been a great opportunity to explore the Earth as it used to exist.
Halliday in his book is able to evoke vividly beautiful landscape, which I found highly fascinating.
I just found a little tough to be multitasking while listening to it, as I didn’t want to miss any details. But overall a great experience and I highly recommend it to all of you audiobook’s lovers out there!
This #audiobook has been a great opportunity to explore the Earth as it used to exist.
Halliday in his book is able to evoke vividly beautiful landscape, which I found highly fascinating.
I just found a little tough to be multitasking while listening to it, as I didn’t want to miss any details. But overall a great experience and I highly recommend it to all of you audiobook’s lovers out there!
adventurous
informative
slow-paced
dark
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
the earth is old y'all
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
fast-paced
informative
reflective
slow-paced
adventurous
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Otherlands takes the reader on a journey back through time 500 million years to the Cambrian age, calling in at different places/times along the way. 500 million years is a staggering amount of time to think about, & yet the earth goes back even further to 4.5 billion (4500 million!) years ago. It's something that is mind-blowing to even try to comprehend the sheer scale of that time. It hammered home the fleeting impermanence of life & even considered what history could tell us about the climate change issues facing us today.
The amount of detail in describing the ecosystems is amazing, it really brings the text to life. The reader feels as if they have been whisked away in a time machine & deposited in the different time periods, I swear I could hear the chirping of the insects, the splash of the huge marine creatures, feel the heat & the extreme cold weather, & see the shadow of a pterodactyl as it flew overhead. It could get very academic in parts, & I was glad I read it on an e-reader as it was very handy to be able to instantly look up the many terms that I was unfamiliar with. It was also an interesting choice to work backwards, rather than start in the Cambrian & work forwards in time - I'm not sure if it would have worked better that way or not. Anyway, it was a fascinating read & one that I thoroughly enjoyed.
My thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Allen Lane / Penguin Press UK, for the opportunity to read an ARC. I am voluntarily giving an honest review.
The amount of detail in describing the ecosystems is amazing, it really brings the text to life. The reader feels as if they have been whisked away in a time machine & deposited in the different time periods, I swear I could hear the chirping of the insects, the splash of the huge marine creatures, feel the heat & the extreme cold weather, & see the shadow of a pterodactyl as it flew overhead. It could get very academic in parts, & I was glad I read it on an e-reader as it was very handy to be able to instantly look up the many terms that I was unfamiliar with. It was also an interesting choice to work backwards, rather than start in the Cambrian & work forwards in time - I'm not sure if it would have worked better that way or not. Anyway, it was a fascinating read & one that I thoroughly enjoyed.
My thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Allen Lane / Penguin Press UK, for the opportunity to read an ARC. I am voluntarily giving an honest review.