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3.33 AVERAGE
3.33 AVERAGE
melissajeanette's review against another edition
4.0
If you are a flora and fauna lover, or if you like reading natural history books, this is a pretty good read. I would, however, recommend reading it in little chunks, because the detailed descriptions get a bit much if you have to read this, like I did, in three days time. I would have liked to savor the places with incredible descriptions of the Selborne area.
There are detailed descriptions of dissected animals in the book. A whole lot of animals die in the pursuit of mapping out anatomical differences. So if that's a deal breaker for you, maybe skip this one. And because this is written in the Georgian/Victorian eras, White has some outdated viewpoints. I actually found it interesting to see the moments when White found something in nature that didn't accord with his ideas about the "natural" order of things. He loses his objective tone in those moments, so you can tell he found some aspects of the natural world upsetting.
All in all, this is a great coffee table book; you can easily read a single letter (did I mention the book is a series of letters?) in a spare moment and slowly work you way through.
There are detailed descriptions of dissected animals in the book. A whole lot of animals die in the pursuit of mapping out anatomical differences. So if that's a deal breaker for you, maybe skip this one. And because this is written in the Georgian/Victorian eras, White has some outdated viewpoints. I actually found it interesting to see the moments when White found something in nature that didn't accord with his ideas about the "natural" order of things. He loses his objective tone in those moments, so you can tell he found some aspects of the natural world upsetting.
All in all, this is a great coffee table book; you can easily read a single letter (did I mention the book is a series of letters?) in a spare moment and slowly work you way through.
ash3's review against another edition
2.0
I don't know if nature writing is for me, I found this book super repetitive.
jjweisman's review against another edition
3.0
Blurring the line between professional and amateur, the accomplished observations and hypotheses set out in the book stand within less than a century of Linnaeus. Astonishing to see, important to note what can be accomplished through dedication and the rigorous application of natural capacity vs. reliance on certifications.