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1.92k reviews for:
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century
Kirk Wallace Johnson
4.02 AVERAGE
1.92k reviews for:
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century
Kirk Wallace Johnson
4.02 AVERAGE
adventurous
informative
mysterious
medium-paced
Wow what an interesting book! Who would think that the theft of Victorian age bird feathers would be so interesting? I learned so much about the feather trade and about fly tying. Very well written and engaging.
dark
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
This book was so weird and so fascinating. If you told me that someone had written a book about a man who was a world class flutist who was obsessed with tying fish hook ties (but didn't fish) and who robbed a museum of almost 300 exotic birds, I would almost never have believed that it was a true story. Everything about it sounds crazy. Honestly the theft was interesting to read about, if a little heartbreaking, but I thought the most interesting "character" in the book was Alfred Russell Wallace, a man who coincidentally came up with the same theory of the origin of species as Darwin did, and instead of some epic Edison/Tesla showdown between the two naturalists he was pretty content to let Darwin have all of the fame and glory. I would read a whole book about just his travels through the jungle.
The writing was zippy and it felt like reading a thriller, albeit with a slightly more ineffective detective than most people would probably want to see.
The writing was zippy and it felt like reading a thriller, albeit with a slightly more ineffective detective than most people would probably want to see.
dark
emotional
informative
fast-paced
adventurous
informative
slow-paced
dark
emotional
funny
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
This is a fun read that does a really good job of immersing you in the world of the problem and seeing all the threads attached to the crime in question. Really well done.
slow-paced
This was incredibly slow for me in the beginning, but really came together in the end. Something about the tone of this felt very fiction-esque, so I kept having to stop and google to see if things were real.
I really appreciated the bits about WHY these feathers, and the social media phenomenon of the fly tying groups banding together and their mentality for why.
The author felt like another character of this story, with his involvement directly affecting the people and the case. I’m stating that tidbit even though I’m not sure how I feel about it.
If you liked this book, I would also read The Art Thief — both stories of big thefts that the general public largely ignored andthe unrecovered items in both cases being felt largely by the specialists in the field, as well as the thief in question being …. Kind of a dick imo
I really appreciated the bits about WHY these feathers, and the social media phenomenon of the fly tying groups banding together and their mentality for why.
The author felt like another character of this story, with his involvement directly affecting the people and the case. I’m stating that tidbit even though I’m not sure how I feel about it.
If you liked this book, I would also read The Art Thief — both stories of big thefts that the general public largely ignored and
informative
sad
tense
fast-paced