Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by binxthinx
Down from the Mountain: The Life and Death of a Grizzly Bear by Bryce Andrews
2.0
Bryce is a morose, self-absorbed, judgmental narrator. He likes the selfish dairy farmer who for some reason is raising dairy cattle and corn in prime grizzly country. But all those selfish “hobby farmers!” They’re the problem! And then the book ends with him becoming a “not like the other hobby farmers” hobby farmer himself. The problem is overcrowding with people in these areas and yet he himself has moved from Seattle to play at ranchhand and then become a Montana hobby farmer. He’s awfully understanding of all the ranchers (no mention of all the negative impacts of cattle on climate change). He’s very sentimental and romantic about nature. Everything bad done is anthropogenic! Wildlife doesn’t suffer, nature isn’t cruel! He goes on and on about his boring fence project whereas all I wanted to hear more about were the cool tribal bear biologists. He is judgmental about zoos and rescues and shows very little understanding of how they work. He judges visitors at the zoo. His last few pages are filled with melodramatic defeatist bitching about how much people suck. This book just had nothing inspiring or particularly educational. The science was very pop sci and digestible, with very little numbers or concrete facts you can sink your teeth into. It gets so repetitive too— the descriptions of the main area of focus and what bears eat and that they’re nocturnal. We get it. Much of the parts about the bears is fictionalized ideas of what he imagines the bear would’ve been up to. It’s not badly written. It just feels like a relatively minor part of the book. And also, in my line of work, I disliked a lot of the way he described the bear’s injury and how it was handled. Just love hearing inexperienced people giving their opinions and making judgements, without really knowing anything about it.
He often goes into how the bears make him feel or how he would imagine they feel. He gives us his opinion on everything. I’m sure he’s a smart guy, but I’m more interested in the thoughts of the experts he interviews. He doesn’t do enough to establish his own credibility. He come across like he’s so special for being this urban Seattlite who discovered natures and REALLY GETS IT, YOU GUYS. No one else really gets it like he does. Maybe I’ve just read too much in this “genre” on this topic. Bored me to tears and felt so superficial and heavily biased.
The writing is often pretty, I’ll give him that. But geez, give the readership some calls to action! What changes CAN be made? Why write a book like this?
He often goes into how the bears make him feel or how he would imagine they feel. He gives us his opinion on everything. I’m sure he’s a smart guy, but I’m more interested in the thoughts of the experts he interviews. He doesn’t do enough to establish his own credibility. He come across like he’s so special for being this urban Seattlite who discovered natures and REALLY GETS IT, YOU GUYS. No one else really gets it like he does. Maybe I’ve just read too much in this “genre” on this topic. Bored me to tears and felt so superficial and heavily biased.
The writing is often pretty, I’ll give him that. But geez, give the readership some calls to action! What changes CAN be made? Why write a book like this?