Tag: 2/5- Just Okay

Based on the author’s real life experiences, this book is about a young man who returns to Africa after thirteen years away, to do conservation and volunteer work in wildlife parks. He travels down the Zulu river by canoe, assists at a wildlife rehabilitation center, and visits a game reserve in Kruger National Park. There are lots of encounters with wildlife- the larger and more dangerous ones like crocodiles, lions, hippos, rhinoceros, elephant, etc are particularly mentioned. Camraderie with his fellow volunteers is highlighted, while the narrator muses on how his first stay in Africa (those thirteen years ago) was soured by disagreements and teasing from his prior companions. Due to the awkwardness of his interactions and his near-encyclopaedic knowledge of animals, I did wonder if he was on the autism spectrum. The writing isn’t great. It feels flat, there’s lots of info dumping (though thankfully in short bursts) that feels like it’s supposed to be a part of conversations people naturally had, but is just a bit too forced. The dialog feels stiff and unnatural, it could easily be a record of what people actually said in real life, but it just doesn’t read well in a book. Too much is told, not shown- things I would love to see described in detail are simply mentioned in a single sentence and then the narrative quickly moves on.

I really struggled to finish this one. I wanted so much to like the content, but the execution was dull. There’s a slow love story in here, but I felt nothing about it at all. There are several chapters about a dangerous close encounter with man-eating lions, but it didn’t feel dramatic, tense or emotional to me, even though people were in fear for their lives. Doesn’t help to find a few typos, which always leap out at me. I did appreciate that as the book is very recent, some of the animal facts were new to me, all felt relevant especially the warnings on how many species are threatened or endangered, and the very real struggles of local and native people in South Africa to make a living and better their lives, while the wildlife eats their livestock or ruins their crops.

I received my copy from the Early Reviewers program on LibraryThing, as an e-book.

A bunch of little snippets about how immoral, depraved, unfair, conniving and murderous animals can be. If you tend to think nature is full of beautiful, noble, innocent creatures living in perfect balance and harmony, and that your cute cuddly pet would never bite you, well this book is out to prove you wrong. Vicious hummingbirds, drunk bees, cheating songbirds, deceptive apes, bullying and abusive dolphins, faithless penguins, uncooperative elephants, thieving animals of all kinds, and the list goes on. I think the author has a good point- most animals are out to get what they want (food, sex, etc) and sometimes a dog really will bite the hand that feeds it. Just because a panda is cute doesn’t mean it wants a hug (yes, someone climbed into a zoo enclosure and tried this). The book is a breeze to read through, and kinda funny, but also dissatisfying. I’d heard most of these stories before- or very similar ones. They’re related so briefly you feel some important details must always have been left out. The formatting is kind of strange, with the regular narrative text broken up by other text boxes that just tell other stories, interrupting the flow of reading. And some of the stories were really dumb, to be honest. A dog that steps on a gun and kills its owner- pure accident. Not intentional on the dog’s part. So how is that “behaving badly”? On the other hand, the stories about people trying to help animals who didn’t actually need, or evidently didn’t want their help, really made me laugh.

The arowana is a large, predatory fish popular in the aquarium trade (especially in Asia) as a status symbol. (Large for an aquarium fish, that is). The author, a science reporter, travelled to fish expos, visited breeders, collectors and dealers across Asia to hunt it down. First she was just trying to learn more about it- why were people so obsessed with this fish? what drove the prices so high? why is it considered endangered in the wild, protected and forbidden in trade, when so many thousands are being bred in ponds. This awful conundrum exists, where the scarcity of the fish drove up the demand, so more people wanted to catch the wild fish. When Voigt went searching for the fish, first just to see one swimming in a tank in someone’s collection, but then determined to find one in its natural habitat- she found a maze of conflicting information, deceptions and half-truths. A bit frustrating that she never did encounter the super red arowana, in spite of reaching the very swamps where it once existed in large numbers, and also never found the batik arowana (a beautiful fish, which I’d never heard of before) in the wild, though she did see two specimens caught and displayed in a tank. Switching focus at the very last, she finally succeeds in locating silver arowana in a tributary of the Amazon. This book is a whirlwind of travel, adventure, crazy circumstances, maddening beauacracy, and quirky characters.

And yet, it’s another book on a subject I thought I’d find enthralling, but ended up struggling to finish. The pages just dragged, and I ended up skimming so many of them. Is it just me? Something about the writing style perhaps, or the focus more on people and places than the fish itself (the author admits several times that she really fails to see why people find arowana attractive)- so many names scattered about, bits of history, on everything relevant from political turmoil in Indonesia to how goldfish were first domesticated and became the costly koi. There’s stuff in here about specimen collecting, nomenclature, and competition between scientists to be the first to name and describe species. Details about the aquarium trade that make me smile in familiarity, and others that make me shake my head in disblief! I just wish I’d liked it all better.

Borrowed from the public library.

Written by a lawyer who specializes in regulations and policies regarding animal health and welfare, this book is about how pets have become so overwhelmingly popular and pampered over the last few decades. While most of the focus is on dogs and cats, one of the final chapters also highlights birds, reptiles, fish, small mammals and other exotics. It’s got a lot of history and in-depth looks at current trends too. There is a little overlap with the last book on domestic dogs that I read, interestingly. Telling how important dogs were to primitive man, native peoples and early settlers- doing important tasks on farms and in fields. When such jobs for canines became more or less obsolete, they were relegated to backyards or left roaming the streets. Only relatively recently have they become members of the household- receiving special food and sleeping on people’s beds, with their antics and cuteness displayed online. The look at their rising popularity was not particularly new to me, although the numbers are telling. Of more interest was the chapter about how veterinary care has changed, and the one about what seems to be a shortage of dogs in shelters for adoption- this author argues that the spay and neuter campaign of past decades was actually too successful, so that now shelters import dogs from other places that have surplus! He also states that commercial breeders have an unfairly bad reputation, puppy mills are not the norm, and if breeders were regulated and felt comfortable to open their doors and show the public their operations, that could quickly turn around. There’s also a lot touting the benefits of pets in these pages- so much so, that it becomes clear that the goal of the book is to encourage more people to keep more animals, urging us to reach a hundred percent of homes owning dogs or cats, which should be allowed to accompany us anywhere in public. I could not really tell if this was tongue-in-cheek or not.

The book is certainly well-researched with lots of data supporting the author’s views. So why the low rating? Sorry, but I really found it hard to read. The writing style and humor just did not work for me. (I know cleaning the litter box can be unpleasant, but I don’t think of it as torture). There was just so much in this book, presented in brief to-the-point chunks with bold headings that made it feel jumpy. The frequent use of lists, bullet points and pop culture references (some I got, some I didn’t) did not appeal to me. I felt that some things were explained unnecessarily, but then stumbled over acronyms that I had to look up. More than once I was left scratching my head over a conclusion, or having to read a phrase a few times over, because it didn’t click. Overall, I think I just wasn’t the right kind of reader for this book.

Seems this is an updated issue, just a year after the initial publication. To include new snippets of data on how covid affected pet ownership, I suppose. Personally I think the original cover was more appealing, but the current one visually matches the style of the book, so I’m showing that. The subtitle has also changed. Originally it was The Love Affair That Changed America. Now it says on the front The Inside Story of How Companion Animals Are Transforming Our HOMES, CULTURE and ECONOMY. (Yes, with bold caps).

I received a copy of this book from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.