If you’re looking for an antidote to being spooked by Jaws, there’s information here to provide it. But there’s just as much...
From Benchley (White Shark, 1994, etc.), a compendium of shark facts, tales, and personal encounters that feels as insightful and trustworthy as anything ever uttered in Jaws.
Benchley has done as much as anyone to give sharks a dose of menace, so it’s only fitting that he should put together this account in hopes of shedding light on shark behavior while also giving suggestions about how to minimize chances of trouble—or, if desired, maximize chances of seeing. Benchley explains that every time you enter the ocean, you are entering shark territory and may be regarded as fair game—though, in fact, sharks are happier shredding a seal or sea lion, whose return on energy expended in attacking and eating are much greater (humans are too bony and protein deficient). The author catalogues sensible do’s and don’ts—don’t swim near seal and sea lion colonies; don’t swim at dawn, dusk, or night, when sharks move into the shallows; don’t swim alone or in turbid water; don’t wear shiny jewelry or make erratic movements. Many of Benchley’s personal stories are drawn from scuba dives, and there’s plenty of advice about how to dive safely—being good, for example, at recognizing territorial displays. Curios—sharks with the face of a pig, others that can fit in the palm of your hand—make these creatures appear as strange and vulnerable as the rest of us, while at the same time (would it be Benchley otherwise?) scary creatures abound, from sea wasps and sea snakes, marauding groupers and bluefish, on to man-eating sharks: great eating-machines, more ferocious than any Bengal tiger. Consider the dazzling speed of the mako: “a gray ghost in the distance one second, right in front of you the next, gone the next, back again the next.”
If you’re looking for an antidote to being spooked by Jaws, there’s information here to provide it. But there’s just as much to spook you anew.Pub Date: June 11, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-50824-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death.
In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. “I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream,” he writes. “I can’t remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence.” Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, “like a slithering, enigmatic miracle”; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature—e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum—and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden’s “eel coast” (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning.
Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-296881-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.
A new life and book arise from the ashes of a devastating California wildfire.
These days, it seems the fires will never end. They wreaked destruction over central California in the latter months of 2018, dominating headlines for weeks, barely a year after Fies (Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, 2009) lost nearly everything to the fires that raged through Northern California. The result is a vividly journalistic graphic narrative of resilience in the face of tragedy, an account of recent history that seems timely as ever. “A two-story house full of our lives was a two-foot heap of dead smoking ash,” writes the author about his first return to survey the damage. The matter-of-fact tone of the reportage makes some of the flights of creative imagination seem more extraordinary—particularly a nihilistic, two-page centerpiece of a psychological solar system in which “the fire is our black hole,” and “some veer too near and are drawn into despair, depression, divorce, even suicide,” while “others are gravitationally flung entirely out of our solar system to other cities or states, and never seen again.” Yet the stories that dominate the narrative are those of the survivors, who were part of the community and would be part of whatever community would be built to take its place across the charred landscape. Interspersed with the author’s own account are those from others, many retirees, some suffering from physical or mental afflictions. Each is rendered in a couple pages of text except one from a fellow cartoonist, who draws his own. The project began with an online comic when Fies did the only thing he could as his life was reduced to ash and rubble. More than 3 million readers saw it; this expanded version will hopefully extend its reach.
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3585-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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