An easy-to-read, pleasurable account that will find its greatest appeal with fellow birders.
A “big year” birding adventure with a personal twist.
The attempt to identify as many species as possible in one calendar year has been the subject of numerous books since Roger Tory Peterson’s Wild America. What makes this big-year book different is the father-son bonding element. Collard (Catching Air, 2017, etc.), a marine biologist by training who has written more than 75 books for young readers, and his teenage son, Braden, a budding birding enthusiast, share a strong common interest, which makes their relationship one that many parents of teenagers will envy. The author may have omitted or softened some of the inevitable tensions or disagreements, but the picture of a teenager that emerges has the ring of truth. A proficient storyteller, Collard writes with style about their travels together in 2016 around Montana, where the author lives (Missoula), and to Arizona, Texas, and California. There are the usual disappointments of bad weather, closed refuges, broken equipment, and missed sightings as well as encounters with enthusiastic fellow birders and time spent with knowledgeable nature lovers. The author also describes an unforgettable brush with a swarm of mad bees. Overall, though, the focus is on the excitement of spotting and identifying new species. The point of a big year is to keep a list, and the longer the list, the happier the birder. Aware that big-year birders can become hung up—even unhealthily obsessed—with competing and with compiling statistics, Collard tried hard to broaden his adventure into a learning experience; for the most part, he succeeded. He and his son’s goals were modest—they weren’t competing with the pros—and the author shows the two of them willingly revising an identification when further examination reveals that their first one was wrong. For readers who are counting, end-of-chapter lists report their sightings, and an alphabetical big-year list appears at the end of the book.
An easy-to-read, pleasurable account that will find its greatest appeal with fellow birders.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68051-136-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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