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4.02 AVERAGE
4.02 AVERAGE
What an absolutely delightful book! Eloquence of the Sardine comes at less than two hundred pages, yet is rich with facts, history, fresh new perspective, and so much food for thought that it's a veritable mental feast.
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
Leuk boekje vol fijne weetjes over allerlei vissen en andere zeebeesten. Wel wat bloemrijk en antropomorfiserend, daar moet je tegen kunnen. Een niet super diepgravend. Maar toch, fijne verhalen, aangenaam leesvoer op de zondagmiddag.
Was für ein tolles Buch! Obwohl ich nicht wirklich ein Wassermensch bin, hab ich richtig Lust bekommen im Meer tauchen zu gehen und genauer hinzuhören! Mir wurde wieder bewusst wie wenig wir über die Welt unter Wasser tatsächlich wissen - weil wir für das Leben in ihr nicht gemacht sind und nicht verstehen können, wie eine Kommunikation funktionieren kann (abgesehen von den Walgesängen die wir hören können). Macht Spaß und Lust auf meer! (Pun intended ;)
'Eloquence of the Sardine' by Bill François is a journal of memories about fish, sort of a formal diary for readers instead of for one's private recollections, feelings and discoveries. The author is a scientist who is fascinated with the creatures who live in the waters of the world. By profession, he is a physicist. But his passion is watching and learning about fish, coral, crustaceans, shellfish and whales. He also has collected stories from fisherman, fellow travelers, and even ancient Greek texts that were written millennia ago, simply everything he could pick up from others who love to explore under the seas. There are some of the most interesting and unusual facts and experiences of fish that I have never before read anywhere else.
When François was a child, he had an encounter with a sick sardine while he was seeing what was in the tide pools and looking at whatever the waves brought onto the beach. He wasn't the only living thing on the beach that was looking. The sardine looked up at him after he captured it in a net and placed it into his pail. He realized suddenly the sardine had had an existence, a life of adventures underwater, growing up, learning. How do ocean creatures communicate? Do they think, feel, have families?
His curiosity led him to research the sardines and other fish, beginning with learning how to snorkel.
One of the first things he discovered was that the underwater world was noisy. Fish do talk! A lot! Their sounds are extraordinary and weird. Are they communicating? Yes, there are sounds of warnings and alerts, discerned from seeing how the fish behave when hunting or being hunted. He has since learned fish can smell scents and odors from many miles away. We readers know about sharks and blood of course, but there is much more than that being smelled and understood by different fish of all types - scents about sex, dangers, stress. Next, many fish have powerful abilities to see colors, so they use colors to attract other fish and to disguise themselves. Some can adjust their skin to display different colors in order to signal their own species as well as warn or hide from other species. Some can create strong electric fields intentionally to kill, while others can sense and identify what kind of fish is emitting the usual delicate and normal electrical fields of life. It is thought by some researchers fish can sense magnetic fields. Plus, vibrations! Many fish can sense and know what a particular vibration in the water means.
People have worked with dolphins to hunt. We know about the military training dolphins. But I didn't know dolphins in the past noticed how tribal men fished, and on their own formed partnerships with certain fishermen to show men where certain schools of fish were in order to share in the goodies of men's hunts for fish! Some ocean fish hunters also collaborate with other fish to hunt down quarry. Fish work together to protect each other or their habitats, too.
Fish have all kinds of sex, a huge variety of styles. Some fish are hermaphrodites, with the ability to change their gender back and forth during their lifetime at will. Some males raise the children alone because Mom leaves after birthing, others jointly share the care for the babes, and a lot of fish parents desert the children completely before they hatch from eggs. Some fish never lay their eggs outside their bodies, but the eggs hatch inside, with the strongest baby eating the others until it's ready to exit mom's body!
The author includes how civilizations of the past thought of fish, as well as how they fished. Generally, coastal communities and fishermen used to only take what they needed for food, using mostly nondestructive methods of the environment, unlike today. François speaks of how communities came together over the shared communal enjoyment of seafood. He also describes the various sea monsters travelers thought they encountered while going about in boats. He really wishes some of those monsters were real. Of course, some of them did turn out to exist to the surprise of many modern scientists!
The book has a lot of little quickie and interesting facts, mostly organized into appropriate chapters. For a lyrical, and often sweetly anecdotal, book, the author manages to cover a lot of ground!
Fish are weird and lovable, basically. Too bad we have killed off at least 80% of them that we found out about in history up to current times. People are yet discovering new species underwater in very deep places though. Poor things. We certainly will attempt to kill them off into extinction for profit if we can figure out how. This is purely my viewpoint. The author does not really do any sniping or whinging on as I just did except to briefly note in passing, and in more of a reasoned adult tone than I am, of how industrial fishing is both too genocidal to fish and it does not encourage any old-fashioned communal human bliss of sharing and caring as it once did. Instead, we've become greedy and selfish pigs, imho. Have you read about the price, and consequent overfishing, of bluefin tuna or some wild salmon species lately in some markets? Are there any cod left in the world? Anyway. This is not that book. It is sweet and interesting and kindly done.
The chapters are:
-Before
-Any Fish Will Tell You So
-The World Without Silence
-Packed Like Sardines
-Are Fish Good at School?
-Cockles and Mussels
-Daily Specials
-Draw Me a Fish
-Hold and Eel by the Tale
-Sea Serpents
-The Sea is Your Mirror
-Aquatic Dialogues
-In Tune with the Tuna
-The Tail End
-Epilogue
When François was a child, he had an encounter with a sick sardine while he was seeing what was in the tide pools and looking at whatever the waves brought onto the beach. He wasn't the only living thing on the beach that was looking. The sardine looked up at him after he captured it in a net and placed it into his pail. He realized suddenly the sardine had had an existence, a life of adventures underwater, growing up, learning. How do ocean creatures communicate? Do they think, feel, have families?
His curiosity led him to research the sardines and other fish, beginning with learning how to snorkel.
One of the first things he discovered was that the underwater world was noisy. Fish do talk! A lot! Their sounds are extraordinary and weird. Are they communicating? Yes, there are sounds of warnings and alerts, discerned from seeing how the fish behave when hunting or being hunted. He has since learned fish can smell scents and odors from many miles away. We readers know about sharks and blood of course, but there is much more than that being smelled and understood by different fish of all types - scents about sex, dangers, stress. Next, many fish have powerful abilities to see colors, so they use colors to attract other fish and to disguise themselves. Some can adjust their skin to display different colors in order to signal their own species as well as warn or hide from other species. Some can create strong electric fields intentionally to kill, while others can sense and identify what kind of fish is emitting the usual delicate and normal electrical fields of life. It is thought by some researchers fish can sense magnetic fields. Plus, vibrations! Many fish can sense and know what a particular vibration in the water means.
People have worked with dolphins to hunt. We know about the military training dolphins. But I didn't know dolphins in the past noticed how tribal men fished, and on their own formed partnerships with certain fishermen to show men where certain schools of fish were in order to share in the goodies of men's hunts for fish! Some ocean fish hunters also collaborate with other fish to hunt down quarry. Fish work together to protect each other or their habitats, too.
Fish have all kinds of sex, a huge variety of styles. Some fish are hermaphrodites, with the ability to change their gender back and forth during their lifetime at will. Some males raise the children alone because Mom leaves after birthing, others jointly share the care for the babes, and a lot of fish parents desert the children completely before they hatch from eggs. Some fish never lay their eggs outside their bodies, but the eggs hatch inside, with the strongest baby eating the others until it's ready to exit mom's body!
The author includes how civilizations of the past thought of fish, as well as how they fished. Generally, coastal communities and fishermen used to only take what they needed for food, using mostly nondestructive methods of the environment, unlike today. François speaks of how communities came together over the shared communal enjoyment of seafood. He also describes the various sea monsters travelers thought they encountered while going about in boats. He really wishes some of those monsters were real. Of course, some of them did turn out to exist to the surprise of many modern scientists!
The book has a lot of little quickie and interesting facts, mostly organized into appropriate chapters. For a lyrical, and often sweetly anecdotal, book, the author manages to cover a lot of ground!
Fish are weird and lovable, basically. Too bad we have killed off at least 80% of them that we found out about in history up to current times. People are yet discovering new species underwater in very deep places though. Poor things. We certainly will attempt to kill them off into extinction for profit if we can figure out how. This is purely my viewpoint. The author does not really do any sniping or whinging on as I just did except to briefly note in passing, and in more of a reasoned adult tone than I am, of how industrial fishing is both too genocidal to fish and it does not encourage any old-fashioned communal human bliss of sharing and caring as it once did. Instead, we've become greedy and selfish pigs, imho. Have you read about the price, and consequent overfishing, of bluefin tuna or some wild salmon species lately in some markets? Are there any cod left in the world? Anyway. This is not that book. It is sweet and interesting and kindly done.
The chapters are:
-Before
-Any Fish Will Tell You So
-The World Without Silence
-Packed Like Sardines
-Are Fish Good at School?
-Cockles and Mussels
-Daily Specials
-Draw Me a Fish
-Hold and Eel by the Tale
-Sea Serpents
-The Sea is Your Mirror
-Aquatic Dialogues
-In Tune with the Tuna
-The Tail End
-Epilogue
Nunca imaginei que um livro sobre peixes pudesse ser tão filosófico e lírico
informative
lighthearted
slow-paced
I'm left wondering "how" and "why" to many things mentioned in the book. Maybe I should've just bought a textbook instead
I received this book (English translation) free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
As the full title does suggest, this book is more a memoir of the sea, the author's exploration of his interactions with the ocean - both as a citizen scientist (he's a physicist with a deep interest in marine biology. Which, TBH, is where I fall, but with *far* less ocean time) and as a human who consumes food and does tourism. I assume carrying over from the original, the translation is very lyrical and successfully evokes the imagery the author's getting at. Including, yes, herring farts. (They're important!)
While I did enjoy these glimpses and descriptions, I tend a bit more technical - for instance, "sardine" at least in my understanding (American English) is a generic term for fish below a certain size, so I would've liked to know which species were included. I don't recall it being mentioned here. Likewise with some of the anecdotes, for instance the people who explore the Paris waterways for fish, more history and background would've been interesting. Of course, it'd also get you a much longer book, but look that is one of many benefits of reading a digital copy. :P
I think overall the translator did a good job bringing his voice through. I do think there's some cultural nuance in phrasing, so worth keeping in mind this was originally written for a Francophone audience. I don't want to say I'm fancy enough to pick up on the dry humor where others might miss it, but, well, that too.
If you're interested in getting impressions of what a well-informed marine enthusiast observes, as well as some fascinating if scattered trivia - from Old Tom to the aforementioned farts - definitely give this a read.
As the full title does suggest, this book is more a memoir of the sea, the author's exploration of his interactions with the ocean - both as a citizen scientist (he's a physicist with a deep interest in marine biology. Which, TBH, is where I fall, but with *far* less ocean time) and as a human who consumes food and does tourism. I assume carrying over from the original, the translation is very lyrical and successfully evokes the imagery the author's getting at. Including, yes, herring farts. (They're important!)
While I did enjoy these glimpses and descriptions, I tend a bit more technical - for instance, "sardine" at least in my understanding (American English) is a generic term for fish below a certain size, so I would've liked to know which species were included. I don't recall it being mentioned here. Likewise with some of the anecdotes, for instance the people who explore the Paris waterways for fish, more history and background would've been interesting. Of course, it'd also get you a much longer book, but look that is one of many benefits of reading a digital copy. :P
I think overall the translator did a good job bringing his voice through. I do think there's some cultural nuance in phrasing, so worth keeping in mind this was originally written for a Francophone audience. I don't want to say I'm fancy enough to pick up on the dry humor where others might miss it, but, well, that too.
If you're interested in getting impressions of what a well-informed marine enthusiast observes, as well as some fascinating if scattered trivia - from Old Tom to the aforementioned farts - definitely give this a read.