ohnoflora's review against another edition
4.0
A really interesting and engaging potted history of islands that have never existed. A good companion book to [book:Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands|15131305], a potted history of islands that do exist but which you will never visit. Both books cover similar ground: the (Western) urge to explore, discover and claim new land; the desire for mystery, for there to be a corner of the map still a murky blank.
tasmanian_bibliophile's review against another edition
4.0
‘Faced with the sky we imagine gods; faced with the ocean we imagine islands. Absence is terrifying, and so we fill the gaps in our knowledge with invented things. These bring us comfort, but they conflict, too, with our desire for certainty and understanding. And sometimes that desire gives us back the absences we sought to fill.’
In this book, delightfully illustrated by Katie Scott, Malachy Tallack writes about twenty-four islands which were once believed to be real. These islands no longer appear on maps. Some of them were the result of human error, some were the products of imagination, while others were deliberately invented.
Some of the names may be familiar. I’ve heard of Atlantis, Thule, Frisland, The Isles of the Blessed, and Hawaiki. But I don’t remember reading about most of the others. I was intrigued to read about Hufaidh in the Southern Iraq marshes. This is a space which is both real, and mythological. This area, where the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers meet was the ancestral home of the Ma‘dān (the ‘Marsh Arabs’) and was known to European visitors including the explorer Wilfred Thesiger, who visited times during the 1950s, and the writer Gavin Maxwell who travelled there in 1956. It was from these marshes that Gavin Maxwell brought back the otter Mijbil, the subject of his book ‘Ring of Bright Water’. Sadly, most of the marshland has now been destroyed because of action taken by Saddam Hussein at the end of the first Gulf War.
‘Like many such islands, Hufaidh existed in a region bridged between life and death. It was part paradise and part hell, both of this world and of another.’
Atlantis may have been pure invention (thanks, Plato), but in this book Mr Tallack writes of other islands believed to have sunk. Sarah Ann Island in the Pacific (claimed by the USA for its guano deposits) is one such island.
I was amused to read that Bermeja, an island in the Gulf of Mexico, the subject of dispute between the USA and Mexico, was only proven not to exist in 2009. That’s one way to solve territorial disputes.
‘Today the era of new island discoveries is over, and the age of un-discovery is likewise coming to an end.’
I enjoyed reading about these islands, and I especially enjoyed Katie Scott’s marvellous illustrations. While it’s good that improvements in navigation have reduced the uncertainty about which islands exist and where, I liked how uncertainty provided fertile ground for the imagination of mystery.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
In this book, delightfully illustrated by Katie Scott, Malachy Tallack writes about twenty-four islands which were once believed to be real. These islands no longer appear on maps. Some of them were the result of human error, some were the products of imagination, while others were deliberately invented.
Some of the names may be familiar. I’ve heard of Atlantis, Thule, Frisland, The Isles of the Blessed, and Hawaiki. But I don’t remember reading about most of the others. I was intrigued to read about Hufaidh in the Southern Iraq marshes. This is a space which is both real, and mythological. This area, where the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers meet was the ancestral home of the Ma‘dān (the ‘Marsh Arabs’) and was known to European visitors including the explorer Wilfred Thesiger, who visited times during the 1950s, and the writer Gavin Maxwell who travelled there in 1956. It was from these marshes that Gavin Maxwell brought back the otter Mijbil, the subject of his book ‘Ring of Bright Water’. Sadly, most of the marshland has now been destroyed because of action taken by Saddam Hussein at the end of the first Gulf War.
‘Like many such islands, Hufaidh existed in a region bridged between life and death. It was part paradise and part hell, both of this world and of another.’
Atlantis may have been pure invention (thanks, Plato), but in this book Mr Tallack writes of other islands believed to have sunk. Sarah Ann Island in the Pacific (claimed by the USA for its guano deposits) is one such island.
I was amused to read that Bermeja, an island in the Gulf of Mexico, the subject of dispute between the USA and Mexico, was only proven not to exist in 2009. That’s one way to solve territorial disputes.
‘Today the era of new island discoveries is over, and the age of un-discovery is likewise coming to an end.’
I enjoyed reading about these islands, and I especially enjoyed Katie Scott’s marvellous illustrations. While it’s good that improvements in navigation have reduced the uncertainty about which islands exist and where, I liked how uncertainty provided fertile ground for the imagination of mystery.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
geekylou's review against another edition
3.0
Really interesting Book on travelling the oceans and other places finding islands that were basically non existent. Amazing how much of the map we thought we knew is complete fabrication.
geekylou's review against another edition
3.0
Really interesting Book on travelling the oceans and other places finding islands that were basically non existent. Amazing how much of the map we thought we knew is complete fabrication.
dmbleighton's review against another edition
3.0
This title has been provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Tallack’s look at mythical isles in ‘The Un-Discovered Islands’ is oddly timely in the age of Google Maps and Fake News. The short volume explores islands throughout the age of exploration and beyond, paired with lovely illustrations by Katie Scott. I gained plenty of insight into the early practices of cartography and the common causes for such errors. Although the topic is compelling, the cases covered are quite short and I sometimes wished for more information on how the myths developed and continued rather than how they were debunked. That said, this is still a worthwhile and beautiful read for map nerds and travel lovers alike.
‘The Un-Discovered Islands’ is available now through booksellers and libraries large and small.
Tallack’s look at mythical isles in ‘The Un-Discovered Islands’ is oddly timely in the age of Google Maps and Fake News. The short volume explores islands throughout the age of exploration and beyond, paired with lovely illustrations by Katie Scott. I gained plenty of insight into the early practices of cartography and the common causes for such errors. Although the topic is compelling, the cases covered are quite short and I sometimes wished for more information on how the myths developed and continued rather than how they were debunked. That said, this is still a worthwhile and beautiful read for map nerds and travel lovers alike.
‘The Un-Discovered Islands’ is available now through booksellers and libraries large and small.
sarahalyse's review against another edition
5.0
Really interesting essays about different islands and their origins that is also well designed and has beautiful illustrations.
ryner's review against another edition
3.0
I was excited to read this new publication as it's such a neat premise: a history of islands that were once thought to exist, but whose origins have proven mythical, due to navigational or cartographic errors, or wishful thinking. Incredibly, some of these islands have been removed from maps only within the last decade. Though boasting an attractive cover and internal artwork, the book would have been further enhanced by images of some of the erroneous maps showing the islands in question. I also couldn't help but wonder: Many islands have become "un-discovered" with the advent of satellites, but has the reverse occurred? Has satellite technology discovered any islands in a remote part of the world that no humans had encountered previously?
inkylabyrinth's review against another edition
3.0
"Faced with the sky we imagine gods; faced with the ocean we imagine islands. Absence is terrifying, and so we fill the gaps in our knowledge with invented things."
You know that quote of unknown origin floating around the internet that boasts: “we know more about outer space than our oceans”? Well, that’s actually kinda true. Especially if you whittle it down to just our solar system versus Earth’s mysterious salt waters. Even if you consider just the surface of the oceans, we as a species arestill not fully confident of our knowledge of every island, reef, shoal, and the like. There is much we have yet to discover.
Tallack’s The Un-Discovered Islands provides an examination of 24 islands once believed to be real, but have since been removed from modern maps, and most of humankind’s memories. Even as recently as a few decades ago, some islands have been “un-discovered”. While most of these were genuine human errors, there were countless islands made up by nothing else but mens’ egos and greed. (More on that below.)
Tallack describes the history and eventual undoing of islands large and small, all over the globe, in more or less in chronological order. I believe this to be one of the book’s biggest downfalls. We begin in the era of Plato and end up in 2012, but we travel back and forth in history so many times, I felt dizzy. The flow was choppy, and the chapter groupings made little sense to me.
The Un-Discovered Islandsreminded me vaguely of Lore, the podcast created by Aaron Mahnke in the way it is told, which I realize could appeal to many. However, to me, it gave me a similar impression in that it was a lot of random facts mashed together in a disorganized matter, that left me feeling pieces have been left out. Both a promised collection of mystery and wonder that fails to fully deliver.
The main lesson of this book ends up being that a man’s ego is so big, it can make up even masses piece of floating land: fake islands “discovered” in the name of some other rich man’s ego, remaining an error on maps for centuries. There’s nothing mysterious, new, or revolutionary about any of that, as Un-Discovered Islands tries to convince me otherwise with each chapter.
The art, by Katie Scott is fantastic, but annoyingly each piece is repeated twice (at the section introductions and again with each new island).There are full page color spreads of a tiny image blown up on one page. For one island, there is a beautiful narwhal embedded in the text, but there was no mention of narwhals anywhere.
I still learned a lot of interesting facts from this read, and consider it a great starting or jumping off point for further research or curiousity. Other than that, I would search elsewhere if you’re looking for a deep view into mythologies such as Atlantis, and possible mysterious islands of the past.
"For millennia, explorers had edges to reach and to go beyond. They had blanks to fill and terra incognita to discover. [...] There may be no more unknown islands to be found in the world, but perhaps there is another ex-isle still intact, a phantom waiting to be un-discovered. And perhaps we should leave it that way."
((2.5 stars out of 5, rounded up))