Reviews

Beastly: A New History of Animals and Us by Keggie Carew

hanthomas's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

bluemint23's review against another edition

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5.0

This book is brimming with the author's passion. Her love for animals shines through and helps to make this a dazzling read. Absolutely recommend everyone to read this!

acejolras's review against another edition

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emotional informative slow-paced

2.0

What an absolute slog. It was marketed as pop science but was really a series of meandering essays about human damage to the environment and the evils of factory farming. There was no real organization or throughline, so it felt more like an unedited collection of passionate blog posts. 

The author clearly has an agenda, which she does at least acknowledge up front, but her anti-science bias (especially in a post-COVID world) made me skeptical of all her claims. I get her thrust that we know bad things are happening and tackling them on an emotional level is a valid way of trying to affect change, but she dismisses scientific study at every turn. It’s clear she thinks of herself as An Artist and has no time for the structure of scientific research, but as someone interested in science, this meant I really had little time for her. But she conveniently had no problem citing scientific studies when they were available to support her points. 

eyelit's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

madhamster's review against another edition

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challenging dark hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

3.75

backpackfullofbooks's review against another edition

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Lost interest 

smdyer87's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

dizzar's review against another edition

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challenging hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

I'm glad I read this as an audiobook because I just cannot with non-fiction. That said I did like that each section was short and snappy but we did return to an overarching narrative to tie everything together. It was interesting, though I did think it was longer than it ended up being. My main critique is that some parts did feel preachy (albeit justifiably) and I feel like some of parts I wanted to fact check as I feel we're not being told the whole picture (the bees section particularly sticks out to me). Worth a read though. 

talia_richland's review against another edition

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informative medium-paced

2.5

taleisin's review against another edition

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hopeful informative inspiring medium-paced

4.0