Reviews with content warning for Racism - I pesci non esistono

If you like reading about science and taxonomy, this would be a good book for you. If you’re loosely interested, maybe you would as well. I am not interested in these subjects but the way the author tied the subjects into her own story about life and how the universe is not as it seems… well I was interested to know why fish don’t exist. It was good book! Definitely not what I was expecting but it was enlightening and relaxing.

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alexisvana's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful informative inspiring fast-paced

5.0

Probably my favorite book of the year so far (I know it's early, but it was truly fantastic). The way Miller revealed elements of the story was so... I have no idea how to describe it, but I was hooked. Fascinating and deeply human.

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kathleendayle's review against another edition

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emotional reflective fast-paced

4.0

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garfguy7's review against another edition

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informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

this was wonderful. genuinely so INTERESTING - but yes, as a fan of radiolab i can say the pacing and tone was kind of an odd replica. there’s a bit of millennial humour but not enough to be noticeably annoying. i was captivated by the idea that fish don’t actually exist about a year ago, but didn’t delve into it. this book makes me want to pursue marine biology seriously. maybe i’ll have more to say about this later but i do wanna say: i think the author waited so long to reveal that jordan was a eugenicist to illustrate her point without giving us a bad preconceived notion about the guy. the point is that he engages in eugenics in a horrific attempt at controlling the “ladder” of supremacy as far as i can tell. it’s all about control and detrimental categorization, trying to make sense of things

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ehmannky's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

I truly did not know what to expect with this book, but on the whole I thought it was a fine memoir/biography with a little bit of science sprinkled in. I don't think it's particularly mindblowing and I think it's definitely overhyped, but overall it was fine. I didn't know anything about David Star Jordan, and now know he was an awful eugenicist (and honestly odd to sort of have that be a Big Reveal when it's in the intro paragraph to his wikipedia page) who probably had Jane Stanford murdered for rightfully trying to get him to face consequences. The best parts of the book are Miller's interviews with survivors of the sterilization program and the bit about taxonomy at the end.

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imogenclendinning's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

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grey_jayne's review against another edition

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emotional informative mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

3.75

I think the hype got to me on this one. It's good but I found it too meandering from the central premise at times. I did enjoy listening to it read by the author tho...and how she shared her queerness. Worth checking out.

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