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A review by mfeezell
Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone by Juli Berwald
informative
lighthearted
slow-paced
1.0
This book really grated me in ways that I'm not even sure how to explain fully, and it sucks because I spent so much of my reading experience wanting to like it so bad and just coming away frustrated. The parts that are just about science are relatively interesting; the author interviews a lot of fascinating researchers for this book, and while there's a lot of pages taken up trying to make them into characters rather than listening to the words they're saying, I can live with that. Its a popsci book, not a textbook. What I can't live with is everything else that accompanies the mildly interesting science about jellyfish: from the author's weird diatribes about her ex-boyfriend to the anecdotes where this author (who is a professional scientist!) seems to only barely understand climate change (including one of my biggest pet peeves of focusing on "overpopulation" and not once even hinting at global capitalism), to even stranger comments about poor people and fatness that you would NOT expect from a book about jellyfish. There's also an incredibly frutrating section about the nuclear bombing of Japan where the author incorrectly claims that the bombs led to Japan's surrender (its a common misconception that I wouldn't expect most Americans to know is wrong, but if you're going to put it in a published book, I expect just a crumb of fact-checking PLEASE).
But honestly, even with all of that, I was planning on giving this book 2 or 3 stars- until I got to the multi-chapter anecdote near the end of the book about the author's visit to the "beautiful ocean paradise" of Israel. Everything about these chapters was horrific and willfully ignorant, with Palestine not even mentioned once, just the "turmoil" from surrounding Arab countries (including Jordan???). The kicker for me was that the supposed message I was supposed to take away from these chapters was how Israeli marine protected areas, which were put in place after MULTIPLE oil spills in the 80s from Israeli tankers, are some kind of beacon of hope for the ocean. I hope I don't have to explain the depths of dramatic irony about this to most people.
But honestly, even with all of that, I was planning on giving this book 2 or 3 stars- until I got to the multi-chapter anecdote near the end of the book about the author's visit to the "beautiful ocean paradise" of Israel. Everything about these chapters was horrific and willfully ignorant, with Palestine not even mentioned once, just the "turmoil" from surrounding Arab countries (including Jordan???). The kicker for me was that the supposed message I was supposed to take away from these chapters was how Israeli marine protected areas, which were put in place after MULTIPLE oil spills in the 80s from Israeli tankers, are some kind of beacon of hope for the ocean. I hope I don't have to explain the depths of dramatic irony about this to most people.