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A review by courtofsmutandstuff
The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World by Patrik Svensson
informative
4.0
Eels are fucking weird y'all.
I picked this up because of a TikTok where a girl was info dumping about how eels can only reproduce in the Sargasso Sea and I went very quickly from 1) OMG how cool/weird, 2) that can't possibly be true, 3) there's a book?! I must read it.
The Eel Question is intriguing, and before that TikTok and this book I had no idea that eels had such an interesting life cycle: they spawn in the Sargasso Sea, travel up the Atlantic to either North America or Europe (though Svensson is mostly concerned with the European variant), then go through several Pokemon type stages of evolution, before the final, sexually mature version grows reproductive organs and travels back to the Sargasso Sea to reproduce and then die shortly thereafter. Svensson talks about several famous people (including of all people Sigmund Freud) who studied eels, and it's incredibly interesting (I particularly liked the depth and breadth he had of subjects, including his focus on Aristotle, Freud, Schmidt, and Carson).
Svensson also alternates the scientific chapters with more memoir-esc chapters about fishing for eels with his father (and later his family in general), which has sweet moments and provides a nice contrast. However, if you were looking for a purely scientific book, you may be frustrated by the alternating chapters that are more about spending time with his father and eel fishing techniques than the scientific aspect of eels. I enjoy memoirs so it wasn't a dealbreaker for me.
There are also some incredibly poetic passages as well, and the voice of the book is nice. The audiobook narrator was good as well.
This is a solid book to pick up if you would like to learn about a completely unique animal.
I picked this up because of a TikTok where a girl was info dumping about how eels can only reproduce in the Sargasso Sea and I went very quickly from 1) OMG how cool/weird, 2) that can't possibly be true, 3) there's a book?! I must read it.
The Eel Question is intriguing, and before that TikTok and this book I had no idea that eels had such an interesting life cycle: they spawn in the Sargasso Sea, travel up the Atlantic to either North America or Europe (though Svensson is mostly concerned with the European variant), then go through several Pokemon type stages of evolution, before the final, sexually mature version grows reproductive organs and travels back to the Sargasso Sea to reproduce and then die shortly thereafter. Svensson talks about several famous people (including of all people Sigmund Freud) who studied eels, and it's incredibly interesting (I particularly liked the depth and breadth he had of subjects, including his focus on Aristotle, Freud, Schmidt, and Carson).
Svensson also alternates the scientific chapters with more memoir-esc chapters about fishing for eels with his father (and later his family in general), which has sweet moments and provides a nice contrast. However, if you were looking for a purely scientific book, you may be frustrated by the alternating chapters that are more about spending time with his father and eel fishing techniques than the scientific aspect of eels. I enjoy memoirs so it wasn't a dealbreaker for me.
There are also some incredibly poetic passages as well, and the voice of the book is nice. The audiobook narrator was good as well.
This is a solid book to pick up if you would like to learn about a completely unique animal.
Content Warnings
Minor: Death of parent