This is the next in my famous " The Worst" series .... we've had the worst bird book for young people, the worst " big UK year" book and the worst "Newspaper Nature Notes". But today we're having The Worst "World Big Year" ..... and there it is ..... I really didn't like this book at all. Not only is is FAR TOO LONG, it's also in VERY SMALL print. To me, it was just an endless stream of flights, hire cars, expensive meals, billions of "local guides", birds ticked and another bird ticked and then three more birds ticked, more meals, more cars, more flights, more people, more local experts to lead them to the birds ... and there was reams and reams of totally nothing-to-do-with-anything pointless sidelines that just made the book longer and longer. It all reeked of money, privilege, more money ...... it got on my nerves. Have I mentioned the tiny print ? It made "The Big Year" that I wrote about a few posts ago seem almost like a trip to the local park. And I'm not the only person who didn't like it. Here's what the two Amazon reviewers had to say ... Person A .... I have had this for a couple of weeks. After I started it I feared the worst, and now I think I'm not going to make it. "We went to place {a} and we met person {b} with whom we saw {d,e,f} and {anecdote} happened. After this our total was {x}. Repeat. Sorry, I love birds and I love travel, but even though I can share the experiences of scoring, dipping, and any number of birding-related {anecdote} I now know that I can't share those things on a loop at the pace of a book. I suspect the book's biggest value to me is that I also now know I probably couldn't enjoy what the authors did either, much as it might appeal at first sight - so I have that to thank them for at least. It all became less meaningful as time went on, as I suspect it might in reality (for me). I also know that if you are going to do it then cultivating professional and personal relationships for a while before the attempt will probably make or break the effort. I enjoyed some of it, but I couldn't take all of it. Person B .... I found this book annoying at times especially when there were inaccuracies. For instance Laguna Medina in Andalucia not far from where I live, was incorrectly spelled. At one stage the maths was incorrect for how many birds remained to be seen. From memory, something like 600 birds remained, but several pages and birds later this figure was now approx 1500 - the correct figure! Even a non birding editor should have spotted that error! However I did not do as one German birding friend did and throw the book in the bin saying "Anybody with two hands and a pair of binoculars could have done the same!" Instead I lent it to my husband, no longer an enthusiastic travelling birder, who said that it made him want to leap on a plane to return to some of his favourite birding spots. As he flatly refuses to do this normally - I travel alone to go birding without a tour company to show me the birds - the book obviously has succeeded on one level. If you are an experienced, hardcore (!) birder, this is probably not for you. Those of you who have birded their locations will notice how many birds they failed to see. Evidence of their lack of initiative was the morning when there was a powercut and so they couldn't charge their recorder for "playback" which in their eyes meant they couldn't go birdwatching!! As somebody who birdwatches without "playback" although I have been known to "pish", this just about summed up their reliability on being shown almost every one of their 4000 birds!! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ One thing I don't know is ,,, is that the only " World Year Tick-Fest Book" ? If it is, it's also the best one. Which would be a bit odd. And ... that was the book that had the FORTY SPOTTED PARDALOPE in it ! Here's the links to some of my previous "Worst Book" selections...
642-the-worst-bird-book-in-the-universe.html 644-the-worst-bird-book-in-the-universe-part-2.html 659-the-worst-foreign-bird-guide.html 665-the-worst-nature-newspaper-column.html
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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