Page-Turner

In the Page-Turner blog of The New Yorker James Guida says that The Book of Barely Imagined Beings

is about earth’s adventure as a whole...much of the news is abysmally sad. Should one be completely frank and insistent about this great tragedy, keep stressing the dimensions of what is being undone? Or will bright facts about the animal world, working indirectly, better aid the cause of action? Wisely, Henderson combines approaches. In that regard, he’s a bit like the honey badger [which] flourishes due to its insane strength and tenacity but also thanks to a fellow hive-seeking partner: a small bird, who lightly leads the way.

Librarians go wild

The verdict in the May 15 edition of Library Journal:

This readable volume...will appeal to the serious reader with broad interests in science, mythology, folklore, and speculation on questions of the human condition.

Reviews

In an interview with Sharon Blackie in Issue 4 of Earthlines, Robert Macfarlane says:

Caspar Henderson's The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is a marvelously inventive, witty, and ethically serious compendium-grimoire-spell book-dream vision, whose many virtues I can neither evoke nor exhaust here.

In a capsule review for the Boston Globe, Kate Tutle calls it a "strange and lovely book."

Hilary at Vulpes Libris says Beings is:

wonderful to dip into...There are many pleasures to take from this book. As well as being erudite and beautifully and thoughtfully written, it is a gorgeous piece of book production as well... I absolutely loved it.

Review by Nicola Baird

In a review for Friends of the Earth, Nicola Baird says:

...Once you start reading The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, it becomes hard to stop......It's a book you will want to reread but may be hard to share.

..it is easy for those who care for the planet to be close to despair...Step forward The Book of Barely Imagined Beings - essential Earth-affirming reading, and a superb celebration of biodiversity.

Recommended by Scientific American

Scientific American recommends the forthcoming U.S. edition of The Book of Barely Imagined Beings.

Review in Cosmos

Rivqa Rafael writes:

Henderson’s writing is engaging, descriptive and often drily humorous...

[He] is a Wallace for our time, delighting in the strange and beautiful creatures that nature has to offer. In describing them, he draws from literature and scientists both old and new, as well as coining some wonderful phrases of his own.

[This] modern bestiary is a book to read and treasure in hardcover if ever there was one.

Review in Publisher's Weekly

A starred review from Publisher's Weekly is the first US review of the forthcoming Chicago University Press edition:

...[the author uses] an oddly anthropomorphic argument to abandon anthropomorphism, but as exotic salamanders and transparent octopi give way to miniscule water bears, whiskered owlets, and the honey badger, Henderson’s contagious awe of life effortlessly advances his argument. The captivating habits of these beings are given significant scientific backbone, before digressing into a free-flowing discourse.

"Book of the Week"

...at The Book Depository (25 Feb):




P.S. On 3 March: Cara Fielder for Waterstone's Blog chose Barely Imagined Beings as one of her top ten for Mother's Day

Futerra review

Ed Gillespie writes that The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is:

a book of genuinely big ideas, grappling with everything from extinction to climate change, the challenging context mollified by the delight and affection that pours from the page for the sheer exuberant, improbable wonder of the natural world. Having bought a copy for my girlfriend, I then bought another for Futerra and one for my Dad for Christmas…it really is that kind of ‘must read’ book...

...the craft, love and patience dedicated to the book shine through for the reader. It is a joyous celebration of our fleeting individual ‘instagram’ moment in evolutionary history. It hits the sweetspot of sustainability communications, marrying science with story, using the ‘poetry of facts’ that are beautiful, striking and often jaw-dropping...

Bravos for Beings

What do you want? A medal?

Praise for The Book of Barely Imagined Beings includes the following:

"Spell-binding, brilliantly executed, extraordinary." – The Guardian
"Magnificent, bravura, astoundingly interesting, beautiful." – The Sunday Times 
"Unquestionably one of the best books of the year." – The Scotsman 
"A top title of the year." – The Irish Times
"An enlightening, beautifully produced book." – The Financial Times
"Book of the year." – Academic Department, Blackwell's Bookshop Oxford
"Clear and lucid, synoptic, nuanced, engrossing, fact-filled yet poetic. Excellent." – The Literary Review 
"Captivating, fabulous, a bounce to the writing, infectious enthusiasm, a lovely book with many charms." – The Sunday Telegraph

Review in The Guardian

Gavin Francis writes:

[This is] a spellbinding book that seeks to astonish us with the sheer intricacy, diversity and multiplicity of life forms that share our planet...

the 27 brilliantly executed [chapters].. are essays in the original, Montaignesque sense of the word...the reader is often treated to rocambolesque free-association, to rival that of Laurence Sterne or Robert Burton...[the] marginalia are like arpeggios on the chords that move through the symphony of the book. None is essential, but each of them adds to the harmony of the whole. I marked up so many in my own copy that when I finished it, I began again reading only in the margins...

this reviewer applauds [the author's] ambition, and [an] extraordinary book

Review in The Sunday Times

James McConnaghie's review of "this magnificent bestiary" is the cover story of the books section in this week's Sunday Times. He says:

...the true literary ambition and inspiration that motivates [the] astoundingly interesting essays [in this book] is the freewheeling philosophical writing of...Montaigne.

bravura [essays]...exuberantly learned, [this] book...is much more than a basic bestiary. Physically, it is beautiful...Politically, it is decidedly green, but Henderson prefers lyricism to anguished howling...There is as much about the future as the past...

Eileen Battersby at The Irish Times includes Barely Imagined Beings among her Top titles from a reading year.

(Image of Ichthyostega by Nobu Tamura)

Review in The Independent

There is a review by James Attlee in The Independent of The Book of Barely Imagined Beings:

...Henderson hopes to prompt a sense of responsibility as well as wonder... [This] extended paean to nature's creativity leaves us with a sense of unfinished business rather than inevitable doom.

"Book of the year" - The Scotsman

The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is "unquestionably one of the best books of the year" writes Bella Bathurst (who previously reviewed it here).  Jackie Kay also selects Barely Imagined Beings: "another wonder."

Last week The Independent selected Beings as one of the "best Christmas presents for the bookish."

Writing in Bath Life on 30 November, Nic Bottomley of Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights selected Barely Imagined Beings as one of two published this year that "knocks the socks of most others in terms of beauty of production and as a gift for a very wide range of recipients...The detailed cultural and natural history of each animals is engaging and accessible." The book's "stunning appearance"...will make it a "huge hit."

FT review

In a micro-review in The Financial Times, Carl Wilkinson describes The Book of Barely Imagined Beings as "an enlightening, beautifully produced book that challenges man’s perception of the natural world."

"Book of the year"

Euan Hirst, Academic Manager at Blackwell's Bookshop in Oxford, chooses The Book of Barely Imagined Beings as his book of the year.

Three more reviews

Review by Anthony Davies in Ham and High (18 October):

The overall impact is stunning. It is a fine and accessible work of scholarship ... To peruse this bestiary is to begin to learn of the extraordinary variety of life forms and to touch on beings far more beautiful, intricate and fascinating than many of the man-made artefacts deriving from the world of visual arts. Henderson hopes that the Bestiary he has devised has deep lessons for the future of mankind. It is to be hoped he is right.

The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is BBC Wildlife's book of the month for November. Tom Jackson writes:

This beautifully produced resurrection of the bestiary, or compendium of animals, is a triumph ... Caspar Henderson’s update is just as imaginative and elegantly conceived [as its Medieval counterparts]: the delightful difference is that the [27] beasts within are real ... Rewarding in all measures, from an idle browse to an immersive page turn, this is zoological writing at its very best.

In BBC Focus Professor Jenny Clack writes:

From macaques to morality, salamanders to smallpox, sea urchins to symmetry and worms to warfare, the author guides you along so smoothly that you won't notice how he got where he was going. More than just a ‘bestiary’, Henderson’s reflections about animals are always thoughtful and entertaining and often challenging.

Review by Philip Hoare

In the Literary Review, Philip Hoare says The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is:

[a] magnificent new compendium... [Caspar Henderson writes] with clear vision and lucid citation, but also with a marked compassion... [His] eye is unerring, while his writing is often witty and always revealing. Marshalling an extraordinary body of knowledge, from scientific papers to archaic manuscripts, through 'deep time' to the origins of life itself, he presents a synoptic, nuanced view of nature. ...[an] engrossing, fact-filled yet poetic book is an excellent attempt to understand the nature of the gulf between [humans and other animals].

Not bad for no desman

From a review by Roy Wilkinson for Caught by the River:

The Book Of Barely Imagined Beings is a kind of rationalist, scientific spin on the the crazed bestiaries that captivated the Middle Ages...at least decades’ worth of accumulated wonder, insight and intrigue...[the book is a] brilliant web of thought-provoking detail...the chapter specimens have been compiled carefully – fascinating in their own right but also leading into wider topics...persuasively non-didactic...very likeable...at the very least, one of 2012’s most remarkable books on the natural world.

Review by Bella Bathurst

In The Daily Telegraph Bella Bathurst writes that The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is:

captivating...a collection as fabulous as anything Borges ever conceived...

...What stops this from becoming a conventional zoological doom-fest is the bounce of [the] writing and the breadth of [the] knowledge.

...[the] omnivorous enthusiasm for this world is infectious. One of the many charms of this lovely book is [the] skill in picking quotes from everything and everyone who might better illustrate [a] point, from Billy Connolly to Werner Herzog.

Earlier reviews here and here.

The pot-bellied gravyboat, fathead congregant and lawless dawn-nymph are diatoms, and among the '100 All Time Diatom Greats.' There was not enough space to list them all in the book, but I have done so here.

P.S. Also today, a review by James Cartwright at It's Nice That.