Expert Week! This week participants can choose to 1) Be the Expert and recommend books on a topic that they have enjoyed 2) Ask the Expert and request books on a topic you want to learn more about or 3) Become the Expert and create your own list of books on a topic. This year, I opted for number three, become the expert! And I think I have a “whaley” good topic!
So if you couldn’t figure it out by my really bad dad joke, the topic I chose was whales! I have seen the book Fathoms: The World in the Whale by Rebecca Giggs around for a whole year now, and I know that I want to read it. Because I love whales. Who doesn’t love a whale tale, for that matter? As a teen I was a total Greenpeacer and wanted to save the whales – I mean, I still do. My heart broke for orca Tahlequah, who grieved for her dead calf for 17 days in 2018. (good news, she is a mother again) They are gentle giants of the sea, mysterious, adorable. They have inspired so many legends and stories, good and bad. I dream of going on a whale watch in the next five years. I just really love whales. But I could know more about them.
So, I have created a list of books I want to read to learn more about these magnificent beasts of the deep.
Starting with this one:
Then I have done some looking and reading and made a list of a few more.
And now I will ask you – have you read any of these? What do you think? Do you have any to recommend? I can be very sensitive to animal cruelty so I skipped the Sea World books. But I would love your thoughts on any others!
Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.. 
Enjoy your whales! I like how the challenge gives you topics to pursue.
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Thanks Laurel-Rain!
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What a cool topic! Hope you enjoy all of these reads!
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Thanks Angela!
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I think we are all intrigued with whales. I read several books about whales as I was reading Moby Dick in 2019, including The Whale and Spying on Whales. Fathoms sounds great, too.
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I remember when you read Moby Dick! Did you like The Whale and Spying on Whales?
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There were parts of Fathoms I loved but parts that didn’t quite work for me. Katie @ Doing Dewey loved it and wrote a much better take on it that you might like to read! I did love Philip Hoare’s The Whale though, more even than I expected to. It was really interesting and encompassed so much more than I was expecting it to. Spying on Whales was a DNF for me but I read some really glowing reviews of it, I think it was just me.
I really liked a book that was newly translated from French this year called The Eloquence of the Sardine. It’s part memoir, part natural history, and covers a bit about whales among other sea creatures and fish. The author clearly loves his work as a marine scientist and picks out really telling incidents and stories to talk about our relationship to sea life. I also read a book called Orca by Jason Colby, whose father was one of the orca hunters in Washington and really regretted what he’d done. It was incredibly tough but it was really educational too, and unfortunately I think a lot of the material around humans and whales has to do with how badly we’ve treated them.
Looking forward to see what you read on this topic, it’s such a great one!
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Thanks Rennie for all the input!! I always am unsure picking out nonfiction, since I do DNF quite a few along the way! I will check out the Eloquence of the Sardine, that sounds lovely!
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You get extra points for your excellent joke. Totally not the point, but these covers are all gorgeous!
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Lol!! Thank you!!
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I posted a review of The Whale in the Living Room by John Ruthven recently which I’d recommend though it doesn’t exclusively focus on whales.
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What a cool topic! I love whales! Of course I always think of that one Star Trek movie 😂
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Oh, I love that you chose whales for your topic this week! I love reading about them. Seriously, what amazing creatures. Both The Whale and Spying on Whales are on my TBR pile. Fingers crossed they’re as good as they look.
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Fascinating! Though the only thing I have read about whales is from Moby Dick –as you know, a large section of the book is really biology, not fiction. You might want to revisit it
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