#david grann

Owned?: No, library Page count: 334 My summary: Tales of the weird, the obsessed, the bizarre, and the foolish. Meet a man who is trying his best to capture a giant squid, a man who died in mysterious circumstances linked to the legacy of the Sherlock Holmes stories, the men who are trying to build New York's water pipes, and many more in this collection of essays. My rating: 3.5/5 My commentary:

This was a weird one. I feel like I say that a lot about the books I read, but it is nonetheless true. I picked it up at a library I was covering at; the subject matter intrigued me, and I liked The Wager, one of the author's previous books. As such, I didn't really know what to expect, but what I got was decidedly not what I thought I was going to. As it turns out, each chapter in this book is a different essay written by the author, most of them previously published in newspapers or online, each loosely grouped with the theme of obsession. The subject matters of these essays are broad, ranging from more true crime material about gangs and murder to stories like the men burrowing underneath New York or the man with the giant squid. I'm genuinely torn over this. On the one hand, all of the essays were really gripping, really well written, and really engaging. It was a bit of a mental switch to go between them; I ended up reading this book more chapter-by-chapter, which in fairness is probably how it was meant to be read. There's some solid writing here, and each individual story was interesting in itself.

The thing is that, as a collection, it didn't really have a lot of cohesion or gel into something larger. The essays were largely unconnected to each other, and it really did just feel like they were being published together kind of arbitrarily. Like I say, it takes a bit of a mental switch to get you from reading about a man's possible murder, possible s-ic-de and then go onto giant squid guy. And I liked giant squid guy! The essays also seemed somewhat outdated - the book was originally published in 2010, but even with that in mind, some were 'set' more in the early noughties. Again, a relic of the fact that most of these had been published elsewhere first, but still. I don't know. I did like it overall, but I felt as though the essays could have been better curated. The title would lead you to think this is a true crime book, and parts of it are, but other parts definitely aren't in a way that felt a little misleading. Like I said, I liked the book, just…not wholly.

If towards the end of winter, one is inclined to read a dark, disturbing, very well written book about what is now a silver of history but at the time produced multiple bestsellers which influenced Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Melville this book is for you. The English poet Lord Byron, the grandson of John Byron a midshipman whose account about The Wager Affair deeply affected the poet even though he never met his grandfather.

It is an account of imperialistic hubris which through the lens of time, one can clearly see how desperate humans devolve after a shipwreck into mutiny and murder.

The book was lent to me by our older daughter. Even though we are both fans of David Grann a staff writer at The New Yorker, she could not finish the book which is very dark.

Not my typical book but it seemed to have a lot of hype behind it. And as this is my historical fiction/non-fiction year, I thought I'd give it a go.