Owned: No, library Page count: 285 My summary: Considering how large the oceans of the world are, it is strange how comparatively little we know about them. But now, we can dive into the depths to explore the strange and wonderful creatures that can be found beneath the waves, from walking sharks to giant whales to flying fish. My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

My first non-fiction book of the year! And this one’s a bit of fun. It’s basically the adult equivalent to those books you get as a kid with 1001 fun facts about the ocean - adult because it mentions things like the Latin names for the creatures, talks about people getting eaten by sea predators, and also talks about penises. I don’t think that’d fly in the kid versions. It feels a lot like an overview of these creatures and the weird things about them, but that’s entirely welcome for the kind of book this is. I didn’t really expect anything that in-depth going in.

What I appreciated, though, is that Bright had a lot of humour about the facts he related. He calls a particular shark species ‘a cutie’, he defends sharks against the idea that they are mindless killers while still acknowledging how sometimes sharks have been known to attack and kill humans, he gives a bit of personality to the facts which is very much appreciated. A few chapters are dedicated to dissecting the story of Jonah and the whale and whether that’s actually plausible, examining stories of people being swallowed by sea creatures and whether they, in themselves, are likely to have been real. It’s interesting, and I feel like I got a lot of little facts from this to research later. Would very much recommend!

The Twilight Experiment #6

The Twilight Experiment #1 (2005)

The Twilight Experiment TPB (2005)