User Profile

The premise and title irk me, but this interview with the author www.ttbook.org/interview/modern-parenting-tips-ancient-civilizations and the introduction set a good tone of seeking and humility in current cultural alternative-to-American parenting approaches, we'll see.

Historical drama of struggle and battles and intrigue and a gender-complicated cast vying for their place in the world and power... hints of fantastical and fanatical possibilities to come, but this was slow and violent for me.

Dark humor from below, a grimly magical adventure in a familiar but inventive world.

Nerdy and approachably thorough, the level of structural and social development of these ants (millions to a nest!) is astoundingly conveyed in short picture-filled chapters.

Expanding the author's prior investigation into "wild" (airquoted throughout) space and rejecting the line between human and nature, she philosophically and environmentally unpacks what obligations we have to animals and species - in her view, mistaken valuing of "naturalness" and "species genetic purity" (reflecting colonial inflected categorization) rather than autonomy and ecosystem diversity - through location reporting on zoos and conservation projects, eradication campaigns and captive breeding. Well summed up in the suggestion that rather than de-extincting woolly mammoths, we coexist with nature in new ways such that we can imagine elephants able to migrate over the next ten thousand years to occupy places where they would adapt with hairy coats.

Second read, the sense of absurdist normalcy around incomprehensible change drives every scene and is just gripping.

Consistently strong interior stories of women reaching for meaning and connection.

Just a factoid [cite is Jackson, Stephen T. 2013].

Available for "free" (in exchange for submitting an email address) download for the next few days from ebookclub.tor.com/

EDIT: after posting I realized it is restricted to US / Canada. Welp, I guess I might not have posted if I saw that the first time.

Re-read after many years for bookclub.