Recent reading
Apr. 19th, 2018 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaSecond-hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich (2013, audiobook in English)
Er, I didn't quite finish this, though I did finish the other two that I've read of hers. This one I listened to as an audiobook in English, the other two I read as books in Swedish. I actually thought it worked really well as an audiobook with multiple readers, though, and the book itself was very good. It's just that it was so long, and I felt like it was starting to repeat itself a little. My main take-away is just how non-homogeneous a country can be, with so many different life stories and opinions and feelings.
Messages From Islands by Ilkka Hanski (2016)
When I was complaining about E. O. Wilson's Half-Earth, this is the book I should've read instead. Hanski was a leading researcher in ecology and biodiversity, according to Wikipedia the seventh most cited ecologist in the world. I have friends who met him (he engaged with the environmental movement, and Finland is close to Sweden) but I never did. This is his book about biodiversity, how it works, and why we should care about it. There was some stuff I already knew that I skimmed past, but also a lot of interesting science that I didn't know. The book is very well structured, with chapters about different topics, each illustrated by an island where Hanski did research.
Funny how Wilson's book is more radical (suggests protecting 50% of ecosystems) but also so much worse about motivating why and giving the scientific background. Hanski's is more conservative (he has a concept he calls "a third of a third", that is, having conservation landscapes on a third of the land area, where a third is protected within each landscape) but also so much better in many ways. But it's not that Hanski thinks this is actually enough to save biodiversity--it's more that he wants something that has more of a chance of actually happening. I guess it's the choice between watering down your message yourself, or letting other people water it down for you.
Er, I didn't quite finish this, though I did finish the other two that I've read of hers. This one I listened to as an audiobook in English, the other two I read as books in Swedish. I actually thought it worked really well as an audiobook with multiple readers, though, and the book itself was very good. It's just that it was so long, and I felt like it was starting to repeat itself a little. My main take-away is just how non-homogeneous a country can be, with so many different life stories and opinions and feelings.
Messages From Islands by Ilkka Hanski (2016)
When I was complaining about E. O. Wilson's Half-Earth, this is the book I should've read instead. Hanski was a leading researcher in ecology and biodiversity, according to Wikipedia the seventh most cited ecologist in the world. I have friends who met him (he engaged with the environmental movement, and Finland is close to Sweden) but I never did. This is his book about biodiversity, how it works, and why we should care about it. There was some stuff I already knew that I skimmed past, but also a lot of interesting science that I didn't know. The book is very well structured, with chapters about different topics, each illustrated by an island where Hanski did research.
Funny how Wilson's book is more radical (suggests protecting 50% of ecosystems) but also so much worse about motivating why and giving the scientific background. Hanski's is more conservative (he has a concept he calls "a third of a third", that is, having conservation landscapes on a third of the land area, where a third is protected within each landscape) but also so much better in many ways. But it's not that Hanski thinks this is actually enough to save biodiversity--it's more that he wants something that has more of a chance of actually happening. I guess it's the choice between watering down your message yourself, or letting other people water it down for you.
