The Book of Eels audiobook

I’m surprised by how much I liked this book. My experience with eels is pretty limited. I saw some big ones in a display at Disney World, and they were repulsive-looking. You couldn’t pay me to knowingly eat eel. Other than that, I don’t have much to say about eels. Luckily, Swedish author Patrik Svensson has a lot to say about eels, and it is fascinating. His chapters alternate between explaining the mysteries of eel life and the mysteries of his own life. Going beyond the biological strangeness of the eel, Svensson ponders the eel’s role in mythology, literature, and geopolitics. (Did you know that eels have never been bred in captivity, and no one has ever seen eels mate or reproduce?) The eel’s metamorphosis, migration patterns, and elusive nature form a backdrop for Svennson’s haunting stories about his father, a hard man who liked to catch, cook, and consume eels. It comes down to this: Patrik Svensson is a gifted writer who uses narrative to explore the enigmas that intrigue him, whether they are in the natural world or in his quest to understand himself.

I never thought I would read a book about eels. It’s not a creature that has captured my curiosity. The one time I tried to eat one I found it abhorrent and never tried again.I had no idea all European eels are hatched in the Sargasso Sea, that they travel across twice. That no grown eel, alive or dead, has ever been found there. That eels metamorphose several times. Fascinating! Interspersed between the historical eel and biological facts are chapter about the author and his father fishing for eels. It’s an odd coming of age tale.I found this book philosophical and endearing, covering a lot more than I had expected. Definitely recommended if you want something different and lightly educational.

I’m fEELing it!I’ve never read H Is For Hawk, but it’s the comparison my mind kept making as I read this. This book manages to be a combination of wonderful nature writing, a scientific history, a memoir about a father and son, and a rumination on origins and endings all at the same time. I learned things and marvelled at life; my creativity was sparked; and I was moved by the simple stories of a father and son fishing together. I’ve been obsessed by how little is known about eels ever since I read Lucy Cooke’s THE TRUTH ABOUT ANIMALS, and this book builds on that interest in a nuanced way. I’m officially an eel-head! An eelthusiast? We’ll workshop this.

Är förvånansvärt tagen av den här till synes märkliga boken. För hur spännande kan det vara med en bok om en fisk, som kanske inte är en fisk? Mycket spännande, visade det sig.Det är lika mycket vetenskap om Ålen som en berättelse om en pojke och en pappa, och hur livet och döden väver dessa samman.Runt mitten fastnade jag faktiskt och funderade på om jag skulle läsa vidare, men eftersom det ändå var en fascinerande historia fortsatte jag. Och det är jag glad för. Fint, vemodigt, sorgligt och väldigt intressant!Lite klimatångest (eller ganska mycket faktiskt) utlovas om man är lagd åt det hållet.

Devo ringraziare Pietrino per avermi regalato questa perla. Per avermi dato modo di tornare bambina e rivivere quei bellissimi momenti che ho condiviso con mio padre. Da quando avevo 6 anni credo, la domenica era giorno di pesca. Io e papà andavamo nei laghetti della nostra zona dove si poteva pescare. Lui preparava canne, retino, secchio, straccio e bastone a portata di mano. Io invece guardavo incantata le camole che stavano al caldo nella segatura, dentro la loro scatoletta tutta colorata. Ero io a mettere quel vermetto bianco e cicciotto sull'amo, era una cosa macabra ma che sapevo fare bene, mio padre è stato un bravo maestro. Quando tutto era pronto era ora di lanciare l'esca nell'acqua e aspettare. Già perché la pesca è uno sport di pazienza, non si deve avere fretta,ma io come tutti i bambini ero impaziente di vedere se abboccava qualcosa, volevo prendere un pesce per dirlo alla mamma. Solitamente portavamo a casa sempre qualche trota. Papà mi faceva partecipare anche alle gare dei pierini (non so mica perché quelle dei bambini le chiamassero cosi) ed ho vinto anche qualche trofeo. Ho una foto che mi ritrae con il secondo premio più grande della sottoscritta e io tutta tronfia tra due ragazzi più grandi di me. Quando andavamo al lago io e papà non parlavamo molto...non abbiamo mai parlato molto in realtà. Papà era come me, di poche parole, ma con uno sguardo che diceva tutto.È stato un uomo fantastico ed ho le lacrime agli occhi mentre scrivo queste parole, è stato un amico per tutti quelli che gli sono stati vicino e c'era sempre per tutti, tanto che mamma diceva che per gli altri era sempre disponibile e noi venivamo dopo.Ma non è così.Quando ho avuto mio figlio ed era abbastanza grande per poterlo portare a pesca lui lo ha fatto. Il mio nanetto di 3 anni e il nonno che pesacavano. Ivano era tutto felice di stare con il suo nonno, orgoglioso di fare quella cosa da grandi, mio papà si scioglieva quando Ivi lo abbracciava e gli sorrideva.Ma, come per Svesson, anche il mio papà ci ha lasciati per un mesotelioma pleurico, un dannato cancro ai polmoni causato dal lavoro di metalmeccanico. Questo libro è stato un pugno allo stomaco, la storia di un figlio legato al proprio padre da un pesce....L'ANGUILLA. Pesce misterioso e disgustoso al tempo stesso. Una sorta di serpente marino, ma che non è un rettile, un pesce che non ha le sembianze di tale. Tanti misteri si celano dietro questa creatura schiva. Molto interessante tutto ciò che è girato intorno a questa figura quasi in via d'estinzione.Un bellissimo libro che, se non mi avessero consigliato, non avrei mai letto. Quindi ringrazio ancora Pietro che inconsapevolmente mi ha fatto un bellissimo regalo!

This is one of those science/nature writing memoir blends. I tend to be more “I don’t care about your relationship with your dad, tell me more facts about the Eels!” but I thought the blend was effective. Every other chapter is memoir about the author’s boyhood spent eel fishing with his dad. The alternating chapters do include many eel facts, yes, but also discussions of the ways eels have been used in literature, the history of eel fishing communities, the philosophical underpinnings of The Eel Question that plagued figures as prominent as Aristotle and Freud, and ultimately ~what it means to be human~. I love this kind of thing. It’s very relaxing. Did you know that early puritan settlers survived by eating eels? On top of all the other lies we are fed about thanksgiving, we can add “they were actually eating eel not turkey” to the list. I loved hearing about the ways the Japanese eel has evaded human efforts to farm it. The Japanese eel, unlike the American and European eel, spawns in a known location. (speaking of which, it was a little confusing how it kept saying ALL eels spawn in the sargasso sea, but then at the end we find out about this Japanese eels who spawns elsewhere, and what’s the deal with moray Eels and what is an electric eel? I am still lost on all that). Anyway, scientists managed to breed some eels, but the babies were all male. They forcefemmed them with estrogen, but the next generation was malformed and died within days. Gotta respect it when creatures evade human antics. However, as the final chapters remind us, eels are still suffering the effects of climate change etc. The eel (specifically the Anquilla Anguilla, the European eel) changes so drastically in its life cycle that people thought they were each different species for hundreds of years. They spend part of their life in freshwater and saltwater and can even survive on land for a bit. The book ruminates on Eel’s ways of knowing and their perception of time. How does an eel navigate so far? How does an eel know when it’s time to change into the next stage of the life cycle? When eels are in captivity, they’ll often simply never reach sexual maturity. Are they doing this because they physically can’t in a captive environment? Is a captive environment missing a crucial cue/signal for change? Or is the refusal to transform an act of defiance? Humans transform from a baby to an elderly person, and I do often wonder how it is our bodies “know” what to do during every stage in that process. Especially with things like childbirth, how does your body know when it’s time to give birth? How does the baby know when to flip around and how to go about being born? The process seems very complicated, but I did it once without knowing anything! Ancient innate magical knowledge that we all have I suppose. Eels, in contrast to humans which are passively drifting through time and the accompanying biological changes, can delay transformations. The word “delay” here suggests some agency, which I’m not sure we can ascribe. Though there’s no reason to believe an eel would not have agency either! Regardless of the eel’s choice in the matter, the book mentions studies of mature eels who go back to the sea and some are as young as 8 years old while some are 80. This means some eels completed their life cycle and multiple transformations within a very short time period, while some took almost a century to reach the same point. Why isn’t their crawl toward death tied to time in the same way that ours is? The closest human equivalent is when you have IVF embryos that were conceived at the same time but gestated and then born in different years. So you can have siblings that are 4 years apart in age or something that were once embryos at the same time. Svensson anthropomorphizes Eels all throughout the book, but he does it with the full understanding that the ontology of eels differs wildly from human ways of being. He is channeling Rachel Carson’s writing, which makes heavy use of anthropomorphizing, in hopes that if an animal is discussed in terms we can understand/relate to, we will care more about them. It’s easy for humans to care about cute cuddly creatures, more difficult to get us to feel for slimy scaly long evil looking fish. I’d say Svensson was successful!

Cos'ha l'anguilla di così particolare? Come mai non è possibile allevarla? Il libro risponde a questa e ad altre domande dell'autore su un animale disgusto, dando origine ad un libro schifosamente bello.Qui vi spiego perché: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rbf2...

The Book of Eels is part science history, part memoir. The chapters alternate between longer ones detailing the long and largely futile efforts of the scientific community to understand even the most basic information about these elusive creatures, and shorter chapters with poignant memories of the author's experiences eel fishing with his father as a boy. The structure helped accentuate what I found to be the book's biggest takeaway - the quest for the eel is, ultimately, a quest for ourselves.