Book Review: The Birding Dictionary

Image: the cover of the book is yellow with blue binding and black writing. There is a red bird with brown wings sitting on a pair of binoculars in the lower right corner. Across the top is a quote from Ed Yong which reads "a laugh out loud funny guide to the ludicrously amazing and amazingly ludicrous world of birds and birders." Below that is the title The Birding dictionary. Below that is a pseudo definition reading "1. (Noun) a tongue-in-cheek guide for people who find themselves obsessed, against all logic and reason, with birds." In the bottom left corner it says written and illustrated by Rosemary Mosco.

I have been a long time fan of Rosemary Mosco. Her comic Bird and Moon brings joy and levity to life in general, but also to the birding world specifically. It's strange to say this, because I initially got into birding as something that relaxes me: Birding can be kind of intense sometimes. There is a seriousness to it, especially if you are contributing to citizen science projects. This can sometimes lead to forgetting just how much we are in it for the birds and our love of them. Being a lister and doing remote bird surveys can sometimes end up frustrating and I become desperate for something to kick me back into the space where it all started. The Birding Dictionary brings that whimsical humor that comes with any niche community willing to poke fun at itself. 

The author had me from the very start with an introduction page penned as a fantastical but realistic overly serious birder. I laughed out loud immediately. Every page that followed brought lightness to my days in these extra dark times we're living in. The dictionary aspect is an intentional design, but this is a brief cover to cover read full of jokes, fun facts, illustrations, and actual definitions- some of which were for terms I had not heard of before. Essentially, laugh AND learn.

This book would be great for any birder. I could see someone just starting out enjoying it as well as an expert with decades of experience under their belt. Hell, there's even a quote on the back from Sibley praising the book. You don't get a more famous niche recommendation than that and the birding world. I honestly wish I had more birders as closer friends, because I want to gift everyone a copy.

This book was truly an antidote for me. In both personal life and in relation to the larger world, things are pretty depressing. Even engaging in birding has been tough as a result. Looking forward to picking this book up each time and knowing I would smile was a simple pleasure I didn't realize I needed. This whimsical little book ended up being far more important to me than I realized it would be. 

So, if you are into birds or honestly anything adjacent to birding like the larger natural sciences, this book is for you. I really enjoyed it and will likely come back to it regularly just to get a little taste of the happiness it brought me.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: Transmentation Transience

image: the cover of the book is a swirling rendition of different landscapes spiraling towards the center. One includes a city skyline, another a desert, another an ocean, whales swim in the upper right corner. Across the center in large white letters is "Transmentation Transience" and across the bottom in amber is Darkly Lem. 

 Transmentation Transience is a creative project composed by a group of authors writing together under the name Darkly Lem. They describe themselves as "five authors in an impeccably-tailored trenchcoat, namely Josh Eure, Craig Lincoln, Ben Murphy, Cadwell Turnbull, and M. Darusha Wehm." I came into contact with this book due to being a fan of Turnbull, so it was interesting to see what a collaborative piece would turn out to be. I honestly didn't know what to expect. I have read books where two authors are writing under one name, but cannot recall reading a book where 5 authors were. Somehow, in ways I don't fully understand, they made it work. 

TT is a book about many worlds. Central to the stories are people who hop from one universe to another, finding themselves in a new body, retaining their own mind and personality, but still being changed by who they end up inhabiting. It is not fully clear how this works or what exactly it entails. This is probably a show don't tell choice, but I hope more explanation comes in future books. There are various groups existing in various universes, many of which have conflicts with one another. Thankfully, the authors give us a character list in the very beginning telling us which locality various characters are located in. As someone with a horrendous memory, I often have to take notes when reading books with tons of characters, especially when those characters are sometimes turning into other characters in another universes. I was very grateful to see this list when I opened the book. 

The writing in TT is cohesive. I am not sure if each author wrote a different section containing each story about characters existing in each locality. There are definite distinctions between each section that would benefit from such an approach. But, stylistically it still fits together for the most part. I would say the last quarter of the book feels a bit disjointed. That is also because there are a couple twists that occur that are not well explained. 

I'm being deliberately vague to avoid spoilers. Overall, despite all of these different universes, characters, and names, I found the book fairly easy to follow. There are some things that are just personal taste that weren't my favorite. I would say this book is what some call science fantasy more than science fiction. The way some of the worlds and the characters and beings within them are designed doesn't feel quite right to me. There are also a couple of events that occur in the last quarter that we're not introduced as fluidly as they could be. I ended up going back and rereading certain sections thinking I missed something. I had not. The characters themselves though all felt quite real to me. I especially enjoyed sections with long conversations. It's interesting that a story with so much extravagant inter-universal travel and wild action scenes enthralled me most when it was just two people discussing their experiences. 

The book is definitely designed to be part of a larger series- listed as the first book in "The Formation Saga." At over 400 pages, (in my ARC at least,) the conclusion leaves you with prompts for the story to continue, rather than a bunch of concrete resolutions. This was such an interesting approach to writing that I hope the series is given the green light to continue by the publisher and not abandoned like some of these projects are. I enjoyed a glimpse into these universes and was left curious about what comes next for these characters. I do hope that when a new book is written, they will offer a decent recap of things that happened in this one for other memory-deficient people like myself. 

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.