Patrik Svensson (1) (1972–)

Yep, it's a book about eels. I will admit, I didn't have good feeling about eels when I started this. There's just something about them that felt sort of vaguely creepy or disgusting in a way that made me not want to think about them too much. Which is weird, because that's not a reaction I have to many animals. Like, snakes and spiders? Bring 'em on!

Anyway, I now feel as if I should apologize to the eel, because it turns out they are deeply interesting creatures, and rather impressive ones, and every bit as deeply mysterious as the subtitle of the book suggests. All the scientific stuff in here about the things we do and don't know about eels, and how we do or why we don't know them, was absolutely fascinating to me. Some of the tangents the author goes on about famous people who studied eels and such was a bit less so, but still plenty interesting enough. I will say that for much of the book, I found his attempts at philosophizing and his reminiscences about his father, with whom he used to fish for eels, much less compelling, But damned if I didn't come around to that, too, and by the end I appreciated it as something both thoughtful and touching.… (altro)