Each of Amy Leach's bite-sized lyrical essays is a plunge into a rabbit hole of her own devise, yet one that feels far less like a construct than the everyday flow of Leach's mind, which must be a wonderful place to inhabit.

For instance, in “Goats and Bygone Goats,” she posits what a world of sound we’d experience if sound waves did not decay but persisted infinitely in their travels, delivering to our ears the sounds of worlds long past - "extinct toxodons, and prehistoric horses wearing pottery bells, and dead bats chewing crackly flies" - before launching wholly sideways down an inquiry into the nature of goats - Hungarian improved goats, Spanish mountain goats, and fainting goats, all of whom, Leach tells us, learn by chewing - "They investigate by chewing and chew more than they swallow, in contrast to sharks who investigate by swallowing and swallow more than they chew." ( )

Nicely written, though I found it a bit overdone in places. ( )

this book is not for everyone. I feel like I should recommend it to lovers of poetry. For whom the rythym, flow of thoughts and made up words would be familiar and allow an introduction to various environmental topics.
But the content might be of interest to those who like popular science.
The main reason I gave it three stars is because I'm not sure who would like this - people who would be interested in the content (many and varied facts about the earth / animals and the universe ) might be put off by the poetic and (at times) convoluted threads which hold each chapter together.
I personally found it hard to take seriously the points that the author is making about the incredible beauty of the world and interconnectedness of the environment and our impacts on it when there were so many nonsense words thrown in to the mix. I cant help but feel that she minimised her impact by putting nonsense words in when there are so many words she could have used. It felt lazy somehow.
I can see were she is coming from but the way it is done I can't help but feel will alienate the intended audience (who ever that might be?).
This is of course purely my own feeling and maybe I'm just not seeing a huge audience of poetry loving science fact geeks. ( )