Listen Type: Audiobook
Title: "The Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America"
Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
 | This listen was actually suggested to me by fellow Venison artist and contributor, Danielle Schlunegger. I listened to the whole thing while working in my studio and for anyone who loves animals (which is most people) this is a must-listen. The wordy sub-title is very fitting for the sentiment in this book. There are vignettes that explore how we, the Big Boss humans that we are, relate to animals in their "natural" environment. Their place in a spectrum of likeness to us, whether in appearance or behavior, is inextricably linked to the prospect of their survival on this big, green planet. That is polar bears are much more marketable to the "save the species" campaign than the wolf spider, simply because they have forward facing eyes and fur as opposed to creepy, crawly legs. There's an underlying story of empathy that is warmly reassuring to balance out some of the depressing postulates put forth in the book. This one will definitely make you re-think your own behaviors and conceptions of the world around, which is exactly what I want my non-fiction to do. P.S. A great follow-up listen to this is Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures, which I promptly listened to right after I finished Wild Ones because I was so engrossed in the over-arching story. |
RSS Feed