Love Volume 4 Review

Love, Volume 4: The Dinosaur. Frederic Brremaud and Federico Bertolucci. 2017. Magnetic Press. 80 pages.

Rating: 3/5

I've read one other book in this series and I think the concept is great. Each book follows an animal over a period of time, depicting its natural environment. The entire story is told using illustrations; there are no words used in the book at all.

Given the format of the book, the illustrations need to be fantastic. I feel that is accomplished in this book. The creators have an opportunity to draw a lot of different dinosaurs in this short work. Those depictions are amazing. They take something that is both familiar and foreign and breathe life into it. The natural surroundings are used wonderfully to highlight the animals and give a sense of the environment.

This volume fell a little short for me because the sequence of events shown in the illustrations didn't always make sense. It's not that they weren't put in the right order, but they jumped around at times where I lost sight of the little guy that is central to the book. These tangents just made it feel less cohesive to me.

The book is all about the art and should be picked up for that alone.

Second Nature Review

Second Nature: A Gardener's Education. Michael Pollan. 2003. Grove Press. 320 pages.

Rating: 4/5

I didn't expect a book about gardening to be quite so engaging. Pollan takes the reader on a journey starting with his earliest memories of being in the garden through the establishment of his own garden. In the end though it is less about gardening tips and techniques and more philosophical. Pollan explores why we garden and some of the similarities and differences between British and American gardens.

I've read many of Pollan's other books and I enjoyed this one almost as much as the others. The way he writes makes the topic accessible to the reader even if it isn't what you expect. There are some parts that are less interesting to me, specifically the very early portion and parts of the last chapter on seed catalogs. But there is humor and insight sprinkled throughout that make it enjoyable and worth picking up.