Customer Reviews

The Curious Naturalist: Nature's Everyday Mysteries

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This is a book that I will never lend out. I will buy a few extra copies of it to give away, but I want to keep my copy forever. I found it by searching Amazon for some good natural history books to read in the winter, when I miss my garden. I really lucked out with this one.

Sy Montgomery was the nature columnist for the Boston Globe. She is extremely knowledgable, and her writing is concise yet filled with wonder at her magical subjects. I learned about the lovelorn messages sent by singing insects on autumn evenings, the messages contained in spiderwebs, the effects of winter snow on the way sound travels, the way all life depends on the unusual structure of water. Most fun is the author's description of ways to interact with other creatures. I learned that it is easy to teach wild birds to eat out of your hand, and that one can flirt with fireflies in their own language using a flashlight in the grass. The author offers some of these suggestions as experiments for children, but at the tender age of 54 I am looking forward to trying them all out by myself.

Another thing I like about this book is that each essay can be read in a single sitting (or a single night before going to sleep, in my case). They are concise. I get a lot of delight per unit time spent reading.

The only thing wrong with this book is that it needs a better title. If Sy Montgomery had the lovely titles that Diane Ackerman comes up with, she would quickly overtake Ackerman's sales numbers.

In the middle of a bleak, New England winter and at a time in my life when I felt disconnected from the natural world due to health difficulties, I purchased this book. I opened it to the section on winter and read the first essay entitled, "Sounds and Silences of December." Not only was it interesting to learn that sound travels farther and is clearer over frozen ground, but it encouraged me to go outside and see for myself! Since then, this book has been a source of valuable information regarding the unique aspects of each season. Also, it has been a source of encouragement, drawing me out-of-doors to explore. I don't have to venture far from home to experience some of the things written about in the book. Learn about peepers in spring, mud season, insects, messages in spider webs, chipmunks and squirrels, animal migrations, exploring the off-season beach in winter...just to name a few. If you've never been an outdoorsy person or need some guidance to reconnect, this is an excellent choice.

A beautifully written book about the natural world that supplies the reader with an enormous amount of information about the world we seldom see and the other lives which inhabit it.