I’ve mentioned this here before, but not following my first dream of becoming a paleontologist is one of my great regrets. It was quite literally my first dream job – I wanted to start digging up dinosaur bones at the age of four and was constantly bringing home rocks so my dad and I could hammer them open and check for bones. My parents were indulgent of my obsession with rocks and bones, which I try to remember every time I am bitter that they wouldn’t send me for ice-skating lessons. I digress. Anyway, I am still interested in dinosaurs probably more than the average person but maybe not as much as the average enthusiastic child (myself as a 5-10 year old).

I did Stephen Brusatte’s The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World as an audiobook and I regret it for two reasons. The first reason is that I didn’t get to look at the photographs and illustrations. The second is I couldn’t skim the memoir parts. Brusatte clearly knows his stuff and loves dinosaurs, and I learned a lot from this book and greatly enjoyed the parts about dinosaurs. The memoir parts were sort of self-congratulatory and not so great? They were informative, just sort of annoying. He drops a bunch of names and while it’s fine, it feels egocentric after awhile.

Brusatte’s writing could also be a bit dry at times. It wasn’t terrible, mind you, I just sometimes felt he could have been using more engaging language. That said, I did feel like he enjoyed and loved dinosaurs too, which I felt a lot of value in. Textbooks are fine but I haven’t actually ever read a textbook I didn’t have to.

Anyway, if you like dinosaurs and want to read more about them, I recommend this book. If you don’t want to read a guy’s memoir where he drops names and congratulates himself for his achievements I also recommend this book but mostly skim those parts. Simple enough, right?

Tagged: authors: stephen brusatte, books: the rise and fall of the dinosaurs, genre: non-fiction, genre: science