nonfiction macroblog #2

Hello fellers. It's me, Ellie, your resident massive wimp and extinction expert.

What can I say? I love extinction.
(that was a joke please don't kill me elizabeth koone and every environmental protection organization)

Anyways, enough fun. You know that this blog is for Serious Matters Only, and I dedicate my life to preserving maturity and extreme professionalism.

So let's talk about this super cool and neat book about extinction!

If you're new here, The Sixth Extinction is a book by Elizabeth Koone that focuses on how we are on the brink of a sixth mass extinction, due to human beings being the absolute worst. 

I have to start of strong and say that Koone's writing style is wonderful. It really makes me feel a little less down about our rapidly decaying planet. We could kill off, like, millions of species by the year 2050. Think about that. God.

But seriously, Koone has incredibly vivid descriptions which go a long way to accentuate the beauties and tragedies of nature. Take this wonderful image:

"... The carnage had grown even more grotesque; many of the bat carcasses had been crushed, and now there was blood oozing out of them" (210)

Yeah, that's... absolutely disgusting, but here we go! The tragedies of nature. But these descriptions go beyond gore and yucky stuff- she's also more than capable of describing a lush tropical forest and a thriving underwater ecosystem. It's like you're reading a nonfiction book with the joys of some magical, fiction-like imagery. It completely discredited my once firmly-held belief that nonfiction is destined to be boring, as it lacks most of the cool symbolism and analyzing capabilities that fiction is known for. 

For someone going in with that impression on nonfiction, I also greatly appreciate how relaxed her tone is. See, one of my greatest fears upon picking this book up was that it'd be nothing but completely confusing jargon, and that I wouldn't understand anything she's talking about. As I have limited experience with natural science and biology and everything else this book focuses on, it was a risky choice to pick up The Sixth Extinction.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Koole's tone was very informal, yet professional, unlike many of the other super serious nonfiction books I read that speak in long, extensive, tiring sentences that bewilder me with profusions of language and cornucopias of methodical balderdash. Think of getting a lecture from cool teacher like Mr. Perlman (please give me an A), and that's what reading this book is like. It's fun. She implements a few intelligent jokes and overall makes this book feel friendly.

"Only in a place where the rules of the game remain fixed is there time for butterflies to evolve to feed on the shit of birds that evolved to follow ants. Yes, I was disappointed that we hadn't found the ants. But I figured I had nothing on the birds" (192)

Doesn't that intrigue you? She said the s-word and made a joke where she compared her disappointment to birds. I'm having so much fun. Maybe the joke isn't fully understandable here, but you had to be there. I promise. Her tone is funny, it's very unique and pleasurable to read, which is definitely where she gets the most points from me.

i am a 10 year old

I'm probably making this book sound like a profoundly beautiful, perfect in every way kind of thing. That's because it's a phenomenal book that I highly recommend to literally anyone who is at least slightly interested in our planet. 

However, I will admit there are a few parts of this book that are pretty boring. For example, the parts where she talks about actual science. Haha. Just kidding. I love me some good science, but some points of the story just seemed to drag on forever and I had to force myself to get through it. It probably isn't Koone's fault entirely that some parts of science are just boring. 

Listen, guys, I like trees and all, but reading a chapter about them when you just finished a super cool chapter about golden frogs is just extremely unfavorable. Maybe Koone had no decent way to make trees cool, and trees are important, so it's not like she could just forget about it. I like how I'm dissing the one chapter that talks about the BDFFP (Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project), which is apparently "the most important ecological experiment ever done." God, I'm the worst. Maybe I'm just too childish.

The most entertaining and worthwhile parts of the book are where Koone describes her own personal experiences with nature and our rapidly depleting world. She's a wonderful observer- it's like I'm there, doing her science stuff.

I mentioned it before, but Koone has such an intelligent and beautiful way of composing her sentences and writing in a way that makes it sound unbelievably genuine, as if you're having a conversation with her. The ocean-related chapters are to die for, honestly (get it? extinction). She definitely brings the wonders of her travels into her descriptions of Earth's beautiful ecosystems. Koone appeals to every sense, though, not just sight. It's great.

Take some of these examples from one of my personal favorite chapters, "The Sea Around Us";

"It is a raw, gray day, and we are thumping along in a fishing boat that's been converted into a research vessel..."

"... a whitish band of barnacles runs all the way around the base of the island, except above the vents, where the barnacles are missing"

"Streams of jellyfish waft by, just a shade paler than the sea"

"The water is frigid. Hall-Spencer is carrying a knife. He pries some sea urchins from a rock and holds them out to me. Their spines are an inky black" 

"... I start to see bubbles rising from the sea floor, like beads of quicksilver. Beds of seagrass wave beneath us. The blades are a peculiarly vivid green. This, I later learn, is because the tiny organisms that usually coat them, dulling their color, are missing"

I think you get the point. What can I say? I love this chapter.

But I won't just focus on her writing style, I appreciate her organization as well. She doesn't just say "we suck!" and end it at that, she goes through the history of extinction as a concept. She goes all the way back to Darwin and Cuvier, which is a greatly appreciated detail that helps you to understand the magnitude of what a darn extinction is. 

That sounds goofy, I know. Of course an extinction is bad, Ellie, you big fool. But it's still interesting to learn about the history of extinction and how it came to be a widely-recognized scientific topic. Koone goes into the pioneers of extinction, the disbelievers, and how we developed the meteor-dinosaur theory. It's fascinating. She doesn't limit it to one chapter, though, she blends it in with chapters even further into the book, making a nice constant as you read.

It's that supplementary information that adds to the experience of reading her book- she doesn't rely on our basic general ideas and understanding of extinction. For me, I find it hard to understand concepts that are as catastrophic as extinctions. It's hard to believe that millions of species could just die out. Plus, my general knowledge of extinction is that it killed the dinosaurs once. But Koone reveals that we've had five prior extinctions, each with death counts in the absolute billions. She explains how much we've truly lost over the course 500 million years. 

Koone dives into the science behind the science. It's a lot of science, but she makes it work. 

I've said "extinction" so many times. Geez. 

Cuvier, the scientist behind the extinction theory, actually opposed evolution. These are the things you learn when you read The Sixth Extinction, which truly deserves the Pulitzer Prize, even if the known Pulitzer prize standards are unnecessarily vague. 

Her chapters are easy to follow- each one closes nicely, and creates a swell transition between each. There are very few unanswered questions or miscellaneous cliffhangers. Each chapter specializes in one main topic, like trees or penguins or frogs. This specialization aids in realizing the magnitude of extinction but also, obviously, assists the understanding of each topic. I just appreciate her organization of chapters, which may sound a little goofy, but it's pretty important. 

At the end of this book, I was satisfied, y'know? It was an eye-opening story that put a lot of things into perspective. I'm aware of what's going on now. I'm an environmental activist. Anyways, my rating of this book is a good 9.3/10. 

Thanks for following the blog.

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Ellie A

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nonfiction microblog #4

I'm gonna do it, guys. I'm going to write some literary criticism.

I don't know if "literary criticism" fits, though. "Criticism" is too harsh of a word for me, Ellie, small-town pacifist and mild salsa man.

me, solemnly tending to my humble wheat crops

Maybe it's a... literary evaluation. Or a fun literary discussion. Me giving my opinions about a book.

Okay, yeah, literary evaluation is fine.

I truly enjoyed this book, my friends. What can I say? I'll have a hard time picking out some flaws that aren't attributed to me being a big dingus who doesn't know what some words and phrases mean.

I guess the real flaw...

is... me.

Haha. Enough goofs. Let's talk about something else.

One of the most interesting things I read about was the bat crisis. Bats are kinda dying, which sucks. We should talk about bats more. They're good animals.

good ol' brown bat

The bats have a deadly fungus that thrives in cold climates, which is where bats tend to hibernate. We got that fungus from Europe (or so they hypothesize), so I guess Europe is cancelled.

Anyways, that's today's fun disaster blog.

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Ellie A

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nonfiction microblog #3

This microblog is inspired by a comment left on my one macroblog.

Anna Yats (hi Anna) wrote a nice message, and ended it with this: 

It's funny, because when I made my blog URL I immediately hated myself because I forgot we had to read another book, and the chances of me finding a nonfiction book that could tie into "A Confederacy of Dunces" is pretty slim, from my experience. 

But, hey, maybe my audience doesn't have to know that. Maybe I can think of some kinda complicated, pretty stupid explanation for my URL and how it relates to both book.

Let's see what we're working with: 

• I am a dunce 

Nice! I guess that's our answer. Maybe my lack of awareness towards our rapidly dying planet is what makes me such a dunce. That's super cool and fun.

Ah well. I guess my blog URL is just a classic mildly self-depreciating jest. Cool.

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Ellie A

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nonfiction macroblog #1

Alright, let's try something different this time. I haven't been painting at all lately and I'm not going to break my record now. Haha. God.

As I mentioned in my previous microblog, I'd like to possibly do some literary criticism for this book. I'm not going to do that. Instead, I'd like to focus on one of my favorite passages of the book, which is as follows:

"The reason this book is being written by a hairy biped, rather than a scaly one, has more to do with dinosaurian misfortune than with any particular mammalian virtue. 'There's nothing ammonites were doing wrong,' Landman told me as we packed up the last fossils from the creek and prepared to head back to New York. 'Their hatchlings would have been like plankton, which for all of their existence would have been terrific. What better way to get around and distribute the species? Yet here, in the end, it may well have been their undoing.'"

Here's some context to that. You see, The Sixth Extinction deals with, well extinction. In this chapter, Kolbert specifically discusses the extinction of ammonites during the late Cretaceous period.

So that brings us to the fun part. Why did ammonites die off during this specific extinction, and not nautiluses, another cephalopod that's closely related to the ammonite. There are theories regarding habitat or egg size, but overall the fates of each creature roughly lies in the fact that the ammonites were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Nautiluses didn't have any special apocalypse-deterring traits- they just happened to live in parts of the ocean where the extinction atmosphere was much less toxic than it was where the ammonites dwelled. 

(This video doesn't really help anything, just look at how freaky a nautilus is. Imagine swimming in the ocean, living your best life, and seeing this giant piece of cappelletti pasta coming at you. It really keeps me up at night. I miss the ammonites.)

See, when dealing with mass extinction, Kolbert says that Darwinism basically goes out the window- how could any species evolve to adapt to such an extreme, once-in-a-million-years event like extinction? When an extinction happens, it basically turns evolutionary history on its head. It abruptly changes the "rules" of the survival game. And as Kolbert writes, "There's nothing ammonites were doing wrong." But look where we are now. 

Basically, everything has a good chance of being screwed and there's nothing evolution can do to help. Nice!

If you read my first microblog for this book, you would know that I am what some people call a massive wimp. I don't want to read about the fact that our world is dying, global warming exists, ocean acidity is rapidly increasing, and the Great Barrier Reef is dying. Naturally, I wasn't pumped to read that we're pretty helpless to the forces of nature. 

This passage, though, was the one that got me- especially the first sentence. We're mammals, on Earth, right now, because some other guys just couldn't survive a mass extinction. The butterfly effect and "everything happens for a reason" are two fairly similar things that contribute to one common goal- messing me up. 

me, in another timeline

So I guess the main thing about this passage, and why it's my favorite, is that it truly made me think the most out of every other passage in the book. The first sentence that Kolbert uses is an incredibly effective way of putting the reader into a new perspective, which is a massive strength in her writing. 

It's difficult to imagine the effects of mass extinctions. It's terrifying to understand that we're basically at the mercy of the universe. At the same time, though, I like facing that fear. The idea of Darwinism being the basis of life except for these few mass extinctions is absolutely insane- it just makes you think what we're doing here and why we're doing it. I'm not sure how existential this book is supposed to make you feel, but it's really making me feel a lot. 

In this passage, though, Kolbert and the quote from her colleague (Landman) truly highlights this mysterious helplessness. Ammonites were more well-equipped for survival, and yet succumbed to the late-Cretaceous extinction. 

And what an ending sentence! "Yet here, in the end, it may well have been their undoing." That's such a powerful, "make-you-think" moment.

Kolbert's purpose, as I have gathered from what I have read so far, is to address the future impacts of mass extinction. In the part I am currently reading, she is focusing on ocean acidity and how by the year 2100 our oceans will have a severely decreased biodiversity- most creatures would have gone extinct, just like the ammonites, if they're unfortunate enough to be incapable of dealing with the acidity. That's terrifying. But the thing is that it didn't happen yet, and I'd say that some of us just have this feeling that it's a problem for the next few generations, and it's a problem that we shouldn't have to worry about. 

say goodbye to these guys

And I bet, had we been alive during the late-Cretaceous, we would have thought the same thing. But look at us now. Ammonites are gone and we're mammals. Does that make sense? Does that have anything to do with anything? I don't know.

I guess a good feeling for this passage is... hopelessness. Ammonites were more than well equipped for surviving! They had small, plankton-like eggs for survival and distribution. But it didn't matter. What's the point of anything, then? We built shelters that provide us with warmth and comfort and we're doing pretty well in these ecosystems but what's the point if a giant catastrophe could just happen. Where am I? A strong suit in Kolbert's writing truly is her ability to make feelings felt. It's a nonfiction book, which I would argue is usually synonymous with boring or lame, but I truly am experiencing a wide range of joy and tragedy from this story. It's enjoyable. 

This passage demonstrates a technique that proves to be popular in Kolbert's writing- ending specific sections and chapters with an open ended, "blunt" ending. Take, for example, the passage I am citing here- Kolbert ends with a sentence that provides none of her personal insight. This method of providing a simple, powerful sentence is repeated in (basically) every chapter, which is incredibly effective in giving the reader a chance to fully process what Kolbert is attempting to say. 

The threat of a mass extinction is something that people have yet to fully realize and acknowledge- I know I had no idea we were in such a doomed state of existence. Kolbert's writing is powerful. I may not know how exactly Pulitzer books are determined (see microblog 2), but I know for a fact that she deserves it for this eye-opening, amazing story. 

Thanks, guys.

 

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Ellie A

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