Reviews with content warning for Ableism - Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

I learned a lot from this relatively short audiobook, but it wasn't quite what I expected. Which is my own fault for not reading a summary first, but for other readers have a heads up that there's a lengthy dive into eugenics that is well reported and interesting, but heavier than I was anticipating from the cover.

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nhewitt99's review against another edition

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emotional informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

3.0

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aproudmc13's review

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adventurous emotional funny informative tense medium-paced

4.75

I loved this book! I think the premise is really interesting because I too have thought of the gun but the beauty behind the unknown is very enticing. I appreciate the author’s candor and I think this has been a great book for people just starting to dive into nonfiction.

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readingpicnic's review

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adventurous emotional reflective medium-paced

4.25

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inthemoonlight's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

I genuinely have no words for much this impacted me. It is truly beautifully and completely done.

My only warning would be to look at any trigger warnings if that's something that would impact you. I personally went in blind, not even knowing what it was about, and did not realize how dark things would be. Vital to talk about, but still potentially triggering nonetheless.

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whatannikareads's review

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informative reflective sad fast-paced

2.75

nooooooot y’all tricking me into reading about a eugenicist!!

i’m a mixed bag of emotions about this book. after about halfway through i think the first half of the book was completely unnecessary/a different book altogether. i fell asleep quite a few times during the first half. the second half was much more interesting, but i kept getting whiplash on the organization of it; we kept switching from history to memoir to social science. i don’t feel the memoir section was expanded enough to be super engaging. the connection between the writer and david star jordan, aside from her research of him, felt like a reach. i think if she has developed her story more, or just made it a completely separate book, it could’ve been more enjoyable. the whole book could’ve just been 3 different articles tbh. it felt like reading a really long op-ed and i don’t think ot should’ve been a book tbh.

also again, i don’t know if talking about how shitty his beliefs were in the second half made up for how nicely he was portrayed in the first half?? it was just very clearly not written by a person of color lol.

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pipn_t's review against another edition

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medium-paced

3.0

This was an alright book that I despised deeply when it became clear it was a biography and not a science book. I guess it’s a good example of why you shouldn’t read books based on a cool title. Did not enjoy nor come to care about the man being biographies at all. The title subject of the book was tacked on at the end. Didn’t appreciate that the author was trying to convert me to her nihilistic worldview, if I’m using the right word. Content warning for extended discussion of eugenics.

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