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A review by frenchfrybri
The Edge of the Sea by Rachel Carson
5.0
here’s a long collection of my thoughts about this book: it is dated, published in 1955 and obviously marine biology and ocean sciences and even the edge of the sea itself has changed a lot since then. it’s not terribly accurate if you’re looking for updated facts about the different habitats of the east coast, go pick up a recently published field guide if you want that. rachel carson wrote in the preface, “For the convenience of those who like to pigeonhole their findings neatly in the classification schemes the human mind has devised, an appendix presents the conventional groups, or phyla, of plants and animals and describes typical examples” - so this book isn’t (to me) really a science book despite carson being a scientist writing about her coastal observations.
i loved this book for two main reasons: in it, the sea is not divided in plants/animals, vertebrates/invertebrates, or really classified at all. every single organism described is not neatly placed in its taxonomical place but rather neatly shown to have adapted to its precise environment and its tethers to all the life around it. as someone who works a lot with the natural sciences it’s easy to forget that the way we (humans) view things isn’t necessarily how they work; this was a portrait of The Sea itself as it’s own living entity that’s part of a deeply intricate web that we may see parts of if we stop and look hard enough.
my second reason for giving this 5 stars was because i love the ocean and most current writings about it are about how we’re destroying it. (these books are all right and they should be talking about this.) but i love the sea and it was nice to take a brief respite from the doom and gloom and listen to someone talk about their joy in how beautiful ocean life is without spending the entire time also reading about how it’s disappearing. a lot of nature books right now are sad, because what’s happening out there is sad and we need to know what’s going on if we’re going to do something about it. but it was nice to have a small break from all that.
info isn’t completely outdated; i read this while road-tripping down the east coast and after reading every section went out to walk on the beach to find what she was talking about and was able to. but to me, that’s not the main draw of the book.
in summary, you should read this book not necessarily to learn about the ocean but to learn how to love the ocean.
i loved this book for two main reasons: in it, the sea is not divided in plants/animals, vertebrates/invertebrates, or really classified at all. every single organism described is not neatly placed in its taxonomical place but rather neatly shown to have adapted to its precise environment and its tethers to all the life around it. as someone who works a lot with the natural sciences it’s easy to forget that the way we (humans) view things isn’t necessarily how they work; this was a portrait of The Sea itself as it’s own living entity that’s part of a deeply intricate web that we may see parts of if we stop and look hard enough.
my second reason for giving this 5 stars was because i love the ocean and most current writings about it are about how we’re destroying it. (these books are all right and they should be talking about this.) but i love the sea and it was nice to take a brief respite from the doom and gloom and listen to someone talk about their joy in how beautiful ocean life is without spending the entire time also reading about how it’s disappearing. a lot of nature books right now are sad, because what’s happening out there is sad and we need to know what’s going on if we’re going to do something about it. but it was nice to have a small break from all that.
info isn’t completely outdated; i read this while road-tripping down the east coast and after reading every section went out to walk on the beach to find what she was talking about and was able to. but to me, that’s not the main draw of the book.
in summary, you should read this book not necessarily to learn about the ocean but to learn how to love the ocean.