Great African Reads discussion

If you want to discuss the book, feel free to do so here... :) happy reading and discussing!

i finished...except for the appendix that describes the fish in more detail. i thought this was a really fun book---scientists are so crazy. i can think of ten different biopic movie ideas stemming from this one slim book. also, i grabbed "Old Fourlegs" and "Half Mile Down" from the collections at work today...they don't seem to be on GoodReads yet. i may need your help, Muphyn, creating records for them...

I'd like to read Weinberg's other Comoros book, about Denbar, the "pirate" but I haven't had a chance to track it down. I thought the territorial issues between South Africa and France were interesting.

my only wish about "fish caught in time" was that there had been more comoros in it...so i'd like to see about getting this denbar book, too...i'd never heard of samantha weinberg before this selection.

as for the issues between South Africa and France, i thoroughly enjoyed Smith's race to comoros to identify the fish there...and then of course the aftermath as France realized what had happened right under its nose. this is one reason i wanted to read "old fourlegs."

i'm still between beginning and not-beginning - anybody can enlighten me on the nature of this book? is it a biography or a fictional narration of how this fish was found?

i'm really bad at reading anything non-fiction, even though the first couple of pages of this looked like an easy-enough, fun read...still, if there's not much information on the comores and its people or nature, i'll probably not finish it - the mere story of how they found the fish is just not my cup of tea, really......maybe i'll pass it on to my brother who wanted to study maritime biology at one point....

It's not fiction, but her prose is so lovely that it may as well be. It's not a biography of any single person, but of a series of people who had a major role in finding this particular fish. The fish itself is very interesting because it's rather large yet impossible to find. But all the different personalities were fascinating too. There is a lot of jealousy among scientists but also politicians.The writer brings up interesting ethical questions regarding killing the fish or preventing it's killing. The book spans quite a bit of time...from 1930s south Africa to the 1990s search for the fish in Indonesia and involves scientists from all over the world. It's a short book that doesn't read much like non-fiction, so I highly recommend it...but regardless of what you decide, I think your brother will *definitely* enjoy it.

thanks Marieke, that's all it took to get me over....:-) the first few pages were rather intriguing, and read like fiction (that's all i need, non-fiction written as it it were...) and i'll definitely give it a try before passing it on...

I think the story of the young woman scientist and her attempts to develop the museum were interesting as well.

Yes, definitely. And she lived to be very very old. I think she was my favorite personality, actually.

I made points with a jewelry craftsman at an upscale craft market. He was selling pendants made from world coins and I said, "I'll bet you have one from Comoros with a coelacanth on it." He said, "Is that what that weird fish is?" I was tempted to buy it, but I was on a mission to find a pendant with a non-sea turtle on it, so I bought one featuring this handsome side-neck turtle from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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Wow...I love love love turtles. I have one, actually. She is Miss Personality! I wonder...any chance you'll ever get the coelacanth coin?

I think it's great that you are preparing for our next group read in your coin purchases! I wish that Kenyan coins had some of the beautiful Kenyan flora and fauna rather than presidents and former presidents.

I haven't read through all your posts (because I still so want to finish it but keep getting side-tracked) - but did people mostly finish it and/or enjoyed it?

For what I've read (about 2/3s through), I've really quite enjoyed and I learned a lot about fish. I'm not really a sciency person, so it was great to read something so different to what I'd normally choose. And the Comoros featured here and there, too! :)