Everything You Vaguely Knew About Owls And Some Things You didn't Know Because You Were Too Afraid To Be Bored

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Let's be fair here. The Secret Life of the Owl by John Lewis-Stempel is not the sort of book I'd normally read. I've made my view on this blog before that basically I'm ambivalent towards animals other than dogs of which I've a childhood phobia.

That said having finished this mercifully slim book I'm surprised by how much I've actively disliked it.

Basically the book is split into three sections. The first is basically a compendium of facts about owls. Did you know Owls have a particular way they process food? (Vaguely I actually did). Did you know Pablo Picasso kept an owl? (No I did not....and I don't care). Do you want some poetry featuring owls? (NO!.....But it's there anyway).

So we get fact on fact on owl fact ploughed into us.

Then comes section two. Short pieces on owls that live in Britain and those that visit. I wonder if this is how The Observer Book on Owls would have worked. It also seems, given the writer is a nature writer, remarkably impersonal.

Finally we get to the first section. Which seemed just a longer version of the first bit for owl based info.

Only in the short couple of pages of the epilogue do we get an idea of how this book should have been written. In it he describes a personal encounter with an owl. It made me realise that he should have followed the manner of Robert Macfarlane or Jean Sprackland of having a personal based challenge, say seeking all the owls in Britain, discussing them whilst interspersing them with owl facts.

Now that would have been a wiser move.

Until the next time.