3.35 avg rating — 17 ratings

"This e-book includes frequent links to websites that explain or elaborate on scientific points that come up in the book. For example, you can pop over directly from the text to a website about termites to find out the facts behind the Term-Mights. In one place, readers are directed to a Wikipedia site giving statistics on teen pregnancy, in another, to an academic paper on the biology of eunuchs. The story is wildly fantastical, yet these links provide frequent reminders of the real, hard-core world of modern science, as if to reassure the reader that stories of an afterlife are only imaginative means of coping with grief, lest the reader mistake them for some kind of reality. Joan Didion wrote that “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Miller is telling himself, and us, stories to help us deal with death. As Wit eventually comes to accept and understand his death, the reader comes to accept the deaths of us all"

3.57 avg rating — 617,073 ratings

"lots of references to whale physiology (now out-dated) and historical whaling practice, "

4.09 avg rating — 506,284 ratings

"many references to rabbit habitat and behaviour"

4.33 avg rating — 1,026,984 ratings

"endless footnotes to cultural practices, historical facts and geographical locations"

4.21 avg rating — 2,050,772 ratings

"interesting and informative facts about spiders"

3.30 avg rating — 23 ratings

"history of the settlement of Sydney interwoven in a murder mystery. lots of etymology explained, too"