Dolphin Mysteries

by Kathleen M. Dudzinski  and Toni Frohoff

A book I've been wanting to read just because every time I see it at the library the cover looks attractive. And dolphins are such fascinating creatures. But a little less than halfway through I found I was forcing myself to pick the book up again every time. Something was just not quite right with this reading experience. Dolphin Mysteries is written by two authors, and most of it is in first-person and you have no idea who is addressing you until suddenly one of them identifies themself in parenthesis, which got to be kind of distracting and annoying. Personally, I think a better way to indicate which author wrote what parts would be a simple change in font, or even segregate their writings into different chapters. But that's just my reading preference.

The book has lots and lots of facts about dolphins but it wasn't very engaging or easy reading. Not quite dry, but a bit overdone somehow. I felt like I kept reading about the same incidents or explanations multiple times. About how dolphins perceive sound, how they communicate via touch and body posture, how they interact with humans... but there was something missing, some other focus or aspect that I wanted and it wasn't there. Sorry, this is one of the times I can't quite put my finger on it, why I didn't like the book, why exactly I decided to stop reading. I was disappointed, as it was praised by Temple Grandin and Sy Montgomery, two of my favorite authors on animal behavior. O well. Maybe I'll try it again another time.

Abandoned ........ 224 pages, 2008