Review: Under the Sea Wind

Under the Sea Wind by Rachel Carson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Imagine you are at a totally immersive theater, like an IMAX, to watch an underwater nature movie. Now imagine a narrator. Not quite the typical Disney narrator with humorous descriptions of the actions of the sea animals, but one very serious, with plenty of flowery detail, so much detail that you could close your eyes and picture exactly what was on the screen. And imagine, like so many nature documentaries, that the action took place in different chapters, each in a different location focusing on a different animal, even to the extent of naming one fish and following it through its dangerous life. That is exactly what Rachel Carson has done in this book. Reading it, you feel like you just have closed your eyes while watching a nature documentary on animals of the sea. I thought this was a nice accomplishment. However, it was a bit long, and I think I understand why when Disney does these kinds of documentaries they ensure there are some humorous bits - you need that kind of personality in the narration to maintain interest. Given this was written in the early 1940s, it predates those many documentaries that were created since then. Carson certainly had a hand in the way those documentaries were narrated over the subsequent years, so it is interesting in that aspect. The descriptions were memorable.

I listened to this as an audiobook. It was over six and a half hours long. While it was broken into different "chapters" telling stories about different animals, it was still a lot of information covered over a longer time than I was used to for these kinds of narrations. Strangely, the edition I listened to, unabridged, included a full glossary that took almost an hour of that time. This "bonus" inclusion seems to have been unnecessary here.

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