Ebook Acquainted with the Night Excursions Through the World After Dark Christopher Dewdney Books

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Product details Paperback 288 pages Publisher Bloomsbury USA (June 4, 2005) Language English ISBN-10 1582345996

Acquainted with the Night Excursions Through the World After Dark Christopher Dewdney Books Reviews

• Dewdney is his own poet, thinker, and man. This traces the origin of "night" in art, and if it is indeed a more prevalent condition than that of daylight or light. Dewdney spares himself nothing, moving even his physical location to explore what it is like to live in a perpetual nighttime. A little like Colin Wilson without the excess, Dewdney is an original we should never neglect.
• The early part of this book was fascinating - the science and culture of night, the mythology and psychology and physiology. I was fascinated by the stages of night and the stages of sleep but toward the end, during the discussion of paintings that were influenced by night, my interest waned. In spite of that, I'd recommend the book for anyone who has walked by night and wondered.
• An absolutely delightful book for those of us whose favorite time of day begins when the sun sets. Christopher does an excellent job of blending the world of science, culture, anthropology, history, astronomy and more to give the reader the most comprehensive book about night. It's very relaxing and gives the reader an excellent visual. The writer also blends some humor and personal experience. Very well done. Highly recommended for those who love night. The book will take you there.
• This book was a little too poetic at times, I learned how to skim it, but on the whole it was a great. I loved how each chapter corresponded to a different hour of the night and about different faucets of our human experience of the night (lore, night life, things that go bump).
• Anyone who remembers the magic of fireflies in their childhood, will adore this book. It examines life after dark all over the world.
  The writing is exquisite, and you will wish you had seen what the author saw in the writing of this book.
• I found this book to be well worth its five star rateing. Every chapter taught me about things I didn't know. This book is a wealth of interesting information and I believe after reading this book you'll never look at the night the same way again.
• Ok, I did like this book. There were times, many times however, I wished it would drop the poetics and pick up the pace. There are many interesting FACTS in this book sprinkled through philosophy and poetics. Some of the potics just aren't that interesting to me. I'd say buy the paperback. It's a good decent book but not library worthy...read it and pass it on.
  
  Chris
• Last night I "finished" <u>Acquainted with the Night Excursions through the world after dark</u> by Christopher Dewdney. I invoke the double quotation marks because I skimmed an awful lot of this book. That said, it did contain a great number of very interesting passages; I was greatly interested in the nocturnal animals, the stages of sleep, some of the astronomy etc. Much of the book is taken up by two-plus pages of waxing lyrical, that borders on purple, about the upcoming topic at the start of every chapter, and some of the most interesting fodder is reduced to what amounts to the listing of facts with little exposition. In these cases, we are being told many things we really already new. The section on mythology and others read like filler, and had a tenuous link to the topic at best anyway. Another problem was that the author intruded a little too much with very subjective (and, one might argue, ill thought out) comments. e.g. on the subject of famous insomniacs, the author comments on Marilyn Monroe
  
  Her pharmeceutical toolkit included Sulfathallidine, Librium, and the phenobarbital Nembutal. In the last year of her life it was thought she was taking up to twenty Nembutals a day. Although some acquaintances thought her death was suicide, the consensus was that it was brought about by an accidental overdose in combination with alcohol. In a sense, insomnia killed Marilyn Monroe.
  
  I guess, in the sense that a guy with an itchy nose decides to scratch it with a chainsaw - you could say an itch killed the man. Hyperbole becomes nobody, least of all a non-fiction writer.
  
  There are strange comments like this throughout the book. I'd say if you're interested in one area in particular, find a book on those subjects instead of this jack of all trades that barely gives enough time to any of the issues.