I haven’t blogged audio books, partly because I listen to so few, and partly because they don’t seem as “real” as regular books. Also, I can’t go back and remind myself of particular passages. However, I’ve been listening to more on my MP3 player, and this one in particular was thought-provoking–but I’m unlikely to read it now I’ve listened to it.
I downloaded a bunch of Recorded Books audios because our district library subscription was about to be canceled. I’m not a fan of their interface (nobody is), and I’m not a fan of their readers (a minority opinion). I prefer only to listen to audios read by the author, but there aren’t enough of those (especially at Recorded Books, because they pride themselves on their readers). But I’m using the MP3 player to pass the time while working outside, and that lowers my threshold. Bird-watching fascinates me, so the content won me over. But ugh! John McDonough is completely the wrong reader for this title. He sounds elderly and stuffy, but it’s a first-person memoir by a guy who’s only two years older than me, writing in a voice that is the opposite of formal and stuffy. I wouldn’t have continued listening if the story wasn’t so interesting.
Richard Koeppel is a “big lister”–someone who’s seen thousands of birds and has made it an avocation. His son Dan tells Richard’s life story and his own, both shaped by obsession with birds–Richard because it’s his central concern, Dan because his father cared more about birds than about him. Richard was fascinated by birds ever since seeing a brown thrasher at the age of 11, but his parents discouraged him from pursuing ornithology; Dan never got the bird bug, but in middle age realized it was the only way to get close to his father.
Big listers are a strange breed: some content to check off a bird pointed out by a guide, even if they couldn’t identify it themselves, others almost scientists (although the mania for accumulation seems to pull against the achievement of true science). Dan tells the stories of Phoebe Snetsinger, the greatest lister of all time, motivated by a cancer-carried death sentence; Joel Abramson, Richard’s college room-mate who became an ornithologist; Peter Kaestner who parlays a career in the Peace Corps and as a diplomat into enough time in each country to pick up the local birds.
Phoebe Snetsinger thinks of her record (over 8,000) as her legacy. Richard also thinks of his list as an accomplishment. Right after finishing this audio book I saw a letter in Harvard Magazine in which the writer says “I expect that in about another 25 years I will have seen more [Harvard-Yale] games than anyone, ever. Not that this is of the slightest importance in the greater scheme of things, but I think it will make a fitting epitaph someday.” At least he denies its importance, but for that to be your epitaph? That kind of collecting bug I don’t really get. It’s telling that Richard Koepell counts other things as well: beers, cheeses, now butterflies.
Ultimately Dan makes a certain kind of peace with his father by accompanying him on birding trips. They’re together when Richard spots #7,000, and Dan whips out a bottle of champagne to celebrate.
Dan bares his pain and confusion at his parents’ treatment of him (his mother, while not bird-obsessed, left some major parenting voids as well), and this may be too much memoir for birdwatchers, while focusing too much on birds for memoir lovers. Memorable nonetheless.