I had many, MANY issues with their dino chapter. I actually yelled at the book at one point last night. I'm planning an update when I get home (and have the book in front of me).
There are no letters to spell "UGH" large enough to describe that chapter.
On a very positive note, I should finish the book in the next hour! Yay! I'm so excited.
The bit where they tell you that everything you might think about how cool dinosaurs are is wrong - that they were slow and really stupid. HOW DO THEY KNOW THAT!?! I'll give them slow, as that *might* be indicated in fossil records, but stupid... where are they getting that from? The one 'dinosaur' that's still around? Cranial capacity based on skull fossils? (One word rebuttal to that: Crows). They then spend the rest of the chapter talking about how impossible it is to know *anything* because there are so few fossils. UGH. UGH. UGH!
FYI, in Eden and Camelot, they seem to suggest that dinosaurs may have developed even something like a civilisation... It really is one of my main annoyances about this book that they keep contradicting themselves. UGH!
Btw, I have just finished the book. Good riddance. I'll miss the Librarian, tho.
I don't know if I'll finish it tonight or not - I remember looking last night and thinking "damn, there's more left than I thought". I'm not hating it... or maybe I am and I'm having fun hating it? *Something* is making me continue to pick it up, even though I KNOW I'm never going to read the follow up books because these two are just too full of themselves.
Although I'm having a blast with the discworld stuff. :D
@ TA: You haven't missed much. Fyi, you can skip the dinosaur chapter, too.
Btw, how is Murder for Christmas? I think that's my next Xmas one.
@MbD: I would have dnf'd this book if it had not been for the Discworld stuff. The science parts in this one made me look forward to "science" parts in the Messner book (about the Yeti) I'm reading with Lillelara this weekend. Now, that is telling you how much I disliked the science parts. (Btw, the Messner book is not likely to contain much science as he isn't a scientist, but he does have an interest in ecology, a sizeable ego, and problems using narrativium.)
Re: Murder for Christmas: Nice, cozy, traditional Golden Age Christmas feel right up until the solution, which is rather a brutal about-face, even if I'd sort of seen part of it coming ... and even if there are few likeable characters in the book. Which, I take it, however, is what the author intended.
On a very positive note, I should finish the book in the next hour! Yay! I'm so excited.
What did you yell at?
Btw, I have just finished the book. Good riddance. I'll miss the Librarian, tho.
Although I'm having a blast with the discworld stuff. :D
Btw, how is Murder for Christmas? I think that's my next Xmas one.
@MbD: I would have dnf'd this book if it had not been for the Discworld stuff. The science parts in this one made me look forward to "science" parts in the Messner book (about the Yeti) I'm reading with Lillelara this weekend. Now, that is telling you how much I disliked the science parts. (Btw, the Messner book is not likely to contain much science as he isn't a scientist, but he does have an interest in ecology, a sizeable ego, and problems using narrativium.)