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Books Related to The Big Oyster Mark Kurlansky - ISBN: 0099477599
Big Oysters in the Big Apple - Rated
With a pending trip to New York and an already well fed interest in the City, I stumbled across this book and thought it would be the perfect companion for the journey across, but alas I slept and it had to wait until the return journey.
although there are not many who would purchase a book on the life and times of oysters over the past couple of hundred years, when you combine their history with that of the founding and growth of New York city, then you have a great read full of interesting facts and snippets about both city and oyster, so much so that the reader finishes the book looking down upon anyone who would consider to eat a live oyster with its "beating heart", something which is compared in Kurlanskys book as "eating a live baby".
Although not as informative and gripping as Russell Shorto's 'Island at the Centre of the World', this book is well worth the read.
My only reason for dropping a star from the rating is that there were numerous occasions throughout the book where Kurlansky repeated a fact which had been previously covered.
I'm off to rescue an oyster from the fish counter in the local supermarket and keep it healthy for the next dozen years!
An unexpected surprise! - Rated
This really is a far more fascinating book than it sounds. I bought it from my local Oxfam (sorry Amazon!) after being attracted by the cover (I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but I'm such a sucker). I wasn't too sure that a history of oysters could really be that involving, but I was so wrong. The book is not only a fascinating insight into the ups and downs of oysters over the past few hundred years (and their sad, inevitable decline once humans started to target them(, it also doubles as a unique view of the history of New York. I was genuinely disappointed when I finished the book - so much so that I bought almost every other book by Mark Kurlansky, all of which have been just riveting. Strongly recommended!
