{"id":403,"date":"2006-03-15T21:37:21","date_gmt":"2006-03-16T02:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=403"},"modified":"2024-04-07T20:19:59","modified_gmt":"2024-04-08T00:19:59","slug":"adams_lastchance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2006\/03\/adams_lastchance\/","title":{"rendered":"Adams, Douglas, and Mark Carwardine, <cite>Last Chance to See<\/cite> (audio, text)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><cite>Last Chance to See<\/cite> is Douglas Adams&#8217; non-fiction book<\/strong> about trips to look for endangered animals around the world. Mark Carwardine is a zoologist who went with him; he&#8217;s listed as a co-author and contributed an epilogue, but the main text is classic Douglas Adams and just as entertaining as his better novels. For sheer emotional effectiveness, in fact, I think it surpasses his fiction with its remarkably horrifying description of a Komodo dragon eating a goat. Perhaps I was particularly suspectible because I was listening to Adams read it while I was in stop-and-go traffic, which tends to make me sick to my stomach anyway&mdash;but all the same, I don&#8217;t recommend it to the squeamish. (If you&#8217;re not, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tdv.com\/lastchance\/\">the text of the Komodo dragon section is online at The Digital Village<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>(I listened to most of this as an audiobook read by the authors. It&#8217;s very hard to find and the quality of my copy is quite bad in spots, which is why I only listened to most of it. If you can find a copy, though, I recommend it as I recommend Adams&#8217; readings of all his works. Well, except for that fifth Hitchhikers&#8217; book, because that doesn&#8217;t exist in my universe.)<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, this is as much about the traveling to see endangered animals and the people who are working to save them as about the animals themselves, and thus is a good mix of tales about quirky people, strange creatures, and the weird things that happen to you when you are Douglas Adams. I can&#8217;t quite imagine that someone who liked Adams&#8217; novels wouldn&#8217;t like this, though I suppose anything&#8217;s possible.<\/p>\n<p>The blog <a href=\"http:\/\/anotherchancetosee.blogspot.com\/\">Another Chance to See<\/a> provides updates on the animals visited by Adams and Carwardine, which makes me wish again that Blogger supported categories (actually, I think I&#8217;ll offer space on steelypips and a MT blog to the maintainer).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last Chance to See is Douglas Adams&#8217; non-fiction book about trips to look for endangered animals around the world. Mark Carwardine is a zoologist who went with him; he&#8217;s listed as a co-author and contributed an epilogue, but the main text is classic Douglas Adams and just as entertaining as his better novels. For sheer &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2006\/03\/adams_lastchance\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Adams, Douglas, and Mark Carwardine, <cite>Last Chance to See<\/cite> (audio, text)&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,118],"tags":[125,158],"class_list":["post-403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-fiction","category-single-narrator-audio","tag-adams-douglas","tag-carwardine-mark"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2920,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions\/2920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}