The Butterfly Season: What 64 Butterflies Taught Me About Nature's Great Mysteries and the Meaning of Life by Lea KorsgaardMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This narrative non-fiction book is about the author, Lea Korsgaard who undertakes an ambitious project to see all the butterfly species in her country of Denmark in one season. She gets help from scientists and a few others who know where you can find which specific butterfly and when. She maps it all out and goes out and seeks to find them, only counting it done when she can take a photograph. There's a website she uses to confirm her find.
Along the way we get information about her life, her kids, but I wouldn't say that the subtitle accurately describes the book. There is a little philosophizing and meandering, particularly with related butterfly subjects. Quite a bit of lingering with Vladamir Nabokov, who was a lepidopterist, or butterfly enthusiast. He even found a couple of new species of butterfly and has one named after himself. But “the meaning of life” and “nature’s great mysteries” is a bit of a stretch.
Unfortunately, I wasn't as interested in the book as I expected, but I did appreciate the line drawings of the butterflies at the end of chapters.
Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book. However, I primarily read the book by listening to a published audiobook copy of the book.
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