Life List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds

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I've written book reviews for most of my adult life, mostly because I liked talking about the books I've read but rarely found an audience, and also because I found this to be a great way to learn about interesting books that other people were reading. Since I've written a public blog for nearly five years, it was natural that I would publish my reviews on my blog, a practice that ended up adding a substantial number of books to my shelves at a time when I was unemployed and couldn't afford anything, especially not the many books I wanted to read, and I couldn't wait the many months it took before the library copies finally become available to me. During the Science Blogger's meeting in London, England, it was suggested that I try to get my book reviews published in Nature Magazine. It took nearly one year for me to work up the courage to pitch a book review idea to the editors at Nature but amazingly, they actually liked my idea and before I knew it, I had a deadline. Anyway, the review of this book, Life List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds by Olivia Gentile (Bloomsbury USA; 2009) was finally published today and you can read it on the Nature site [Free PDF].

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