In his famous work Parerga und Paralipomena, the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer put forth the dilemma faced by a group of hedgehogs who need to huddle together in order to share one another’s body heat and thus better survive the cold. However despite their best intentions, the closer they get to one another, the more pain each one causes the others due to their respective spiny exteriors. This parable has, since Schopenhauer’s first publication of it, been widely used to explain the dichotomy of human relationships – how it is often the case that the more two people want to be emotionally close to another, despite their best intentions, they cannot but help increasing the amount of pain inflicted upon each other. However in Hugh Warwick’s The Hedgehog’s Dilemma: A Tale of Obsession, Nostalgia, and the World’s Most Charming Mammal, the situation is given a slight twist in that it is not the hedgehog that is wanting to be close to humans, rather it is the humans who are becoming closer to hedgehogs, either willingly or simply as a resulting effect of the human-caused changes on the natural world, and thus inflicting harm upon the hedgehogs – and quite possibly ourselves as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Two of the possible definitions for the word “pathological” offered by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary are “altered or caused by a disease” and “being such to a degree that is extreme, excessive, or markedly abnormal.” While allowing for vast differences in the perspectives of those contemplating it, and certainly not to levy any moral judgment upon it, it is difficult not to conclude that Phoebe Snetsinger’s dedication to birding was indeed pathological. However once this definition is applied, the deeper and more difficult questions emerge. Was the disease cancer, depression, or the misogyny of mid-twentieth century America? Where is the line rightly drawn between hobby and obsession? In Life List, Olivia Gentile doesn’t necessarily answer these questions; however she does elicit them in the mind of the reader, and in the process adding a level of humanity to the story of Phoebe’s (it seems too formal to refer to her as Mrs. Snetsinger) life that makes it relevant and interesting to readers both within and without the birding community. Read the rest of this entry »