Read this book on the recommendation of a friend of mine. After hearing I was reading the Alexandria Quartet, written by Lawrence Durrell, she had told me that she had read some of his brother’s books. Gerald Durrell grew up in Greece, among other places, and ended up becoming a naturalist, roaming the globe collecting animals. The books are quite deftly written in a sort of old fashioned, British way, and charming. We learn what it’s like to have a marmoset as a housepet, not to overfeed baby hedgehogs, what to do if you are a pit with twelve Gaboon vipers (among the deadliest snakes on the planet), and many other things. Durrell is very good with description, so you get a sense of the varied landscapes through which he travels, and even if you don’t know what the animals look like, they’re easy to imagine from his portraits.