The End of Night Book Review

The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light by Paul Bogard
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This was like reading one long news article and that was not good. What was good was the different stance taken on why we should preserve darkness and what we lose if we don’t. This felt like an academic book which only appeals to a certain crowd, but not likely to garner the mainstream into being interested. On the subject of darkness you never get a clear sense of Bogard’s actual concern. Mostly he just misses looking up at a starry sky yet he uses other arguments to validate why darkness is important but he doesn’t give the impression that he cares about those other reasons. Most of it falls on astronomy and that isn’t much selling point. If all creative non-fiction reads like this then count me out. It was jarring coming from an eloquent argument made by a lighting designer to another 2 pages about eating pasta in Italy. The transitions sucked and it made me not care. Everyone else’s opinion is so much clearer or inspiring than what the writer himself had to say and all he does is mirror or echo there viewpoint. If you were to eliminate all the quotes and excerpts you might be left with about 20 pages of the authors own writing which isn’t saying much. While the topic is fascinating the book itself is not. Everything good written here comes from someone who is more learned in the topic. Unless someone has a direct interest in this area, you should pass.

View all my reviews Coming out July 9, 2013 Received the book for free through Goodreads First Reads.