Naira de Gracia

nonfiction/memoir - 20-something field researcher spends 5 months observing penguins (and sometimes seals and other animals) with 4 other scientists in a tiny, musty/moldy shelter (Oct 2016-Mar 2017)

At first I wasn't sure if this book could include anything not already covered in Lindsay McCrae's My Penguin Year (2019), but figured I would still enjoy some more time reading about penguins. I was very pleasantly surprised--de Gracia (who was stationed in a way tinier, less-glamorous structure than the Neumayer III) answers all your questions about what qualifications/personal connections/luck are needed to be among the few selected for this unadvertised position, what the bathroom situation is, how the heated 'always wet' room is used for things like showering/laundry, how a relatively small group of people might wrangle a fur seal mother and her newborn pup out of a seal harem without getting attacked by male seals in the process, how to efficiently tag a penguin, and much more, in between thoughtful and often lyrical descriptions of her experiences in Antartica (which actually go pretty far in the way of making up for the absence of photos). The way de Gracia unabashedly tackles topics a reader might not even think to ask about reminds me of Mary Roach's books -- though deGracia's book is a bit longer/denser, a reader with any interest in penguins/Antartica/wildlife in general will enjoy.… (más)