The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

By Elisabeth Tova Bailey,

Book cover of The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

Book description

While an illness keeps her bedridden, Elisabeth Bailey watches a wild snail that has taken up residence in a terrarium alongside her bed. She enters the rhythm of life of this mysterious creature, and comes to a greater understanding of her own confined place in the world. In a workā€¦

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Why read it?

6 authors picked The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I appreciated this bookā€™s up-close examination and meditation on snails. Bailey, bedridden by an unknown illness, discovers purpose in her own disrupted life by tending to a wild snail that arrives in a pot of violets.

I love watching snails and slugs and have been curious how they eat after I watched one chomp the petals of a buttercup and another gorge itself in doggie doo. One of the first things Bailey notices about the snail is a square-shaped snail bite on paper. I wanted to know more! Snails have teeth? Why was the hole square shaped?

Who knew a book about a snail and the ill woman it was keeping company could turn out to be a great read? While an illness keeps her bedridden, Bailey watches a snail that a friend has brought to her in a flower pot. As a result, she discovers a sense of wonder observing this mysterious creature and a greater sense of her own place in the world. This is a remarkable book. I learned a lot about snails, and I didn't even know that I would be interested in learning about snails. But what really kept me reading isā€¦

Before reading this book, I thought the most inclusive version of the slow travel principle of micro-travel and mindfulness was going outside and experiencing the weather. But because of a mysterious illness that left her bedridden, Bailey could not go outside nor look out the window. Yet, she wrote about the habits and hijinks of a tiny snail a friend brought her in a pot of violets.

I loved that Bailey found snail ā€œbitesā€ on paper and then explained how a snailā€™s mouth works and why the hole in the paper was square-shaped. The snail becomes Baileyā€™s connection to theā€¦

From Heidi's list on slow travel adventures by women.

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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctorā€”and only womanā€”on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route upā€¦

Baileyā€™s book is about a friendship (one-sided perhaps) between a woman and a snail. She describes her growing affection for a woodland snail who is trapped inside with her during a long illness. Although Bailey isnā€™t offering commentary on pet-keeping, her book suggests a compelling alternative to loving animalsā€”especially creatures we bring in from the wildā€”by making them into our pets. She shows us how to encounter another creature with curiosity, wonder, and respect.

When this author is confined to her bed for a year, she passes the time watching and noting the small doings of Neohelix albolabrisā€”a common forest snail. Bailey's powers of observation are a mix of poetry and science that slowed my heart down to a comfortable pace I will call: Here I Might Manage to Listen to the Mysteries of Existence, that is, a very healing pace of listening and being.

From Charlotte's list on the healing power of listening.

As soon as it was published, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating became a classic. No one had ever written about the lowly snail with such tenderness and respect. Stricken by a mysterious illness and confined to her bed, Elisabeth Tova Bailey is gifted with a woodland violet. Inside the pot, Bailey discovers a snail, which she begins to study minute by minute. What she learns about her guest--how it moves, eats, sleeps, and reproduces--will forever change your perspective on this common mollusk. Her writing is gorgeous and addictive, transporting us to a miniature world that mirrors our ownā€¦

From Jean's list on the ways that animals redeem us.

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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctorā€”and only womanā€”on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route upā€¦

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