Mémoires glacées par Nicolas Vanier

Nicolas Vanier is a modern day explorer and dog musher who has written and made films about his time in the Grand Nord. In lieu of a traditional review, I offer you this French animal vocabulary quiz:

1. bernache	a. badger
2. blaireau	b. beaver
3. brochet	c. boar
4. canard pilet	d. bustard
5. castor	e. capercaillie
6. cerf	f. char
7. coq de bruyère	g. deer
8. geai arctique	h. goose
9. glouton	i. gray jay
10. grand corbeau	j. hare
11. hérisson	k. hedgehog
12. lagopède	l. moose
13. lièvre	m. otter
14. loutre	n. pike
15. omble	o. pintail duck
16. orignal	p. ptarmigan
17. outarde	q. raven
18. renne	r. reindeer
19. sanglier	s. wolverine

I'll also say a few words about the book, though.

It is largely organized as a sequence of mostly unrelated anecdotes. The various stories are each pretty short, and definitely approachable by a non-native reader. On the other hand, there are some ways in which more coherence would be an improvement.

In fact, the last few chapters do have a more coherent form, and I think I found that the most enjoyable part of the book. Vanier is an interesting character, and has a lot of interesting things to say, but he is hardly a great writer. The longer stories that comprise the end of the book have more time to engage the reader, something the shorter anecdotes throughout can't always achieve.

Vanier has interesting views of conservation, and two chapters in particular—one called "L'Affaire des bébés phoques" and the other "Le Trappeur, ennemi de la nature"—present his view. He insists that trappers have gotten a bad rap, that they are in fact the ones who care the most about the natural world, and that their careful culling of animals from it is a form of stewardship that keeps ecosystems healthy. His arguments are definitely worth hearing.

I finished this book shortly after we returned from France. I read most of it on the plane ride home. I'm almost caught up with my backlog of book reviews—only the most recent sci-fi installment remains.