Bernard Werber

Probablement mon livre préféré. Chaque nouvelle déborde d'inventivité et arrive à conter une histoire passionnante en quelques pages. L'art de la nouvelle n'est pas si facile, mais Bernard Werber la maîtrise à la perfection. Aussi délicieux qu'une boîte de chocolats, car on ne sait jamais ce qu'on va trouver dans la prochaine histoire ;)

Don't kill any more ants!!
This book is worth learning French to read. Honestly. It had me worrying for the fate of an ant by page 40! Fascinating swap of perspectives, and hair-raising cliff-hanger ending. I have the 3rd book in this trilogy, but am anxiously waiting to get the 2nd from the library!

Ne tuez plus de fourmis !
Ce livre vaut la peine d'apprendre le français pour le lire. Vraiment. Il m'a fait soucier pour le destin d'une fourmi avant la 40e page ! Changement impressionnant de show more points de vues et fin incroyable. J'ai déjà le 3e tome mais j’attends avec impatience le 2e de la bibliothèque !

ShiraDest
22 Decembre, 12015 HE show less

I already like books about animal societies, so I guess I'm biased. You could tell he'd done some research (I did a bit on ants myself a few years ago) which meant that though it had the feeling of magical realism, a lot of the details were right.

The best parts of it were definitely the sections following the ants. They felt like a proper mystery-adventure and I was excited to see what happened next. The ant facts didn't feel superfluous or crowbarred in to the text.

I wasn't so keen on the show more way individual ants had intelligence, as my understanding was that they have more of a swarm intelligence. I thought that was anthropomorphising unnecessarily but I understand that it advanced the plot.

The whole story with the humans and the cellar was just... bizarre. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Some of the "insights" from Edmond Wells and his Encyclopaedia were quite tired, and bordering on racist I thought. Comparing the Japanese to insects? Check. Shallow anthropological observations about caste in Hindu society? Check. Honestly humans are a separate topic I would expect the same level of research in to write anything profound. (Werber spent 15 years researching ants as a hobby.)

There were a couple of quibbles I had with the misuse of words - calling the venomous moth Zygaena a butterfly. (Still amazed at the fact of there *being* venomous moths!) Mixing up a few biological terms which aren't interchangeable (I didn't mark where he or the translator did that, but I'm sure it would be easy for others to spot). These may have been mistakes in translation rather than errors from Werber himself.

Apparently this book is well known in France. I had never heard of it. It was given to me as a gift after a lengthy explanation of how amazing it was (and if I read it as a child I'm sure it would have changed my life too). It's worth reading and I'm sure older kids would love it. show less

Preposterous but still fun and good for my French. I would definitely recommend against giving this to any neuroscientists to read, as the bits with all the neurons lighting up and hormones running to and fro will make them roll their eyes. And computer programmers will probably be equally exasperated by the idea that a regular citizen could hop on the web and easily find out not only where someone had made hotel reservations, but whether that person's bed looked slept in or not! But at show more least good triumphs (in a way) and the fast-paced action did keep things moving, except when I had to stop to look words up. show less