Review: Khaki and Binoculars

For a topic that has absolutely zero appeal to me, I was surprisingly entertained by Luke Dempsey's A Supremely Bad Idea: Three Mad Birders and Their Quest to See It All. I love the outdoors and all, but birding? Strikes me as an activity for retired 70-somethings living either out of an RV or somewhere in Florida. I think this because of my grandparents who, in my childhood, were 70-somethings with binoculars hanging beside the bay window overlooking the backyard that was littered with birdhouses, bird feeders, and bird baths. I've never actually asked them if they were birders, but my skills of deduction are going to say yes.

Dempsey doesn't actually follow this stereotype. He's a 30-something year-old British immigrant living in New York City and working in publishing. After some friends pointed out a bird flying around his country house in upstate New York, Dempsey was hooked with a new hobby. Battling the khaki-wearing, granola-eating, fanny pack-using convention, our protagonist makes his way across the country with fellow birders Don and Donna and a keen eye to the treetops.

If you have absolutely zero interest in bird-watching, like me, you can at least appreciate it after reading Dempsey's memoir. His narrative guides the reader through his renewed love affair with nature and the landscape of his adoptive country. He pokes fun at the unobservant traveler and the general "stupid" person as much as he pokes fun at himself and his untanned, grayish-tinted English skin. His storytelling pulls you in with the subtle humor of Bill Bryson [to whom Dempsey has been compared with this novel]. He's sarcastic and witty and you can tell that as much as he loves birding, he doesn't take himself or his experiences too seriously. He brings a very human and very relatable quality to these stories to which only a small population of people could actually relate.

To me, this was one of those books where the subject matter isn't as important as how well the author tells the story. Despite my lack of interest in birding, I enjoyed the story because of Dempsey's voice. If you're a birder, you'll like this because you can relate. If you're not a birder, you'll probably chuckle at the extremes these people go to. And then you'll want to go outside and enjoy nature, maybe think twice when you see a bird, but then shrug it off because, really, you don't care what kind it was.

Here's a video:

Review copy received as part of LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program.