Leviathan or the Whale by Philip Hoare Fourth Estate HK$142
You needn't like whales to appreciate Philip Hoare's book, but it helps. An affecting volume that is everything you wanted to know about the whale but didn't think to ask, it is also a homage to Herman Melville as well as a memoir, travel book and print version of a BBC documentary. Just as Ishmael, the sailor in Moby-Dick, 'continually interrupts the reader with diversions and digressions', says Hoare, so too he weaves in and out of personal observations, history and whale-related curiosities. He begins with memories of seeing a beluga whale on Coney Island, New York, then segues into a section about a beluga caught off Labrador, Canada, in 1877 and transported to Southampton. The mammal died: kept in a wooden box on a steamship, it was doused with salt water every three minutes; it caught a cold. Hoare provides fact after fact, but he points out that whales still mystify: no one really knows why they leap; it may be to dislodge parasites or simply for fun. Readers who don't enjoy Leviathan may cite Hoare's over-enthusiasm as a reason. When spume hits his face in the wake of a finback's dive, he writes, 'I have been breathed upon, and it feels like a baptism.'