Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience

I've read a few of the Objects Lessons series, and I've really enjoyed every one that I've read. Since they are usually very educational or information/analysis, so I didn't expect this book to be part memoir. Erica Wright talks about some of her knowledge of snakes and her previous experiences with snakes, and I thought it was fun. One thing I found really intriguing was that Wright herself has a fear of snakes, but set out long ago to expose herself to them, and learn what she could about these animals. Personally, I've never been afraid snakes, so I didn't need to rethink the way I see them, or see them as more than something to be afraid of. I do like that concept though because I know that there are a lot of people who are.
My favorite thing about this book (really it's a long essay) is how it talks about the history of snakes, how they were used as symbols, links to femininity/feminism, and the negative picture unfairly painted on them. Overall, it was fun and short read that made me think a little more about snakes!

Interesting and well written, if sometimes a little chaotic in a stream-of-consciousness style. You will find a myriad of stories here, about mythology and religion, poetry and art, conservation and hinting. While I sometimes longed for a deeper dive into some of the topics, I have to admit that this book does its work as a "very short introduction" well. I was never particularly interested in snakes, I am rather neutral towards them (a member of the arachnophobia team, myself), but now I will gladly read some more about these creatures.

The book is a part of an interesting series, Object Lessons, about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Thanks to the publisher, Bloomsbury Academic, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

This is the first I'd heard of the 'Object Lessons' series and it's not something I would usually read for fun - but I have an incredible passion for snakes. In fact, I work with reptiles, so I feel that I'm very knowledgable and experienced when it comes to snakes. I wondered what a book like this could teach me, the answer? A lot!

Snakes by Erica Wright is a fascinating insight into snakes in history, art, literature and culture. It explores the theme of the snake from cave paintings, to the bible, to modern times, often returning to the theme of the duality that a snake presents. It is well written, interesting, and had some unexpected examples. This is an awesome read for someone who is interested in how snakes have been perceived and affected society over the years, but should also appeal to anyone with a general interest in myth, culture and symbolism. Or just if you're looking to spend a few hours broadening your knowledge.

Interspersed between facts are anecodates and personal reflection from someone who does appear to have a genuine interest in the subject, giving it personality and bringing it to life.

Five stars from me.

Snake is a fantastic inclusion in the Bloomsbury Object Lessons series. It perfectly captures the quirky and whimsical mood I have come to expect from the series. It easily covers a wide range of topics from ophidiophobia, mythology, snake cults and a myriad of other factoids and symbolism.
The snake is death and rebirth simultaneously, a crawling contradiction.

Am not sure it helped me with my snake phobia, but by the end of the novella I was definitely thinking "humans are really weird."

Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Academic for the reading copy.

Reactions to snakes are notoriously variable from screeches of fright to having nightmares to giddy excitement. My experience has been all three. Like Erica Wright, I used to fear snakes before knowing much about them. Now I seek them out deliberately and document and photograph them, though admittedly still do jump from time to time!

Wright's book details how humans over time have felt/feel about snakes. To some they were a necessary part of life.
They've been revered and despised, charmed and symbolic, worshipped and killed in "sport". Mythology, religion and symbolism were extremely important and impactful historically. Still are but now we are discovering snakes will apparently have a future in treating illnesses.

"Misunderstood" is the first descriptor which comes to my mind when contemplating snakes. Before researching and handling them I thought they would be slithery and slippery but they are dry, leathery and incredibly strong. When wrapped around your arm their powerful muscles easily hold up their heads. In nature I've seen them hunt and mate for hours, locked into a beautiful dance.

This book is an interesting mix of facts, history and anecdotes. The writing is so easy to read and the author has a great sense of humour (nope rope!). Those who fear them or are on the fence, please take the time to learn more about these beautiful creatures...highly rewarding. This engaging book offers fascinating personal perspectives, a nice complement to encyclopedic reads.

My sincere thank you to Bloomsbury Academic and NetGalley for providing me with a digital copy of this enthralling book in exchange for an honest review.
Much appreciated.

Part of the Objects Lessons series, a collection of short books which take a look at everyday objects, encouraging the reader to see them in a new light. Snake is part textbook, part memoir, as Erica Wright details her own experiences of the fascinating animals, paired with facts about them and their links to mythology and symbolism.

I have to admit, I’ve had a fascination with snakes since I was a kid. They’re intriguing animals, often portrayed poorly, sometimes harmless, sometimes dangerous, and much less scary than spiders. As Wright explains, they’re often linked to evil, to the bad guys, whether it’s in the Garden of Eden or the prince’s right-hand, er, snake in Robin Hood, or even the intriguing, unusual hairstyle of Medusa.

Wright does a great job of giving her own experiences alongside everything else, and there wasn’t a moment in this short book – which could really be considered a long essay – when I felt the text was boring or dry. One thing I found really intriguing was that Wright herself has a fear of snakes, but set out long ago to expose herself to them, and learn what she could about these animals.

There was nothing particularly new here (‘we might be born with a fear of snakes and spiders’ is one of my favorite factoids) for me, but it’s still an engaging read, told in a conversational tone that allows the reader to really follow it, without it becoming over-bearing or perhaps too academic. The ties to the snake as symbol, links to femininity, negative connotations and the like were laid out well and do provide food for thought, made better by the way it’s all laid out and connected.

I think this is a really good book that does well to dive into the snake, in an easy to follow manner while conveying a lot of information. It’s interesting, and worth checking out, especially if you want to know a little more about these fascinating animals.

Rating: 5 Stars

There are something like ninety books about reptiles and amphibians on my shelves, which I’ve accumulated over the past two decades. Almost all of them put the author’s expertise on the subject front and centre: these are books by hobbyists who have raised generations of reptiles in captivity, field naturalists with decades of experience finding them in the wild, or herpetologists with deep CVs and institutional authority. Credentials, in this field, matter. What, then, to make of Erica Wright’s Snake, out today from Bloomsbury, a slim volume from someone with no experience with them whatsoever?

Wright writes crime novels and poetry, edits a literary journal and teaches writing: not the profile of someone who writes a book of short essays on snakes. But she has gone and done that very thing. Snake, part of the Object Lessons series of short books “about the hidden lives of ordinary things,” is possibly the most different of all the books about snakes I have ever read, simply because she does not fit that profile. Snake is by someone who was wary if not afraid of them as a child, but came to them as an adult.

“It’s difficult to pinpoint the moment when I decided to immerse myself in snake stories: grandmothers killing copperheads, rock stars injecting themselves with venom, and physicists studying sidewinders. Perhaps it started with my 2013 road trip to the Rattlesnake and Wildlife Festival in Claxton, Georgia, or just as likely with seeing my first anaconda—impossibly large and surprisingly active—at the Tennessee Aquarium. A decade ago, I spent a summer obsessed with Titanoboa, a prehistoric marvel clocking in at around forty feet and weighing over a ton. My childhood was filled with close encounters, and I’m sufficiently embarrassed by the number of times I jumped at discarded snakeskins (or even occasionally a thin stick). I better remember the moment my phobia was pricked with sympathy: watching video footage of rattlesnakes being brutalized for sport at what’s called a roundup. I’d never thought much about people killing snakes before, but seeing the animals slaughtered in front of a cheering crowd, hands full of corndogs and hearts full of bloodlust, flipped a switch inside me.”

In their multiple field guides about snakes, Whit Gibbons and Mike Dorcas make the point that peoples’ attitudes about snakes are strongly polarized: they either adore them or despise them; there’s very little in between. (Most people are neutral toward lizards; everybody likes turtles.) Most of us started young and began proselytizing at our classmates; Wright is coming to the subject both late and from the other group. She has a lot of catching up to do, and Snake is the diary of her journey. It’s a personal book describing her attempts to encompass the subject.

Because it’s an Object Lessons book, she only has 25,000 to 30,000 words in which to do it. Wright covers a lot of territory in a hundred and ten pages, most of which is familiar to me but new and astonishing to her. The book’s brevity necessitates a hummingbird’s attention span: a single chapter may segue between several related subjects; chapter six starts with Versace and passes through considerations of Medusa and leather before ending up talking about the Florida python problem, for example.

It’s also a book that focuses less on the biology and more on the cultural freight. Because there is a ton of cultural freight involved with snakes; and outside books on rattlesnakes, or attempts to debunk old myths in the hopes of having fewer snakes get killed, other books don’t pay nearly enough attention to that question. It’s a subject few old hands handled well, but it’s one that interests me a great deal, and I’m happy to see Wright grapple, for example, with the symbolism of snakes in the post-Irwin era, where social media is full of sneks and danger noodles with snoots to boop.

But it’s too brief and too introductory—for me. This is a rare book about snakes: one that is not for me. Those who’ve spent their lives with snakes will find this book a bit exasperating, like an Olympic athlete listen to a new swimmer extolling the virtues of water. But if it’s introductory, it’s also not for children. It’s a rare thing: a beginner snake book firmly for adults. The market for such a book is uncertain, but it is also certainly untapped.

This book is well-researched, informative, humorous, and gave me, as someone with a lifelong fear of snakes, a few things to appreciate about the otherwise horrifying danger noodle. I liked the author's straightforward prose, and her analysis of poetic works that center snakes as creatures of beauty, rather than classical terrors. Her anecdotes about family run-ins with venomous snakes raised the hairs on my neck, as well as her deep dive into pentecostal preachers who use snakes as religious props. I'm still so very scared of snakes, but reading this book, at the very least, allowed me to see them through somewhat friendlier eyes. That being said, I refuse to entertain anyone that owns one as a pet. Stop it. Just stop.

Erica Wright's Snake is part of the Object Lessons series, books aimed at shedding light on the hidden lives of ordinary things (coffee, the ocean, bookshelves, hair, personal stereos, eye charts; I'd go on because despite their ordinariness you can see how a book about these items would be fascinating, but I digress).

I love snakes. Don't turn and run if you're anti-snake, Wright isn't fond of them herself. But she gives them a fair shake, and delving into why snakes seem to hold a sense of evil is part of this fascinating account of what snakes are all about and the unfair (and sometimes fair) qualities we ascribe to them. Although snakes often inspire fear, they are also the symbol of medicine. The snake is a true contradiction, "a living embodiment of duality."

Scientists believe that the medicinal potentials of venom are far-reaching. A drug for blood clots created from studies of the saw-scaled viper has been on the market since 1998. Neurotoxins might one day be used to treat brain injuries and Alzheimer’s. Some experts believe that we could see snake venom playing a role in treating Parkinson’s and breast cancer, as well. A substance that strikes fear into so many hearts could be used to restart those very organs.

Wright recognizes that humans are also creatures of duality, with the power to be menacing or helpful, destructive or redemptive. "Irrational fear justifies a lot of cruelty," and if we fail to understand the serpent we run the risk of losing a valuable resource. Wright explores the snake in voodoo, church, pop culture, science, conservation, and social media. Britney Spears, David Letterman, Steve Irwin and scientists studying robotics all have snakes in common. A baby cobra still had 150,000 followers on social media eight years after he escaped the Bronx Zoo. We are fascinated with snakes, we just need to understand them more. Wright's Object Lessons installment is a great place to start.

Snakes scare the f*** out of me! I’ve had repetitive snake bite dreams when I was a kid and it still is a nightmare to watch snake horror films.. But I requested this book about SNAKES to know more about them. Its like the saying “know more about your enemies”.

Before requesting this I never knew Object Lessons was a series and I’ve added other books to my tbr. This book particularly deals with atmosphere of snakes, their nature, what they represent right from the mythology times to the current fashion/art creationism. Wonderfully written but repetitive at times, I recommend this to anyone who is looking for a science + nonfiction + informative read!

3.75/5 ⭐️

Thank you Bloomsbury Academic, NetGalley and Erica Wright for the arc. This review is my own and is not influenced in anyway!

When I reviewed Object Lessons = Political Sign my main negative was that the author cherry picked some interesting anecdotes, it worked as a monograph but he was too much like me as a person - and so our references (and shared outlook) were too similar to be thought provoking. Erica Wright, who has penned the superficially similar in tone and outlook Snake is not a alternative music skate-punk turned self-styled political pundit. She's a poetry editor. That is just about enough diversity to give it a better tone for me. A poetry editor that lived in a snake riddled house who is now perhaps a snake obsessive. And whilst it feels that she used to be a bit interested in snakes and became much more interested in them to write this book, that is fine. In many ways its preferable. This is the breeziest of the Object Lessons I have read, it comes in, it knows we are all interested in the deadly venom and the biblical stuff and - you know - has she ever been bitten by a snake?

He route is also nicely circuitous, she understands I think really well that a book like this might be read in one sitting but like a snake can meander through robotics (modelling snake movements), to Will Ferrell doing a skit on the Today Show not about snakes. There a moments of self reflection and memories about snake encounters but this is mainly been put together to enjoy as a book you dip into, each of its short chapters takes an aspect of snakedom (and those who charm and sell their oil) and goes to town. Is there a greater thesis, I thought at the time not, but the slipperiness of the subject gives a greater meta-textual meaning - discover and fall in love with your fears and you will fear no more. I think Wright probably also would want you to do that with poetry, though she will be happy with rehabilitating the humble snake.

I found this book extremely interesting. I found the way the author explored the duality of snakes and what they represent in iconography interesting. There were times I found this repetitive but it was a nice bit size look at the perceptions of snakes in the media and general public. overall really enjoyed it.

Even if this short book belongs to a series called “Object Lessons,” the author will probably agree with me that snakes are not a thing, but a wonder of nature with a PR problem. Still, the theme of the series makes this not a biology or ethology textbook, but a wonderful reflection of how humans view the snake as an object. There is plenty of information on these creatures, but there is also art, culture, folklore and even some poetry. Animal lovers will cringe at some paragraphs about the abuse that humans have brought on them throughout history. I once was walking by the river behind my office and saw a big, fat gopher snake. I immediately went closer (there are no poisonous snakes where I live, but it still left me in the minority of living creatures, along with mongooses and Eve whose first instinct was not running away), so I share Wright’s fascination with these beings. Reading and learning more about them was a wonderful experience. Even if you’re afraid of them, give this book a chance. It may just change your mind.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/ Bloomsbury Academic!

Given that I had to read this book with my feet off the floor, I'm not sure why I requested this. Snakes creep me out a little bit, nethertheless this was full of really interesting and really highlighted things I'd never thought much about before like how a snake is often seen as a dangerous, potentially deadly creature, yet it features on many medical logos.

An excellent addition to this fascinating series.The author focuses on snake their symbolism place in history to modern times.Well written informative an in depth look at snakes#netgalley#bloomsburyacademic

Snake by Erica Wright is an extremely interesting take on how the snake itself is portrayed in media and culture, I really enjoyed this read and feel as though I would think about things a lot more deeply in the future.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an Advanced Readers Copy in exchange for an honest review.

A thoroughly enjoyable read that whisks you around the cultural significance of snakes. For such small creatures, they harbor such symbolism and I really loved how Erica Wright broke it down in a quick fun read that included her personal experiences with snakes.

This series of books – the list of which will soon breach a second page in every edition, so long it's getting, no matter the font shrinking – is designed to discuss semi-academically something we routinely find around us, or don't realise is culturally significant enough to have a non-fiction book dedicated to it. They're not for the specialists regarding each and every topic, for they're designed to be for the lay browser, in a collect-the-set fashion. And for the second time only (I discount 'Egg' and 'Whale Song' as by-products) we look at a living entity – the snake. Now, I did actually realise there was cultural significance about this critter, and I don't normally find it around me at all. I've barely met a slow worm, let along one of the more regularly considered British snakes; the only one I touched was held by a handler in a shopping mall for some event or another. I wouldn't normally be drawn to reading about them. But the beauty of these books – when they get it right – is that they let you read about the results of reading around them.

This author, for one, has had a connection to the subject that makes the production of this text look effortless. We get autobiography here, which is par for the course for this series, but here it's well-written, welcome and interesting (as opposed to too many under this umbrella). She's been around them since hating them as a child, but is more than enough of an able researcher to provide for a heck of a lot of the cultural references, semiotics and so on of the serpent, from "Paradise Lost" to Britney Spears. But it's not only the connotations of the legless reptiles that is here, for we get plain fact too – the man who has handled three million of them over decades of work with them and admits they would never actually be a pet, in contrast with lots of people who have them under the microscope of a bedroom tank wall, and in contrast to the nut-job religious ceremonies involving them.

It's not a perfect volume, unfortunately – there are a few 'yes – and?' sections, such as two pages about First Lady couture, that don't really go anywhere, and the last couple of chapters seemed to be a bit too waffly, the author spent in her arguments. But I did like it for proving so convincingly that the snake is good and evil, death and rebirth, both alien and needing our love. It's yin and yang personified – the ambulances speeding victims to receive antivenin have a picture of the things on the outside, of all things (although we're told that's a modern cock-up, without more elucidation, dammit). On the whole, four stars feels a touch generous but about right.

Snakes by Erica Wright is an interesting look at snakes and their relationship with humans throught history and modern culture. As a snake owner of a ball python, I think I was looking more for a factual history of snakes and their evolution as a species. This book is geared more towards those who are more weary or who have a passing fascination with snakes from a distance. For someone who owns or doesn't have a problem interacting with snakes, this book might not bring a lot of new information to the table regarding humans and their attitudes towards snakes, which can range from dangerous ineptitude to paralyzing fear. The book has many good stories and personal anecdotes from the author regarding interactions with snakes. Altogether, this is a good read for anyone that wants to learn more about snakes and their history with humans.