The book is short, and would be a lot shorter if it had been properly edited. Or maybe the editor told the author to pad it to at least fill 150 pages, including a few uninteresting illustrations and empty pages between chapters. If I don't seem very enthusiastic about the book, I'm about as enthusiastic as the author is about her subject. Actually, I feel rather sad that this woman has worked as a Nightingale expert for so long, without showing any sign of really liking them. I don't think she particularly dislikes them either. She just seems to think that the nightingale is really just a standard, mediocre songbird like any other, except for having a song that you can do research on. The first third of the book tells you this.

The second third of the book was about the research on the nightingale's song. This is apparently interesting to work on, although not really to read about. But some of the things she mentions might be interesting to learn more about. Her most common comment in this section was, that more research is needed on this aspect.

The third section is supposed to be an overview of the nightingale in human culture, but the author doesn't really know much about it, doesn't know how to research it, so mostly throws in a few crumbs of trivia.

I might have given the second third 3*. The book as a whole gets 2*, which feels generous. ( )