Okay, you can’t watch wall-to-wall pre-game coverage of the Super Bowl, can you? You shouldn’t take in too many replays of every debate spark that flew last week, should you? Tired of the nonstop football and election articles, internet highlights, and television analysis ~ not to mention what’s up with Britney lately?

Take some time to revisit the lake monsters, folks. They miss you.

There is a brand new review of The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep (NY: Tarcher/Penguin, 2003) published by epinions.

It is always encouraging to read intelligent critiques written by someone that actually reads the entire book and then takes some time to think about what the authors were trying to do in, for example, this field guide. That makes the effort worth it all.

Please find the whole review here. The following are the last two paragraphs.

[The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep] goes through the sea serpents, waterhorses, mystery whales, monster sharks, unknown manta rays, giant “sea centipedes” (possibly some kind of armored prehistoric whale), titanic turtles, colossal octopi, dinosaurs, and other fauna reported from nearly every corner of the globe. Instead of trying to throw in every sighting committed to paper, the authors zero in on a few of the more convincing and remarkable cases that have crossed their radar (with helpful maps that show exactly where each occurred). Strange carcasses and beached globs are also addressed, as is the “ridicule factor” that you’re likely to experience should you run to the nearest newsman with tales of your own monster sighting. For those determined to encounter these creatures, there are also lists of the places where you’re most likely to encounter sea serpents and lake monsters (try Cadboro Bay in Canada and just about any lake in northern Europe, respectively), not to mention an awesome collection of lakes and rivers around the world that boast some kind of beastie or another. I’d be willing to bet that most of you live within two hundred miles of a supposed water monster lair, and probably didn’t even know it.

If you’re into the kind of weirdness that attracts the attention of this demented reviewer, then you should snap up The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep. There’s not a lot in here that devoted readers of the field haven’t seen before (that said, I’d never heard of the giant beavers, possibly man-eating ones, that are alleged to inhabit the lakes of Utah), but that doesn’t prevent one from getting that creepy feeling when reading about encounters with prehistoric sharks off the coast of Australia or run-ins with horse-headed serpentine forms in the fjords of Scandinavia. Coleman and Huyghe came up with a sensible, highly readable, and well-organized overview of what is admittedly a difficult subject to take seriously. ~ Bryan Shultz, epinions.com, February 1, 2008.

The Giant Beaver or perhaps the Great Bear Lake Monster of Utah, an illustration by Harry Trumbore from The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep (NY: Tarcher/Penguin, 2003).

I also appreciate it when a news service actually follows through on their promise to show a cover of one of my books, as CNN did last summer. Beavers didn’t come up in the conversation, but, well, otters did: