A kindle in the dark

Just for fun, I downloaded free samples of three field guides to my Kindle, covering (respectively) butterflies, dragonflies and spiders. The samples from the first two didn't show any color plates. The sample from the spider book, by contrast, *only* showed the color plates! Suddenly, things weren't so funny anymore. Yes, I'm practically arachnophobic. Just about the only bugs I can stomach are, ahem, butterflies and dragonflies…

So thank you NOT Mr Kindle!

That being said, I don't doubt that this is an excellent field guide to spiders, although part of me hopes they're not as common as the title implies. Nor do I understand why anyone would want to buy a work of this kind on Kindle for 70 dollars, when you can get a used copy of the actual hardcover for a lower price? How many people run around in the bushes (or their backyards) with a Kindle device in search of Arachnida?

If you only want the free sample (to scare somebody with, perhaps), brace yourself for some quality color illustrations of trapdoor spiders, tarantulas, hackled orbweavers, the “toadlike bolas spider”, garden spiders, cellar spiders and, of course, the black widow. There's even a “false black widow”, so who knows, maybe those 70 buck will save your life? Or the life of a poor common spider…

Five stars. Very reluctantly.