Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places

Rating: 2.5 Stars

Review:

I absolutely loved the Chernobyl chapter - I'm strangely obsessed with Chernobyl - but everything else, eh. Blackwell is a good writer, but I just could not get interested in most if the other places he wrote about. I definitely could not stomach all of the last chapter about India's most polluted River and I'm quite okay not having read the whole thing. Chapter 4, 'The Eighth Continent' was interesting - something I knew absolutely nothing about prior to giving this a read.

Overall, I'd say pass unless you, like Blackwell, see all the beauty in these places. And want to read about pooping outdoors.

Additionally:

This sums up Blackwell's thoughts about these polluted places pretty nicely, and why they are intriguing to him:

"I love the ruined places for all the ways they aren't ruined. Does somebody live there? Does somebody work there? Does anybody miss it when they leave? Those places are still just places." (page 226, hardcover edition)

I really want to visit Chernobyl and I know that sounds weird, but where else can you see time literally stop? Okay, so the looters kind of ruined it a little, but Prypyat was once a bustling city and within 24 hours, the lives of these citizens were changed forever. I just can't even comprehend. And also, I am kind of a nerd for ghost hunting, and Destination Truth investigated there in season 3. Although after seeing the ABYSMAL Chernobyl Diaries a few years ago, I don't think I'd be brave enough to be there at night.