Recently Collected Shells of Vietnam

Recently Collected Shells of Vietnam
by Nguyen Ngoc Thach

2007, L'Informatore Piceno and NNT, Acona, Italy, bound in laminated boards, stitched binding, 384 pages, A4 size (about 8.25 by 11.7cm), 118 plates most in color a few are b/w drawings

I have very mixed feelings about this book. I first of all must say that I was expecting this work to be a significant update to the author's 2005 book "Shells of Vietnam" and my expectations have not been met. It is a beautifully produced book and the quality of the photography and the printing does put it ahead of the earlier book. But on the other hand I find that there is a lack of organization in the plates that makes this book very difficult to use. There are land and freshwater shells scattered among the marine species on the plates. Very often you will find shells of the same family showing up on plates that are far apart from one another, and there are also instances of the same species being show on one or more plates. This makes it hard to use the book as an identification guide to be used to browse through the plates to find a match-up to the shell that you are trying to find. I know that there has yet to be a shell book written that is free of errors and this book is by far not free of them. Dr. Thach presents a whole list of experts who have helped him prepare this book and yet I find that there are many more misidentifications in this book than there should be. I will not even include my personal feelings about the validity of some of the names that you will find for the shells in this book but suffice it to say that if you follow the nomenclature used in this book you wil lwind up making a lot of changes in the names of some very common species in your collection and probably scratching your heads about why these shells have been renamed.
The first series of plates are the shells collected by the author since the publication of the previous book. There is a second series of plates that is devoted to the malformed shells that Dr. Thach is so fond of and that are a major part of his collection. For my part a very little of this can go a long way and I could very well do with less than 20 or so illustrations of variations of the same species before I get the idea. There are a few specimens that are illustrated in this "sideshow" that appear to me to be perfectly normal, but I will not argue that point.
If you want to read a review of this book that is in complete contrat to mine I suggest that you read the review in "American Conchologist" Dec. 2007 page 23 by Z.Orlin and I quote from this review "All those interested in the shells of the China Sea(sic) and Indo-Pacific will benefit by including this book in their library". I also have no doubt that an even greater benefit will be had by the author, the publisher and yours truly should you decide to buy it.