September 2007 - Page 3 of 3

The Plague Dogs

by Richard Adams

Two hapless dogs escape from an animal research lab into the barren wilderness of England\’s Lake District, where they take up company with a wild fox. A journalist finds out about them and spreads inflamed reports that the dogs carry bubonic plague, causing the whole countryside to rise up against them in fear and horror. There are two strong appeals to The Plague Dogs: the fast-paced adventure of the dogs fleeing for their lives; and the wonderful characterization and word play that bring them to life. The two dogs are a large black mongrel that suffered psychological tests by repeated near-drowning, who still tries to hold firm to his belief in man, and a small fox terrier full of humor and wit who underwent brain-surgery experiments that make him hallucinate. The mongrel\’s sober speech and the terrier\’s wandering hallucinatory nonsense are offset by the language of the fox, who speaks an Upper Tyneside dialect known as Geordie. It is the dialog between the three that gives the story its life: full of pathos, humor and courage.

Rating: 4/5 389 pages, 1978

More opinions at:
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Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Fiction, Past Reads

Don Coyote

by Dayton O. Hyde

Surrounded by sheep ranchers who hate, revile and try to exterminate the coyote, Dayton Hyde takes a stand to protect and study this fascinating and resourceful animal on his cattle ranch in Oregon. His informal investigations include examining the ecological benefits of having coyotes on his land and hand-raising a litter of coyote pups. Through his first-hand experiences with coyotes, Hyde proved wrong the long-held belief that they prey upon cattle. Don Coyote was a ground-breaking wildlife study in its day, and the American Library Association named it one of the ten top books of the 1980s.

Far from being a dry, scientific volume, Don Coyote is full of humor and set against the background of the author\’s life with his family– who view his coyote dealings with long-suffering patience and continual amusement. It is a very personable story, and an old favorite of mine.

Rating: 4/5 245 pages w/19 black and white photographs, 1986

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Nonfiction

Harry Potter

by J.K. Rowling

I finally finished it, the last Harry Potter book! Last time I read the most recent of the series, I actually went back and read the previous book, just to catch up on all the details. This time I didn’t bother with that. Rowling does a pretty good job at reminding you what important things mean or where they came from, without spelling it out in your face.

Well. It was really good. Suspenseful, although the part where Harry and his friends are in the wilderness really started to drag. I kept thinking: why don’t they do something!? The odd thing was that the fight scenes lost my attention. The opening chapter is one big battle, and there’s many smaller ones interspersed until you reach the grand finale at the end: and every time I actually had to put the book down, go do something else and come back. I don’t know what it was. Maybe she just doesn’t write action scenes well, or I don’t read them well.

I was glad that there were still surprises, all the way through. Rowling kept the last twist there, and I didn’t see it all coming. Dumbledore turned out to be more of a complex character than I’d figured, with his own faults and flaws as a person. Makes him more believable, to me. I also appreciated finding out more about Snape; I always figured there was more to him than just a bitter, nasty revengeful and spiteful man. I did regret that many of the other minor characters were not described as well in this last book, the author kind of depended on you already knowing them, and didn’t give them much attention besides simply what they did.

There were a few things that annoyed me: like what was the point of the gift Dumbledore gave Ron? I didn’t agree that it was something Dumbledore would have foreseen a need for; and the more common use they put to it could have been done by other spells? Also, two-thirds through the book the magical object suddenly seemed to disappear; at least I saw half a dozen instances where they really could have used it, but it wasn’t around. Maybe they lost it and I forgot when. The other thing that really bugged me was that they keep using the same old spells in the most crucial moments. Always expelliarmus… My last gripe is that I don’ t like how the main characters got paired up in the end. Even though Rowling made it pretty obvious it was coming, I don’t think they were a good match.

I won’t say anymore. Suffice that I really liked reading all her books, they were highly entertaining and had enough puzzles to keep me enthralled. However, I don’t think they’re destined to become classics, nor due to be called great literature. They’re great stories, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy reading them again, but that’s about all for me. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows had some quite original magic ideas in the second half, but there’s other books that stand out more in that regard. Actually, I enjoyed all her previous books that were more about a schoolboy experience in a magical setting over this last one which was about the final battle between good and evil. Now I wonder what she’ll write next?

Rating: 4/5

759 pages, 2007

Read more reviews at:
Musings of a Bookish Kitty

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Current Reads, Fantasy / Sci Fi

The Time-Traveler’s Wife

by Audrey Niffenegger

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is a love story in a pseudo sci-fi setting of time travel. Unlike other books about time travel, in this one there’s no machines or tunnels through space. Instead, Henry has a genetic condition that causes him to spontaneously time-travel to moments in his own past or future. It seems his episodes are triggered by stress and similar to epileptic fits. He can’t control where he goes or how long he stays, and he always arrives naked. In order to survive during his trips this apparently very nice guy hones skills at pick-pocketing, breaking and entry and especially running– to procure food, clothing, shelter and escape from thugs and policeman. As the story progresses, Henry’s unpredictable disappearances into the past and future become increasingly dangerous.

The story is full of twists. When Henry first meets Claire, she is twenty and he is twenty-eight. He’s a good-looking librarian at the Newbery Library in Chicago, and she’s an art student who creates large sculptures out of handmade paper. He’s never seen her before, but she’s known him since she was six years old, when he first visited her from his future. It can be really confusing, but if you ignore the dates and ages heading the chapters and avoid trying to match every event up, you can sit back and enjoy it.

I had a difficult time putting The Time-Traveler’s Wife down. It was one of the best reads I’d had in a while! When I was done I had quite a number of unanswered questions, though. Henry’s genetic time-traveling condition is rather sketchily presented and you have to suspend some belief to read about it. I wished the author had spent more time on the medical treatment and discoveries related to it. I also thought that living in such a confusing non-linear state would eventually cause some kind of major mental breakdown. But the thing I really couldn’t figure out was who first wrote the list? It really bugged me that there was no answer to that.

Rating: 4/5

518 pages, 2003

More opinions:
Book Haven
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Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Past Reads, Speculative Fiction

Meme: Multiples

Do you have multiple copies of any of your books? If so, why? Absent-mindedness? You love them that much? First Editions for the shelf, but paperbacks to read? If not, why not? Not enough space? Not enough money? Too sensible to do something so foolish?

The only reason I ever have multiples of a book is if I went browsing in a bookstore and forgot I already own it, or somebody bought me a copy as a gift and didn\’t know I had it. I consider space on my shelves too precious to waste on extra copies. That\’s also why I try and buy only hardbound books, so they last longer! Occasionally I have found a beautiful copy so much nicer than the one I already owned that I bought it to replace my original. Then the duplicate copy gets donated to someone else who needs a good book to read! I\’m not a lending library, so I just don\’t see the sense in having duplicate copies, when someone else could own the other one.

From Booking Through Thursday

Tags: memes

When the Legends Die

by Hal Borland

I found this book to be sombre and powerful. If you read other reviews, you\’ll find that some people are bored by the main character\’s lack of integrity and the dry writing style. But I thought that it precisely reflected the protagonist\’s state of mind: a paucity of feeling. There was no other way he could deal with the betrayal and heartbreak he faced than by denying his very identity and emotions. It created a lonely desert in his heart, and after a lifetime of pursuits that lead to nowhere, he finally travels a full circle back to confront his origins and seek healing.

I\’m getting ahead of myself. When the Legends Die is about a Native American from the Ute tribe, who called himself Bear\’s Brother but came to be known as Tom Black. When all of his tribe and family either died or was assimilated into turn-of-the-century American culture, Tom as a young boy remained alone in the wilderness, struggling to survive by himself in the traditional ways of his people. Eventually he is discovered and betrayed by one of his Americanized tribe members, and coerced to live at an English school. There he is ridiculed and shamed into abandoning his heritage. He strongly resists adapting to the American culture and Christian beliefs that are forced upon him, and grows up to become a man full of bitterness.

Seeking an avenue of life that doesn\’t bore or disgust him, Tom becomes a bronco rider and for years travels the rodeo circuit venting his anger and suppressed sorrow on the horses. He becomes famous for his brutality to the animals and is feared by many people. Anyone who tries to get near him is pushed away by his abrasive personality and outright rejection of friendship. The number of people who try to take advantage of him doesn\’t help any. He does everything he can to forcibly renounce the memories of his past.

But he can\’t run away from it entirely. The message of the book is strong: attempting to remove yourself from the heritage that shaped you and gave you identity creates a vacuumn in your soul that cannot be filled. As the quote that gave the book its name states: \”When the legends die, the dreams end. When the dreams end, there is no more greatness.\” A very good read, this book is a poignant story full of sights and sounds of the Southwest. It presents a clear portrayal of what many Native Americans faced when their culture was stamped out.

Rating: 4/5 …………Published 1963, 288 pgs

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, General Fiction, Past Reads

The Craggy Hole In My Heart & the Cat Who Fixed It

Over the Edge and Back with My Dad, My Cat and Me
by Geneen Roth

Okay, did the title have to be so long? And wasn\’t it long enough without a subtitle attached, too? I felt it wasn\’t really an apt title for the book, either. After reading the first lines: When my friend Sally called to tell me that I needed a kitten, her cat Pumpkin was pregnant, I said no, absolutely not. I didn\’t want a pet, I didn\’t like cats, and I didn\’t want to love anything that could die before me… I was looking forward to at least something about how Roth went from disliking cats to being so deeply attached to her \”Mister Blanche\”. But there was none of that. After the first descriptions of how cute Blanche was as a fluffy kitten, the book suddenly skips ten years and launches into an exploration of the author\’s struggle to overcome years of eating disorders and emotional instability. The cat was the key to her turning point. He was the first being she could love unconditionally, without reservations. He enabled her to let down her defenses. Soon after letting Blanche into her heart, she met her boyfriend (now husband), Matt: \”for continuing to beam his living light on me day after day, I thank Matt Weinstein. Blanche opened the door to my heart, and you walked through it.\”

Not long after that, Roth had to face the possibility of her father\’s death; and went through a difficult spiritual and emotional journey to finally understand the true nature of her relationship with him (it wasn\’t as rosy as she\’d always thought). Through the heart-wrenching passage of her loss, Roth finally came to an emotional freedom she had never been able to reach with all her therapists, gurus and spiritual retreats. As if that wasn\’t enough, then she had to face the loss of her beloved cat. Finally, he comes back into the story at the end!

I found it particularly sad that it was love that ruined Blanche\’s health. He was grossly overweight because she showered him with so much luxury. He even got carried all over the house, never had to walk! All the acupuncture and holistic healers couldn\’t do much for his failing kidneys… if you read between the lines, this book says a lot about a spoiled rich lifestyle. But mostly it is about love, trust and parent-child relationships. The chapters are short, and written with a witty self-deprecating humor. Overall, The Craggy Hole in My Heart is a very engaging book and an easy read.

Rating: 3/5 Published 2004, 238 pgs

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Nonfiction, Bios / Memoirs, Current Reads, Inspirational

The Bridge Across Forever

by Richard Bach

I picked this book up from a secondhand store in Seattle many years ago, and was pretty dubious about it. In the first place, I\’m not much into romances or love stories. In the second, the out of body experiences, astral projections and dreams in which the author visits the future seemed a little far-fetched to me. I questioned whether those things really happened the way he stated. This book was written as a nonfictional account, but now some people have been finding it in the fiction section of bookstores.

That said, I really did enjoy reading The Bridge Across Forever. I found it an engrossing story, partly because it described a life so different from mine: a writer finds himself a sudden success, and goes through a bunch of ups and downs as he alternately spends his money on airplanes and looses it again. The descriptions of what it feels like to fly an airplane enthralled me. But the heart of the story is about a man seeking a perfect relationship. The problem is that he isn\’t perfect, and the woman he finally finds is portrayed as being so. He comes across as rather immature, self-centered and rude, whereas his soul-mate is full of phrases of wisdom and philosophical advice on life and love. The dialog between them is very frank and realistic, and made me laugh quite a number of times.

The sad thing is that recently I discovered that Bach left the soul-mate he wrote about in this book, after being married for twenty years, and returned to being the womanizer he was before he met her. Apparently he had left a wife and six kids before he ever met her, too! Children are never mentioned in the book at all, not as part of his past or plans for his future. It was quite disappointing to realize that he never followed all the beautiful-sounding advice he made in his book.

Rating: 3/5 Published 1984, 316 pgs

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Inspirational, Past Reads

Month: September 2007

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