Month: June 2008

Lessons from a Freethinking Dog
by Ted Kerasote

The author of this book lives in a cabin in the Wyoming mountains, in small, secluded community. He spends his free time hunting, hiking, skiing and subsists mainly on game he shoots himself. During a river trip, Kerasote found Merle, a dog who had been surviving alone in the wild for some time. Upon adopting him, the author decided to give the dog free range to come and go as he liked. Merle\’s Door describes the depth of their ensuing relationship, evidence of Merle\’s thought process and decision-making, and expounds on canine history and behavior. These sometimes lengthy quotes from other sources interrupt the story at times, and I\’m not sure if I\’ll find them as engaging next time I read it. But they were interesting. And familiar to me. Most of the books quoted I\’ve read or have on my TBR. I\’m also familiar with the area described, having lived several years in nearby Idaho. I grew up in a family that loves the outdoors, and for many years my father filled up our freezer with venison and elk meat from hunting trips (though not exclusively like this author did). So I found a lot to recognize and enjoy in these pages.

Although the conclusions drawn from observing Merle\’s behavior as an independent dog were insightful, even fascinating, I don\’t think it\’s easy to follow these \”lessons\”. Living in busy cities or suburbs, most pet owners would never find letting their dogs roam freely a safe option. Even in the area where Merle wandered, other dogs were often involved in dog fights, caught by the dog catcher, hit by cars or shot at for harassing livestock. Because he learned to survive on his own at an early age, Merle was able to avoid these hazards (or just lucky). He happened to be a very intelligent dog, above average for his kind. His story is nothing less than extraordinary.

Rating: 4/5               398 pages, 2007

by Elizabeth von Arnim

In search of the next book to read, I picked up von Arnim\’s All the Dogs of My Life because I enjoyed her Enchanted April several years ago, and was in the mood to read more about canine companions after Merle\’s Door. Von Armin\’s memoir of the numerous dogs that came and went in her life is pleasant and charming, but I did not get much more out of it. I suppose if I had read more of her other works or about her life before this, I might have appreciated it more. As it was, I found my interest seriously deteriorating after about fifty pages. I\’ll keep looking.

Abandoned                 211 pages, 1936

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Last night I had a little fun giving new faces to more books I had without dust jackets. I thought I\’d share the results with you (from my magazine clip file):

Icebound Summer, by Sally Carrighar

One Child, by Torey Hayden

The Tribe of Tiger, by Elizabeth Thomas Marshall

Papillon, by Henri Charrière


Bambi, by Felix Salten

I read recently that the deer Salten had in mind when writing the story were european roe deer, not the north american white- or blacktail I \’d always imagined. So I used a picture of that species.

by Dr. Laura Schlessinger

My husband laughed when I told him I\’d read this book (several years ago). He pointed out to me that the author isn\’t really qualified to give marital advice. All I knew about Dr. Laura was that I used to listen to her talk-radio show in the car occasionally. Most of the time her input struck me as sound, from the limited one-sided story you got from a caller. But reading the book, I got a different impression. It felt way over-simplified, and seemed to blame everything on women. That women need to treat their men better: quit nagging and complaining, and put their husbands up on a pedestal. That men want their wives to just give them good food and constant s-x and they\’ll be happy. While I appreciate the reminder to look at ourselves first to make positive changes, I don\’t think problem marriages are all the woman\’s fault, or solved in such simple fashions. And though some of the ideas here were useful, they were also obvious (respect each other, express your love, give each other some space). I think all the good material in this book could have easily been printed on one page. Unless you do want to read all the examples of people\’s problems and solutions which can be amusing- I could not believe how manipulative and insensitive some of them were- or insulting depending on your viewpoint.

Rating: 2/5               180 pages, 2004

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Announcing

the winner

of Vinegar Hill by Margaret Ansay:

Windy Cindy!

Congrats!

send me your address and your book will be on its way! Watch for more book giveaways coming up next tuesday….

A Naturalist Debunks Our Favorite Fallacies About Wildlife
by Warner Shedd

The title pretty much tells you what this book is about. Naturalist Warner Shedd describes more than thirty North American wildlife species, not only explaining the error and origin of common misconceptions about them, but also describing their behavior and many interesting facts. Woven seamlessly into the detailed information are numerous personal anecdotes. The fluid, descriptive writing and humor make Owl Aren\’t Wise and Bats Aren\’t Blind a real pleasure to read. I was already familiar with many of the \”myths\” and knew they were incorrect, but there were also a lot in here I had never heard of. And I learned many new things about familiar animals. Did you know for example, that in addition to nuts and seeds squirrels also eat fruit, fungi, tree buds, sap, bird eggs, baby birds and small frogs? I had no idea. My favorite story by far was of the \”dead\” possum found in Vermont by a man who\’d never seen one before.

And I really enjoyed the illustrations by Trudy Nicholson. They are beautiful, detailed and infused with character. Except for- my one peeve with the book- the one of the polar bear. I was really surprised after so many pages of excellent artwork to see such a poor one. It looks like the artist really struggled with depicting fur underwater, and I rather wish she\’d just drawn a polar bear on land and made it look great like all the others. I know it\’s a small thing to be bothered by, but every time I thumb through the book I stop on that page in dismay.

Rating: 4/5                 322 pages, 2000

How to Keep Your Child Safe
by Vicki Lansky

For such a small book, Baby Proofing Basics is really packed with information. In an easy-to-read reference format, it explains how to keep your baby or young toddler safe from all types of hazards. First the book goes through your house room by room, describing potential dangers and what to do about them. Then it covers outdoor areas, safety measures to take while traveling, at the beach, hiking and camping, precautions during holidays (think fireworks and Christmas trees), poison and choking, how to be safe with pets, lists of poisonous plants, and safety rules to teach your child. Comprehensive, quick to read and nothing too paranoid. Although most of it was common sense or things I\’d heard before, it was all good reminders at the time. Though some ideas came across to me as unpractical (like turning a desk to the wall so your toddler can\’t open drawers) others struck me as ingenious (wetting shoestrings before tying will make them shrink together and not come loose again).

Rating: 3/5                    130 pages, 2002

by Elizabeth Berg

At the time I read it, I did enjoy this book. But looking back, I find many of the incidents unbelievable, and the novel as a whole pretty forgettable. Never Change is about a nurse who does in-home care. She leads a quiet, uneventful life. Then she runs into a patient she had a crush on in high school. Back then, he was the popular jock. She was quiet, shy, the girl who never went to the prom. Now he\’s dying of cancer and she not only takes him on as a patient, but brings him to live in her house, and tries to make his last days comfortable while blossoming in his attention. I think she tried too hard to make him happy: the worst moment in the novel was when she brought his old girlfriend to visit, and then listened to their intimate moments through the bedroom wall! The book wound to a predictable ending. Love, death, lessons learned. Fans of this author mentioned in other reviews that this wasn\’t one of her better books, so I tried a few other titles. But I could not get into them at all.

Rating: 2/5                214 pages, 2001

by Sara Gruen

I’ve spent most of today trying to think of what to say about this book that hasn’t already been said on blogs (Maw Books’ database lists thirty reviews of this one!) So many people loved it, I suppose I ought to just explain why I didn’t. Brief summary: Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob, an old man in nursing home reminiscing of the time when as young man he ran away and jumped onto a traveling circus train. Having almost finished veterinary school, his skills are needed so he’s taken on. This in the Great Depression, when the circus is hard-hit and work not easy to come by. Based on lots of research, the book abounds with details: the circus organization and lingo, the flashy glitter and display that awes the crowd and hides darker truths- squalid conditions, men and animals alike often going hungry, bosses who abuse their workers, trainers who mistreat the animals… In the middle of it all is an unfolding story of love and violence: Jacob is enamored with a performer who’s married to schizophrenic man prone to violent fits. He’s also the animal trainer, so Jacob ends up working in close proximity with him. Then there’s the elephant, brought into the circus to enhance its status, but no one knows how to work with her. Jacob is desperate to save both the woman he loves and the elephant from the hands of brutal men.

I enjoyed reading Water for Elephants. I had a hard time putting it down, and finished it in a day or two. The inclusion of many bizarre events based on true incidents was a great touch. But I wish the story had included more details about Jacob’s work as an untried vet with exotic animals- he’s given high status as “the circus vet” yet there are only a few cases mentioned (very briefly) and he seems to spend most of his time mucking out stalls and feeding the big cats. And I wanted to know more about the elephant! I was also disappointed that the closing scene was told in the beginning of the book. What I really loved was all the circus lore. It was the perfect compliment to books like Here Keller, Train This! and Zamba, which do tell more about the animals and less about the life of performers. It also reminded me a lot of Geek Love– that behind-the-scenes story of the freaks on display.

Rating: 3/5
350 pages, 2006

La Vida Loca: Gang Days in LA
by Luis J. Rodriguez

Growing up poor in LA, the author of this memoir spent many years in gangs searching for security and empowerment. But what he found was a never-ending scene of violence: drug use, rape and murder are common events in the pages of Always Running. Eventually realizing that staying in gangs would probably cost him his life (having seen many friends and family members die), Rodriguez escaped via his education. Years later, he was dismayed to find his own son becoming involved in gangs, and wrote this book in the hopes of deterring him by showing what he had gone through. Although it gives an inside look at gang life, and explains to me some of the reasons why kids join gangs, I really feel like this book failed in many points. Its main method of getting the message across is relating countless shocking incidents, with an array of flashy characters. But the reader never gets any depth- and thus I came away ultimately dissatisfied, feeling slightly ill from reading about many things I would rather not have known in such explicit detail. And I was sad to discover that despite the book\’s publication, his son still ended up involved in gangs, and in jail.

Rating: 2/5                 262 pages, 1993

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All books reviewed on this site are owned by me, or borrowed from the public library. Exceptions are a very occasional review copy sent to me by a publisher or author, as noted. Receiving a book does not influence my opinion or evaluation of it

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