June 2008 - Page 3 of 3

When Fox is a Thousand

by Larissa Lai

Another failed attempt at magical realism. When Fox is a Thousand is a fantastical tale told from three viewpoints: a young Asian-American woman living in modern-day Vancouver, a female poet in medieval China, and a fox who has lived almost a thousand years, using magical powers to animate the bodies of dead women and cause mischief. I was really enjoying the prose, and the modern characters. But the others parts really lost me. I\’m sure all the characters\’ stories weave together in the end, but when after more than fifty pages I still can\’t really tell what is going on, I don\’t see the point in continuing. I read seventy-two pages of this surreal book before leaving it behind.

Abandoned 236 pages, 1995

Tags: 0/5- Abandoned, Speculative Fiction

Whole Health for Happy Cats

A Guide to Keeping Your Cat Naturally Healthy, Happy and Well-Fed
by Sandy Arora

I have to admit I picked this book up from a library sale just because it has such gorgeous photographs. Whole Health for Happy Cats describes in simple, easy-to understand language how to care for your cat \”naturally\”: feed a raw food diet, use herbs and home remedies for simple ailments, how to monitor your cat\’s health and even deal with some behavior issues. The part that interested me most was the section on raw foods- the book claims that having a nutritionally correct, raw food diet will prevent many problems cats have- it got me to thinking that if I could grind up chicken carcasses and add all the strange-named additive powders (I\’m unfamiliar with most of them) for my kitties, one would stop loosing his facial fur, the other quit having upset stomachs and fleas will find them both unattractive!

I really skimmed over the pages about herbs and flower essences, because I can\’t imagine myself mixing up remedies at home. But if that\’s something you\’re interested in, this book is full of information and charts to help you get started. I\’ve never used things like aromatherapy or acupuncture for myself, much less my cats, so I was kind of skeptical about some of the content. If I did decide to introduce a raw food diet, or try herbal remedies, I\’d do more reading first. But this attractive, reader-friendly book (I went through the entire volume in one day) was a great introduction for me to the ideas.

And it answered one question for me: why does my cat like to chew on plastic grocery bags? and the other one lick photographs? Apparently these behaviors aren\’t as strange as I thought: the plastic and photo chemical coatings are made with animal fat or fish oils, and the residue has a smell that attracts kitties. I had no idea.

Rating: 3/5 184 pages, 2006

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

book giveaway!

Win a Free Book

This week I\’m giving away a paperback copy of Vinegar Hill, by A. Manette Ansay. Enter to win by leaving a comment and tell me why you\’d like to read this book! (Or if you already have, what you liked best about it). The winner will be announced on tuesday 6/17 (my giveaways are going to be bi-weekly for a while).

Tags: giveaways

The Painter from Shanghai

by Jennifer Cody Epstein

I was thrilled when this book arrived in the mail for me from the author: it felt so exquisite in my hands with the sleek, glossy cover and smooth creamy pages. The cover is just beautiful. And the story really intrigued me. The Painter from Shanghai is a novel based on the life of Pan Yuliang, a post-impressionist painter from China who spent her early years in a brothel, having been sold into prostitution at the age of fourteen by her opium-addicted uncle. Half of the book describes her life of oppression there. Eventually she attracted the attention of a government official, who took her out of the brothel to become his concubine and later made her his second wife. He encouraged her to study and grow as a person. And that is what I felt this novel was really about: a woman\’s struggle to find herself against all odds. Yuliang was one of very few female students at the Shanghai Art Academy. She excelled there, went on to study art in France and Rome, then returned to her native country when it was struggling towards revolution. Her depiction of female nudes (many of them self-portraits) was not well-met in China, and a disastrous public reaction to one of her gallery openings nearly convinced her to cease painting. I am awed at the strength of this woman, who found her realization as an artist in a very controversial fashion, during troubled times. I really enjoyed reading about her time spent in the studio, discussing art with professors and fellow students, learning the methods of painting. It is very inspiring. ~~You can view some of Yuliang\’s paintings at the author\’s website~~.

Rating: 3/5 416 pages, 2008

More reviews at:
Booking Mama
A Work in Progress
Diary of an Eccentric

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Art, Current Reads, Historical Fiction

Silent Partners

the Legacy of the Ape Language Experiments
by Eugene Linden

In the 1970\’s, several different types of experiments were undertaken to teach apes sign language. Ten years later, lack of funding, loss of outside interest and internal conflicts between the researchers brought the studies to a halt. In this solemn report, Linden relates what happened to the apes afterwards- from famous one like Koko the gorilla, chimps Washoe, Lucy and Nim- to those unknown to the public as well. Very few of them reached a happy ending. Some were sold to zoos, other to research labs. One was taken off to be rehabilitated into the wild- with sad results. Raising questions of animal rights and ethics, Silent Partners also confronts the responsibility we have to animals whose lives have been altered by us. Having lived for years in close company with humans, and learned to communicate their desires and needs to us, how could one of these apes feel anything less than misery to be shut up in a cage at a zoo or lab? For a time I was interested in these language experiments, and read a number of books about them (reviews are coming!), becoming familiar with their individual failures, successes and personalities. So it was very sad for me to read of their fate.

Rating: 3/5 247 pages, 1986

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Animals Nonfiction, Past Reads

Badgers

by Ernest Neal

This is a fascinating and informative read about an animal I knew little of. I think my only contacts with it in literature before were Incident at Hawk\’s Hill and Wind in the Willows, both fictional. Badgers is based on years of direct observation by naturalist Ernest Neal, who was a leading expert on the animal. He recounts many interesting anecdotes in describing the badger\’s nocturnal behavior, diet, habitat and history, illustrated with lots of excellent photographs and drawings. Badgers in England are quite different from the American ones I\’m more familiar with, not only in appearance but also in their habits. One of the most interesting things I learned about them is that they live in expansive underground tunnels and burrows called setts, which are used by generations of badgers in succession. Some have been dated to be hundreds of years old!

I have some confusion about the title of this book, though. When I read it years ago, I had it listed on my TBR as The Natural History of Badgers. But I could only find the title Badgers to read. Looking online for an image to share with you, I also found the title The Badger. I\’m sure Neal wrote a number of books about badgers, so I don\’t know if this is the same book published under an alternate title, or a different text altogether. Also, the image I did pull up for Badgers has a co-author, whereas I don\’t remember the book I read having two authors. So the faces of the books you see here may not actually be the one I read, but they are attractive in their own right, so I present them to you. (If anyone can clear up my confusion of titles, I\’d be glad of it!)

Rating: 4/5 321 pages, 1977

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads

Meme: Trends

.From Booking Through Thursday:

Have your book-tastes changed over the years? More fiction? Less? Books that are darker and more serious? Lighter and more frivolous? Challenging? Easy? How-to books over novels? Mysteries over Romance?

My reading taste has definitely undergone a gradual shift over the years. When I was a teenager I used to read a lot of picture books, and enjoy them! There would be days when I would gather a pile of picture books and just sit on the couch and go through them all. I don\’t do that anymore. I guess I\’m finally growing up, but they just don\’t enthrall and delight me like they used to. Now when we\’re in the children\’s section of the library, my focus is more on finding books my child will enjoy than looking for myself.

I also used to read a lot of books I didn\’t like. This doesn\’t really fall under reading tastes, but I feel it\’s related. In going back through my book logs, I am coming across numerous titles that I remember reading and disliking, or just not caring about. Why did I make myself suffer so? I\’m definitely enjoying reading more nowadays, and reading more books I like, because if a book just isn\’t doing it for me, I have no qualms on quitting.

I do still pick up YA or juvenile fiction from time to time, but am finding that my appreciation for that genre is slowly sifting away, as well. I don\’t have much patience anymore for books that feel like they talk down to the reader, and have a hard time reading a book written for a younger audience unless it\’s very well-written and crafted. Overall, I would say that I am now reading mostly adult fiction, some fantasy, and a lot more non-fiction than I ever did before. My husband has also been directing me to more sci-fi books and non-fiction on topics I wouldn\’t normally choose for myself. Oh, and I rarely read poetry anymore, though I used to from time to time. A few months ago I picked up a poetry book I saw on shelf display at the library, and brought it home. But after reading only three poems I was bored and since then haven\’t really read any poetry at all. This makes me rather sad. I don\’t know why I\’ve lost my appreciation for poetry.

Tags: memes

Carnivorous Nights

on the Trail of the Tasmanian Tiger
by Margaret Middelbach and Michael Crewdson

Feeling like a travelogue mixed with natural history, this fantastic book was created out of a trip two naturalists and one artist made to Australia and Tasmania with one main purpose in mind- to find the Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine. Traveling across the island in search of a carnivorous marsupial long believed extinct, the adventurous threesome hiked through rainforests, up mountains, crept into caves and visited pubs and museums dedicated to the Tasmanian tiger. They interviewed many people of different sorts who still search for the thylacine, and enthusiasts including wildlife experts working to save endangered marsupials and scientists hoping to one day clone the thylacine from tissue of preserved specimens.

Just as fascinating as the lore about thylacines and the history of their demise presented in these pages are the descriptions of the astonishing and curious Tasmanian wildlife. It was enough to make me want to visit Tasmania one day, to see the bandicoots, pademelons, echidnas, quolls and potoroos for myself. There\’s lots of interesting information and humorous incidents in these pages, and I marked a dozen pages that mentioned animals or incidents I want to read more about, as well as a list of fourteen additional books on the thylacine and other Tasmanian wildlife. One odd thing about the book is that it\’s written entirely in the \”we\” form- which felt awkward at first, but eventually I was able to ignore it. And what I really enjoyed is the artwork of Alexis Rockman, which adorns every chapter- made from acrylic mediums mixed with soil, mud, and other natural substances taken from visited sites and often having direct relation to the animal painted. I kept skipping the text to gaze at the artwork, then going back to read more. (His art in the book doesn\’t look like what I could find online- it is very granular, textured and mostly monochromatic).

Rating: 4/5 320 pages, 2005

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Nonfiction, Current Reads, Nature

The One-Hour Garden

How You Can Have a No-Fuss, No-Work Garden
by Joanna Smith

This book gives you ideas on how to create a garden that is attractive and low-maintenance, requiring an hour or less of work per week. The One-Hour Garden is really written for people who are very busy and want a pleasant outdoors area to enjoy without spending lots of time weeding, pruning, mowing, etc. For me this isn\’t really the case, so I did find some of the repetitive statements about how tedious weeding is and why lawns are a poor choice tiresome after a while. I really felt like the book could have included less opinion and more detailed factual information. For example, on the front and back endpapers there are maps of climate zones for the entire United States. Yet in all the plant lists types of foliage, soil and sun needs are indicated, but never the zones. So although I now know the hardy plants that like the type of soil/sun exposure I have, I don\’t know which like my climate zone. There\’s lots of charts to help you plan your garden and choose plants that require little or no care. The downside to it all is that to have a self-sustaining garden requires a lot of work (and expense) in the beginning to establish- especially if you have to redesign most of your existing space.

I got some really good ideas from this book- like to put in a mowing strip, build a sandbox that can covert later into a fishpond (but it doesn\’t tell you how), and how to choose plants that look great and take care of themselves.

Rating: 3/5 157 pages, 2003

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Gardening / Food

Month: June 2008

RATINGS / SUBJECTS: