Does the Dog Die? Mini-Reviews of Four Books
I’m going to have a busy week away from the computer, so I thought I’d go to a small journal I kept and see if there were any books I could review in bumper sticker format. I found four.
First up is The Last Season, by Eric Blehm. This is the true story of Randy Morgenson, a seasonal ranger with the U.S. Park Service, who disappeared one winter in Kings Canyon National Park. This is an excellent book, one of my favorites, and I highly recommend it. However, quite a few rescue dogs were used in the search for Morgenson, and one of them was injured pretty badly. This dog did survive, and the dogs are heroic in general. With that in mind, I’m going to declare this book Mostly Safe for animal lovers.
Next is Murder Unleashed, by Elaine Viets. This is from Viets’ Dead End Job series of mysteries, which are like brain candy — not very demanding, and fun. However, we learn about some of the bad things that can happen in the pet care industry, and one of those things really bothered me. So I am going to declare this book Probably Unsafe for most animal lovers.
Philosophy Made Simple, by Robert Hellenga, was quite frustrating. It started off great, then collapsed in the last third. I had a pretty strong love/hate thing going on with this book. One of the hate issues had to do with animals. This book is also Probably Unsafe for animal lovers.
Finally, Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen is a good book that is Completely Unsafe for animal lovers. I loved so much about this book, but my book group felt horrible for the animal characters in this book. If you can approach this kind of book as a forewarned reader, go for it. Otherwise, it might upset you.
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This is a picture of Priscilla, who lived to be an old lady cat of 19 1/2 and passed away on July 21, 2008. As Dave put it the next day, she was a great cat. I was privileged to adopt her in 1994, when her first family moved overseas and decided they couldn’t take her along. I don’t know if there’s an afterlife or a real “Rainbow Bridge” or any of that. But love lives on, and so I would like to dedicate this site to Priscilla and my first two cats, Hillary and Rabbit.
Like most blogs, this one includes random thoughts and observations, but its primary purpose is to provide book reviews for animal lovers. Please feel free to add comments or make suggestions of books that are animal-friendly.
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- Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of A Wild Sheep Chase, by Haruki Murakami
- Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Bachelor Brothers’ Bed & Breakfast, by Bill Richardson
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- Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
- Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Lucia, by Andrea De Robilant
- Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of The Hamilton Case, by Michelle de Kretser – and a Discourse on Blogging
- Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Gumbo Tales, by Sara Roahen
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A friend saw this come up today, and forwarded the mention of my book, The Last Season. First, thanks for the kind words. Second, there is one heroic canine in the story, for reasons I won’t divulge here… But, since this blog focuses on the dogs, I thought I’d let anybody interested know that the search dog, named SEEKER, who is the dog protagonist in the story, died a few months back, after having a very successful search dog career… Her owner has trained another dog, and is still in the field. So, a moment of silence, for Seeker please? And, a big thanks to search dogs everywhere. They do things we humans just can’t…best regards, Eric Blehm [ericblehm@cox.net]