From the Bookshelf of What's the Name of That Book???…

The Council of Animals

Nick McDonell,

Steven Tabbutt (Illustrator)

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Apr 27, 2021 karen rated it liked it

Shelves: grgiveaways, les-animaux, oh-no-biiiiiiirds

NOW AVAILABLE!!!

"It is better," said the cat, "to accept what cannot be changed, and pee on it."

brief personal backstory: i slap every book i'm even casually interested in on my 'to-read' shelf here, so whenever there's a giveaway for one of them, i get that notification email, and i enter all of them, even if i can barely remember the book in question. despite the sheer number of giveaways i enter, unlike in the olden days when goodreads was a small family operation, i rarely win—this year, i h ...more

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Jul 17, 2021 Lisa Vegan rated it liked it

Shelves: dogs, novel, animal-rights, 1-also-at-librarything, z2021, won-at-librarything, reviewed, goodreads-author, owned-previously-20700, zz-3star

I won this book at LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review. I received an advance readers paperback copy a few days before the book’s publication date. I read it over 2 days in less than 24 hours, but I didn’t find it to be a page-turner.

As a vegan and animal rights activist and environmentalist, the premise of this book intrigued me and appealed to me. From the description it seemed as if a great human caused catastrophe had occurred and some animals were getting together to decide whethe I won this book at LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review. I received an advance readers paperback copy a few days before the book’s publication date. I read it over 2 days in less than 24 hours, but I didn’t find it to be a page-turner.

As a vegan and animal rights activist and environmentalist, the premise of this book intrigued me and appealed to me. From the description it seemed as if a great human caused catastrophe had occurred and some animals were getting together to decide whether to kill & eat the few remaining humans or to spare them. Poetic justice? Or more mercy shown than humans showed to them and to themselves?

It's interesting here that the animals have a lot of the same flaws as humans do. Also, yes I already obviously had it shelved as speculative fiction but it was even more of a fantasy than I’d expected.

The narrative was exceedingly tedious to read. For me the most disappointing part was that the animals were fantastical too. The dog and cat and I think horse were not like their real world counterparts except in some very specific small ways. I started enjoying it slightly more when (view spoiler)

I was curious about the identity of the narrator and I did appreciate the end of the book. It did end up being more profound than what I was expecting.

The premise is promising and it did sort of come to fruition. Hence, my 3 star rating, even though much of the time I was reading it felt like a 2 star or 1 star book.

I haven’t been in the mood for fantasy and maybe that’s part of the problem I had with this book. I see this book compared to Animal Farm but I don’t think it’s a good comparison. If you are looking for fantasy I recommend The Phantom Tollbooth perhaps. If you’re looking to read about human caused climate change and other human caused catastrophes or violence and war there are many great non-fiction books and articles on the internet that are available.

I did really enjoy the illustrations and liked the way the animals and (others) were depicted.

Most of the ratings for this book are high so I don’t want to discourage anyone from reading it. I say to go check out other reviews. I plan to do that and see why others rated it higher than I have. Until toward the end I was thinking that I would not like the book and would give it 2 stars for the premise and because I liked the illustrations, but once I got to the end I was glad that I read it so 3 stars it is. I ended up liking it despite not enjoying reading most of it. ...more

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