All About Animals discussion

What book are you reading or listening to on audio other than our book group read?

Right now I'm reading "
Along the Way: The Journey of a Father and Son by
Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez

I'm enjoying it so far. I love that it's a book about a father and son. They alternate from Martin talking and then Emilio, and so on.

Today I'm going to be starting

It's set around the Civil War. I know it's an older book (2002 publication), but I had never seen it before and I found it when searching the Kindle store. Thought it sounded really good so I'm going to give it a try.

Looks interesting Elizabeth. I don't read too much on the Civil War unless our book group picks it. My husband loves anything on the Civil War though.

I started it. It's OK. Not as good as the reviews, IMO. I'm not going to finish it.

Well, there are so many books out there, so if you aren't enjoying it you mid-as-well move on.

Barbara wrote: "Well, there are so many books out there, so if you aren't enjoying it you mid-as-well move on."

I'm thinking that what I need is to take a break from reading books. I haven't read nearly as much this year as last. And the few books I have read this year, I feel like I had to struggle to finish. So I think I'm going to put the Kindle away for awhile.

Elizabeth wrote: "I'm thinking that what I need is to take a break from reading books. I haven't read ..."

Maybe it's just the books you are picking up. Sometimes I go through bouts where I can't seem to get a really good book. Once I do, I love to sit and read it.

Currently reading The Storyteller Almost done! Mixed feelings on this one as it is about the holocaust but that is the best part. All the current stuff is kind of annoying me too much detail on making bread!

I've read this series it is really good, I love historical fiction and this author is very good at combining history with fiction.

deleted user wrote: "Today I'm going to be starting

It's set around the Civil War. I know it's an older book (2002 publication), but I had never seen it before and I found it ..."

I'm currently reading Death Comes to Pemberley

I'm loving it so far. It started off fast and now is a little slower but it keeps you coming back because there is something that is about to happen that you have to know about, the author has done an excellent job of leaving a few cliff hangers that keep the reader wanting more.
Kylie

I am currently reading Naked in Death

Reading The Litigators by John Grisham.

I love reading about law and trials =)

I'm currently reading The Guest Book

Currently listening to "The Little Stranger" by Sarah Waters. Love her book "Fingersmith" so thought I'd tray another ... more than halfway through 13 CDS and it hasn't got my rapt attention yet. Not sure if I should continue ... ;o?

A dystopia universe where Hitler won the war.

Currently reading... Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children ...about 2/3 done and totally into it!

I'm reading Better Than the Real Thing - really enjoying it. It's very "British" but lovely, subtle, witty sense of humour - and making me feel a bit homesick for life back in the UK! :-)

"Stoner" by John Williams. Vintage Classics. This is a quiet unassuming novel about the quiet unadventurous life of an American University teacher. Rather like the author in fact. It was first published on 1965 and was largely ignored.It is an elegantly written quiet classic. It deserves the acclaim it is now receiving.
Stoner is a farm boy from the west, who almost accidentally finds himself in college studying agriculture, but is captivated by his introduction to literature in a compulsory Lit course. He changes his academic and life direction and studies, with the same same diligence and doggedness he applied to farming. He is hired to teach in the University after WW1 when many students and young scholars did not return from the trenches.

His difficult non communicative relationship with his parents is carefully observed. The depiction of his parents sole visit to his college for his graduation is painfully described. His folks stay with relatives, also farmer, where Stoner has been lodging for three years and earning his keep working on the farm. The evening family re-union consists almost entirely of one of the sisters mentioning the name of another family member and everyone else nods.

This tragedy of non cummunication is then virtually repeated in Stoner's difficult marriage, with a wife whom he barely knows; and who clearly has psychological and emotional problems.
She proceeds to drive a wedge between Stoner and his daughter, and the girl gets pregnant while still in high school, in a relationship with an undergraduate for whom she has no special feelings.

Stoner is reluctantly drawn into the viciousness of University politics and personality clashes. His temporary release from this and his loveless marriage, is through an affair with a graduate student.Which his chief enemy seeks to use to bring him down. Stoner avoids this, but loses his lover in the process. She leaves and completes her thesis at another university.He never sees her again, except a photo on the cover of her excellent literary critical study. In short, nothing much happens in Stoner's quiet life, he doesn't go to war, he doesn't do anything heroic, but Williams describes this uneventful life with such skill and sympathy, that you cannot stop reading.
As I said, it is a quiet classic. I plan to read some of Williams other works.

I just finished Spy in a Little Black Dress that I received from Goodreads (for review). It is about Jackie Kennedy before she was married and when she was a CIA spy (fiction). The research for the book was outstanding and it is fun to read about the 50s.

I'm reading

This is a classic! I've loved the trilogy. Thank you Cornelia Funke!

I'm currently reading Sanctity of Hate. This is a murder mystery by Priscilla Royal. It deals with a hateful town, but the priory where the main characters live is not hateful. There is a cat living at the priory and Lady Eleanor, the prioress, loves cats.

Stewart McFarlane’s (Goodreads Author) review of
Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend
by Susan Orlean (Goodreads Author)Published September 27th 2011 by Simon & Schuster

The real story of the original Rin Tin Tin is as captivating and exciting as the story-lines of his movies. 

In many ways this is a book filled with powerful mythic themes. The finding of Rin Tin Tin amongst a litter of puppies, in a bombed out German military kennels toward the end of WW1, is as exciting as any movie. Lee Duncan’s refusal to leave his two puppies, Rin and his sister, in France, when the US forces were returning home after the end of the war, has the quality of an epic story. The first film script Lee wrote was based on the classic story of Gelert, the devoted Welsh hunting dog who defends his master’s baby son against a wolf, only to be killed by the master who wrongly assumed that the dog a attacked the baby. 

Lee’s struggle to convince the movie bosses that Rin could perform for the camera well enough to emerge as a canine movie star, also has a mythic quality. This was an age when most Americans went to the movies every week, and the industry sold 100 million movie tickets a week. In such a setting, the impact of RinTin Tin in those early silent movies of the 1920’s, was immense. He became a major star and helped turn around the fortunes of Warner Brothers and Lee Duncan. 


This book is a fascinating read for anyone of my generation who grew up with the later descendants of Rin Tin Tin, in my case the TV shows of the 50’s & 60’s, where Rin Tin Tin is a heroic member of US Cavalry troop living in a fort out west. After recently injuring my back, I found myself watching YouTube re-runs of these TV shows, I still enjoyed them, after not seeing one for about 50 years. Anyone who admires German Shepherds will enjoy this book. Since I had to wait 50 years and move to Thailand before I could get a German Shepherd Dog, I suppose it is inevitable that I would appreciate this account. My own book of animal stories, “OF MICE and ZEN”, has three chapters devoted to my own Thai German Shepherd and his adventures. He just happens to closely resemble the Rin TinTin of those TV shows.

German Shepherds had only existed as a separate breed since the late 19th century, but their strengths were soon noticed and they became the standard German military dog, serving as couriers between communication trenches. Medical dogs, seeking out injured soldiers, to provide aid & supplies to the injured or comfort for the dying, sentry dogs and detectors of enemy artillery. My Grandfather, a slight man but a very fast runner, was a courier in the trenches in WW1, so I have some idea of the dangers these human and canine couriers faced. Early in the war the allied forces had to use human runners because the dogs were not available. Eventually the British and US military had the use of thousands of requisitioned civilian dogs in the war effort, but the Germans has this elite breed of strong, aristocratic, intelligent dogs. Many allied soldiers admired the work of this new breed, and other GSDs as well as Rin Tin Tin were smuggled or otherwise shipped back the USA. 

One famous GSD was Strongheart, who became the first canine movie star in 1921. Dogs had appeared in films prior to that, but only in cute comedy roles. Strongheart was far from cute, he was a powerful, intelligent and focused German Shepherd. Peter the Great was another, specially imported from Germany to star in many movies. By the mid 1920’s Rin Tin Tin outshone them all, he seemed to run faster, clear higher fences, and could even climb trees. One of his great skills, thanks to Lee’s dedicated training, was his feigning injury, to provoke the tears of the audience. He could act cowed and crestfallen in scenes where he was wrongly accused of some misdeed, and then act overjoyed when he was proved innocent and vindicated. He was totally focused on Lee, not surprisingly, given his background. A typical one man dog, devoted to the man who rescued him. He was not a friendly dog, and was known to bite people and dogs who approached him without proper introductions. But in the studio or on location or in the many demonstrations he gave, so long as Lee was there off-camera, directing the dog, often by gestures, Rin Tin Tin was impeccable and could act friendly and sociable as required. He was, basically, a very focused working dog, trained to perform. Working dogs back in those days were not expected to be friendly. Dogs were generally kept to guard livestock and they lived outside. Sociability was not really expected. But by the 1930’s America was changing, becoming more suburban and expectations of dog owners changed too. Susan Orlean documents this shift very clearly, and describes the rise of dog obedience trials and the notion of training household dogs. She notes the work of Blanche Saunders and Helen Whitehouse Walker who popularized dog obedience and training for the American dog owning public.

Rin Tin Tin died in 1932, and despite having sired 48 puppies with his mate Nanette, Lee Duncan had given most of them away, and had not trained a successor to Rinty to perform in the movies. He reluctantly trained Rin Tin Tin Junior, one of the pups he had kept, but his heart wasn’t in it. Junior was a much bigger and more handsome dog than his father, but he could not perform in the same way. Lee often used substitute dogs to complete a movie. But at least the Rin Tin Tin lineage was established. Lee Duncan responded to the demands of the new attitudes to dogs by allowing Junior and his son RinTinTin 3rd, to play with children and visitors, and make them friendly and socially acceptable. Lee was growing tired of the movie business, and even tried to re-enlist in the early 1940’s but was rejected as too old. Orlean describes his war contribution in detail. 

He and RinTinTin 3rd were the major recruiters for the military “Dogs for Defense” scheme. They made personal appearances and appeared in newsreels for movie audiences, encouraging owners of GSDs, Dobermans, Belgian Shepherds and other large breeds, to lend or donate their dogs for war work. By 1939 the Nazis had their specialist corps of 200,000 German Shepherds. They had ousted Baron von Stephanitz, the developer of the breed, as President of the GSD Club, they threatened him with concentration camp if he didn’t resign, and he died in 1936. In the USA things were handled differently. A friend of mine was a young boy in WW2 and recalls “Skipper” their beloved German Shepherd, being sent by “Dogs for Defense” to be trained by the US Coastguard as a detection dog, guarding the shores against Japanese or German infiltration from U-boats. He returned to the family in 1945, a superbly trained war hero, just as good natured as when he left.

Orlean notes with bitter irony that not only was Hitler a devotee of German Shepherds, so was Anne Frank, the Jewish girl who died at Auschwitz aged 15, along with her family. She loved Rin Tin Tin and even managed to get hold of a Rin Tin Tin book, when she could no longer see his movies, as the Nazis banned Jews from cinemas when Anne was 13. Susan Orlean’s well researched reference to European and American history and particularly social history, is one of the great strengths of this book. It provides the context in which the generations of RinTinTin emerged as international stars. She documents the role of Bert Leonard, the producer who was responsible for the TV careers of the later generations of RinTinTin, including the US Cavalry hero I had so admired as a child, along with millions of other kids of my generation.

Mark Stevens, an earlier reviewer on Goodreads, rightly says that the Rin Tin Tin story, “…is about hopes and dreams in America. It’s about myth-making and reinvention. It’s about star-making and it’s about persistence and the power of shared experiences. It’s about the rise of movie-moving and the rise of television and, the biggest surprise to me, the history of dogs being used in war.”

This is an excellent way of summarizing a fine book. I still get a thrill when I see my German Shepherd running to me over the fields of Thailand, so fast that he seems to float over the ground, clearing rocks and hedges with ease. I know part of that pleasure relates to my seeing Rin Tin Tin bounding across the landscape, returning to his fellow cavalry troopers, all those years ago. 



Of Mice and Zen. Animal Encounters in the Life of a Wandering Buddhist

I just read Into the Abyss which I stayed up all night to finish so you know it is good. Remarkable story, well told. Four men survive (just barely) a plane crash in Canada, written by the journalist daughter of one of them. How they fare in the years afterward. (I hope this appears as a separate post rather than a reply.)

I'm currently reading a short story e-book that takes place in Japan about a Japanese man and a monkey who become friends. It's The Old Man & The Monkey

Just finished reading Night Road by Kristin Hannah and really enjoyed it.

My review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Reading The Blind Assassin and somewhat befuddled by the non-linear storytelling