Name: ON ANIMALS.
Rating: 3.6 (5 reviews)
ISBN: 9781838955465

SUSAN. ORLEAN

ON ANIMALS.

Nate

"But we have a dog!" I blurted out, nonsensically. "A twelve-year-old dog!" That's nice," the landlord said. "Dogs are fine. It's just lawyers that aren't okay."

The book reminded me why I love animals and sometimes too much.

Susan Orlean

Susan Orlean—the beloved New Yorker staff writer hailed as “a national treasure” by The Washington Post and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Library Book—gathers a lifetime of musings, meditations, and in-depth profiles about animals. “How we interact with animals has preoccupied philosophers, poets, and naturalists for ages,” writes Susan Orlean. Since the age of six, when Orlean wrote and illustrated a book called Herbert the Near-Sighted Pigeon, she’s been drawn to stories about how we live with animals, and how they abide by us. Now, in On Animals, she examines animal-human relationships through the compelling tales she has written over the course of her celebrated career. These stories consider a range of creatures—the household pets we dote on, the animals we raise to end up as meat on our plates, the creatures who could eat us for dinner, the various tamed and untamed animals we share our planet with who are central to human life. In her own backyard, Orlean discovers the delights of keeping chickens. In a different backyard, in New Jersey, she meets a woman who has twenty-three pet tigers—something none of her neighbors knew about until one of the tigers escapes. In Iceland, the world’s most famous whale resists the efforts to set him free; in Morocco, the world’s hardest-working donkeys find respite at a special clinic. We meet a show dog and a lost dog and a pigeon who knows exactly how to get home. Equal parts delightful and profound, enriched by Orlean’s stylish prose and precise research, these stories celebrate the meaningful cross-species connections that grace our collective existence.

On Animals

Rachel

Thank you Edelweiss & Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster for the advance reader copier in exchange for an honest review.

This is a collection of stories about Susan's adventures with animals both on her farm and on her travels. I especially liked the stories that involved non-Amercian cultures and their relationships with animals on an everyday basis. I do wish at times there were more details or research involved, but overall the stories are light and fun to read. Most importantly, most of the stories do not include any death of animals.

ON ANIMALS.

Reviews

Highlights