Welcome and Preview

The Random Animal

Welcome! This is a preview of “Random Animal,” a blog which reviews books (generally published within six months of the posting) that touch on animal issues. These may be nonfiction books specifically focused on human/animal relations, conservation biology, animals in culture, and so on. Or they can be fiction and poetry collections in which animals are significant. So you can look forward to reviews of Hal Herzog’s Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat, Melanie Joy’s similarly titled Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, Jaimy Gordon’s Lord of Misrule, and Derek Walcott’s Egrets. If I feature a book in which cats play a nefarious role, I may then turn to an account of a hero cat, like Vicki Myron’s Dewey. Occasionally I’ll comment on an animal issue in the news or present experiences from animal shelters or wildlife observations, such as Audubon’s Christmas bird count. A few odds and ends (fictional or otherwise) may slip in, like Moby Dick: The Glee Version and “Emily Dickinson tweets.”

The books are randomly selected by my roaming interests. (I receive no remuneration from publishers.) I have a Ph.D. in English literature and have taught courses on the representation of nature, landscape, and animals in art, photography, and literature. I grew up on a dairy farm in rural woodsy Maine and currently live in snow-bound Minnesota, having exchanged one cold “M” state for another. I have been involved with animal shelters and wildlife organizations. My publications include Abandoned New England: Landscape in the Works of Homer, Frost, Hopper, Wyeth, and Bishop and a children’s book Howard and The Sitter Surprise that, yes, has talking animals.

Looking for a long read over the winter holidays? Coming soon—a review of Franzen’s Freedom.