false 3 25 24 true 5661780 read 1 true 2143446 currently-reading 0 true 2143445 to-read 13 false 2179546 fiction 8 false 2251921 nonfiction 8 false 2172464 scifi 4 false 2172642 autobiography 3 false 2251833 treasured 2 false 2172613 history 2 false 2172433 unreadable 1 false 2179784 travel http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20632660 Alice's review of Siberian Huskies for Dummies
by Diane Morgan

I do remember you saying you've already got a copy, right? If not then ours remains on offer. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20518002 to: Siberian Huskies for Dummies (Paperback) by Diane Morgan
bookshelves: nonfiction
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20517989 to: The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (Mass Market Paperback) by Ursula K. LeGuin
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20517968 to: Man Plus (Paperback) by Frederik Pohl
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20513792 to: The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2) by Dan Brown
bookshelves: fiction, unreadable
Linear and hopelessly contrived plot, cut-out-and-paste characters, lumpen writing style, and the whole lot apparently nothing but a scaffold for a bunch of suspect assertions about religious history. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20360706 to: Never Cry Wolf (Unbound) by Farley Mowat
bookshelves: fiction
This is a book I both love and hate. I love it because I love wolves and this is a well-written, entertaining story about wolves. I hate it's made up from start to finish, yet the tagline on the cover says, "The incredible true story of life among Arctic wolves."

Let's get one thing straight: Never Cry Wolf is fiction. Made up. Fabricated. And quite a lot of it is, at least in terms of factual accuracy, horseshit. Mowat knew a lot about life in the Arctic, but he didn't know much about wolves.

What he knew, he admired. This was in the early 1960's, when a lot of people were bent on systematically eradicating the wolf as a species. If I remember correctly from reading a long-ago interview with him, Mowat fully intended his book to be pro-wolf propaganda. As such, it probably succeeded: it sank deep into the public consciousness of wolves, and surely helped the great turnaround of the wolf's image in the western world. Its fundamental thesis was "wolves are okay," and that badly needed saying at the time.

Trouble is, now that big truth is largely accepted, we're still stuck with all the little lies. The pendulum has swung the other way. A wolf-handler friend of mine puts it nicely: "wolves are the new dolphins" -- all too often seen as the incarnation of Nature's goodness, wisdom and beauty. Mowat helped convince two generations that wolves are sweet-natured beasts with strong family values and a natural place in the ecosystem. Unfortunately he forgot to mention that they're also damn' great bloodthirsty beasts with strong territorial and dominance drives, a propensity to roam long distances, and a large appetite for ungulate flesh. As a wolf biologist said, despairing of educating the public, "We'll never get past Never Cry Wolf!"

Never Cry Wolf has served its day. It's a fine good story, with a strong emotional plotline as the narrator gets ever more involved with the wolves, and a nice line in laconic Canadian humour, but I'll never be able to stomach it while it's marketed as "An Incredible True Story."

]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/19390461 to: The Road to Dune (Paperback) by Frank Herbert
bookshelves: scifi, unreadable
Absolutely ghastly first draught and associated short stories from the classic sci-fi novel, mangled and made strident by the author’s notably untalented son. Occasional excerpts and letters from Herbert pater provide a glimmer of lucidity that only accentuates the gruesomeness of the rest. For Dune freaks and masochists only. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20330500 to: Ruff the Wolf (Hardcover) by William S. Briscoe
bookshelves: fiction, treasured
This is a children's book, one of the very first I can remember reading - which also marks my first memory of my lifelong fascination with wolves.

In Minnesota (or thereabouts) in the mid-20th century, a boy adopts an orphaned wolf cub after seeing its parents and littermates shot. Adventures ensue.

The prose style is bald and simplistic - deliberately dumbed down for children, I think, so it's a bit monotonous for adults to read. Even so, it's a remarkable book for its depth and insight. There are some heavy errors in wolf behaviour (for a start, wolves will never make good pets), but, for a book written in the 1960's, Ruff the Wolf shows astonishing sensitivity to wolf behaviour in general, and to the misunderstandings and conflicts of interest that beset wolves and humans alike - especially wolves and farmers.

Granted, Briscoe simplifies the issues (kid's book, remember) and glosses over some of the uglier aspects (the rancher's objections to wolves are rational, with no mention of the blind hatred that some people reserve for the wolf). But in the broad strokes, at least, he's right on the money. This was barely three years after Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf, a wild flight of fancy whose cutesy and self-serving myths have distorted public understanding of wolves ever since. If William Briscoe had taken Mowat's place, I can't imagine how much better understood the wolf would be today. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20329593 to: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Hardcover) by Edward R. Tufte
bookshelves: nonfiction, treasured
In The Elements of Style, Strunk and White famously laid out a manifesto for lucid, minimal prose. This book is the equivalent for anyone who needs to put a lot of numbers on one piece of paper.

Like The Elements of Style, this book is not a manual. Though rich with ideas, examples and suggestions, its main contribution is to wake the reader up, to get you thinking about the purpose of numerical graphics, and to describe the basic principles of this kind of communication. What works, and why? and what doesn't work, and why?

Many people describe this book as seminal (sometimes in more than one sense). Personally I lack the expertise to judge, but it certainly opened my eyes to a wider world of possibilities of expressive communication. It also opened my eyes to the gruesome standards of graphical communication that crowd the pages of magazines and beat the sense out of business presentations - and for that I'm not entirely grateful.

Physically, the book is gorgeously produced, a jewel of the typesetter's art. All the more reason to give it a permanent place on my bookshelf. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20328389 to: Man Meets Dog (Hardcover) by Konrad Lorenz
bookshelves: nonfiction, treasured
Charming study of people, dogs, and the relationship between them, written by "the father of ethology." Light-hearted and personal yet always deeply insightful, Lorenz describes everything from the origins of dogs to advice for dog owners and breeders. His points are illustrated both with anecdotes of dogs he himself knew, and with engaging and perceptive drawings of dogs and their behaviour. Many of his scientific views are old-fashioned, and a few are even positively wrong (for instance, it's now more or less proved that modern dogs don't have jackal ancestors), so this book is no substitute for modern training manuals or natural histories. Even so, Lorenz's warmth and wisdom and keen observation make it a delight to read, and I unhesitatingly recommend it anyone who ever did or will love a dog. ]]>