from the aforementioned ‘great-books-to-recommend-to-everyone’ pile…

Bryce Courtenay’s The Power of One, which is about a young boy who grows up in South Africa wanting to become a boxer. It has rare quality among “historical” novels in that it doesn’t force the setting or the social climate in a contrived way, but rather creates a great story that is also an integral part of a specific time and place. I found myself captivated, and learned as much about South Africa in the mid-20th century as I did about boxing.

Shreve Stockton’s The Daily Coyote is a booked based on her highly successful blog of the same name. She tells the story of how she came to live in Wyoming and adopt the orphaned coyote pup. It’s absolutely engrossing and a relatively quick read, with photos of Charlie and the gorgeous Wyoming scenery scattered throughout. She makes living in a drafty one-room cabin in the middle of Wyoming while also rearing a wild animal sound kind of…exciting.

On a somewhat related theme, there was John Katz’s The New Work of Dogs, which is (not surprisingly) about dogs, but would be of great interest to dog owners and non-owners alike. Katz explores how our relationship with dogs has changed over the years, and while most Americans don’t keep dogs as working animals for a farm or otherwise, we do ask that dogs work: we ask them to understand, to reflect, to respond to, and to meet our social and emotional needs. We’ve gone past humane treatment to downright human treatment, a task which dogs are simply not equipped to handle, and the result is a nation of neurotic canines. Katz suggests that our increasingly isolated and individualistic society has bred this over-dependence on the emotional support of animals and explains why this is disastrous both for people, and for dogs. I won’t give the whole book away, but I’d highly recommend it to anyone and everyone.

And of course, there were the Terry Pratchett novels, of which I’ve read at least a dozen to date. What a wonderful treat to have a favorite author who is also highly prolific. I finished Wyrd Sisters in no time at all, and will shortly be reading the continuing story, Witches Abroad. On the other hand, Mort was left unread for a very long time; I wasn’t really getting into the story, but wasn’t ready to give it up. It paid off, in the end, when I finally connected with the novel and finished it in one marathon reading session.

The thing about Pratchett’s stories is that he relies on a lot of set-up, just enough sprinkled clues to keep you guessing, and a whole lot of exposition that pays off later in the story. So in The Last Continent, once of his longer and (if possible) more convoluted novels, all of that is well-worth the effort because when you get to the scene where the celibate wizards are trying to explain sex to the God of Evolution, it’ll be just about the funniest thing you’ve ever read.