Title: A Dog Year
Author: Jon Katz
Genre: Non-Fiction
I was never a dog person until I got a dog. B always wanted a dog, always. I always wanted a cat, but B is allergic. When we got Grace as a tiny puppy any coldness or indifference I had toward dogs completely melted away and I wholeheartedly embraced my newfound role as “one of those crazy dog people.” Some 7 years later I’m still completely comfortable in my role as a crazy dog person and suspect I’ll always be.
B found came across this in the bookstore and since she’s been wanting to more light reading these days we picked it up. I was already familiar with Katz’s work, having read several of his pieces for Slate, and knew that not all of his dog stories have happy endings and not everyone finds him to be such a dog lover or dog champion. I skimmed a few pages and found nothing that would leave B in too many tears (she weeps easily over the pain and suffering of animals) so we bought it.
It’s a very, very quick read, and as long as you don’t know too much about Katz and his dogs beyond this book, you can read this book and feel happy as a dog lover. It might make you rub your dog a little bit more or take her on a little longer walk through the neighborhood. It’s not groundbreaking literature but that’s quite alright.

Title: Another Turn of the Crank
Author: Wendell Berry
Genre: Non-Fiction
Wendell Berry is one of Kentucky’s great treasures and it’s a real failing on my part that I’ve read so little of his work. 2008 is the year I change that. Another Turn of the Crank is a small collection containing six essays that each deal with community. Specific topics include local food, local economies, public, private and common wealth land ownership, forestry programs, conversation of land and humanity, health care and education but the overall theme is community.
I wondered to myself as I was reading this collection whether there is value in reading a collection like this where you are in almost complete agreement (even if you didn’t know it yet) with the author and his positions. I’ve got to say that I believe there is first because I do agree with Mr. Berry on so many things that I didn’t even know I agreed with him on because I’d not been pushed to think of them and my mind had not taken up the task of pondering them on its own. Second I think there is great value in reading the works of a man who strongly takes and lives his convictions. While I can agree with Mr. berry on so many things I cannot, or perhaps will not is more truthful, move back to the farm or take some of the more drastic measures that Mr. Berry takes on a regular basis to help his local economy, help farming, help Kentucky, help the environment, help society at large. His words remind me of how small my efforts in these areas have been and how much more and better I could do. In short, it gives me a good deal to think about and a good deal more to strive for.

“They believe that knowledge is property and is power, and that it ought to be. They believe that education is job training. They think that the summit of human achievement is a high-paying job that involves no work. Their public boast is that they are making a society in which everybody will be a “winner” — but their private aim has been to radically reduce the number of people who, by the measure of our historical ideals, might be thought successful: the independent, the self-employed, the owners of small businesses or small usable properties, those who work at home.”
- Wendell Berry Another Turn of the Crank

Title: Will Write for Food: The Complete Guide to Writing Cookbooks, Restaurant Reviews, Articles, Memoir, Fiction and More
Author: Dianne Jacob
Genre: Non-Fiction
I got this book as a gift a few years ago but never actually read it because I suck. However, I’ve been writing about food more and more often on Consuming Louisville and this book was still on my shelf so I thought it was more than past time to give it a read.
There are huge sections in this book that were completely irrelevant to me. For example I’ve no interest in writing a cookbook or blindly pitching recipes to magazines. However the parts that are relevant are very relevant and insightful. The chapters on writing restaurant reviews and food memoir pieces are very good. The sections on editing your work is invaluable. After reading this book and looking back over my recent food writing I’ve been cringing a lot. I don’t want to complete change my style, for example I’m not opposed to “telling” instead of always trying to “show” I think sometimes telling is more direct and honest and makes it more accessible to the reader. However I’m lazy when it comes to reusing the same adjectives over and over and don’t give enough detail. There’s a list of adjectives that are excellent for food writing that I’d like to blow up onto a 24×36 sheet of paper and hang in my office. That’s how handy I think it’s going to be.

Title: Into the Wild
Author: Jon Krakauer
Genre: Non-Fiction
I came to this book because of the Sean Penn directed film that came out last year. Not that I’ve seen the film mind you. Allow me a slight digression. There seems to be a trend about running advertisements and trailers for films long, long before their wide release. When I first saw advertisements for the film version of Into the Wild I couldn’t wait to see it. Well, I did wait and wait and wait and wait. When the film finally made it to Louisville I decided that I was so perturbed by having seen advertisements for it for so longer because I could actually see the film that I’d just wait a bit longer and see it when it came on HBO. Onward.
I very much enjoyed this book. I enjoyed the overall story, the detailed research, the narrative and Krakauer’s writing style. The story is that of a young man compelled to live a very different kind of life than is expected for a college educated person of means. He has a very different path in mind for himself than his parents had planned for him. The path he has chosen is a very difficult one and ultimately leads to his very untimely death. While his death is tragic and sad it’s the journey and experiences in the two years leading up to his death, his wandering years that are fascinating and deeply touching to me.
It’s a bit cliche I know to speak of being drawn to a different kind of life than is standard in our modern society. Even more cliche when I’m living a life that’s very much a part of that modern society but I’m trying to make my own path and live my own life in small ways. Those small ways are what I can manage so I deeply, deeply respect people who can move beyond the small ways of creating their own lives, people who in fact create their own lives in the largest, grandest and most fundamental of ways, like the protagonist in Into the Wild, even if those lives are tragically short ones.

Title: Intuition
Author: Allegra Goodman
Genre: Fiction
There are few things in life more disappointing to me than reading a book I’d been very much looking forward only to find that I don’t enjoy itt. I had put Intuition by Allegra Goodman on my Amazon wishlist when it first came out well over a year ago (possibly two?). I finally received a paperback copy for Christmas last month. I could not wait to dive in.
I can’t remember what got me so excited about the book. Maybe a review, maybe because my partner is a scientist and I wanted to explore that world a little bit. The only exploration this book caused was for me to look at and realize just how tender hearted I really am. The sections of the book dealing with experimenting on and sacrificing lab animals really disturbed me. So much so that I found myself skipping whole passages that dealt with those topics.
I’ll give Intuition credit for one thing. It’s a book that you really don’t know at all what it’s about, what the true heart of the book is, until the final 8 pages and perhaps even not until the last two sentences of the last paragraph on the final page. It takes a gifted writer to build an entire world and tell countless stories about that world but not really let you in to the book’s emotional core until right before you finish the book.

Title: Digital Stock Photography How to Shoot and Sell
Author: Michal Heron
Genre: Non-Fiction
ouple months ago I received a copy of Digital Stock Photography How to Shoot and Sell by Michael Heron from the publisher. I’m terribly behind in reading and reviewing it but it was a good, inspirational book to read near the first of the year so alls not lost.
Looking at the title and cover of the book I wrongly assumed it would focus on microstock. Perhaps because I’m such an internet person when I think “stock photography” I automatically think of microstock as well as the big agencies like Corbis and Getty. Microstock is actually barely touched on in this book and the term “microstock” isn’t used at all. Instead sites like istockphoto are referred to as stock portals. Not using the common term and not discussing microstock in depth seems an odd choice but I really can’t say the book suffers from that choice. If anything it’s a really nice reminder that the world of stock photography existed long before the concepts of royalty-free and microstock were ever dreamed up and will probably (hopefully) be around for even longer still.

Title: Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Genre: Non-Fiction
I really do hate to be a follower but enough people whose opinions I trust kept telling me to read this book and eventually I relented. I’m honestly glad I did. This was a very quick read that I enjoyed and it has me thinking. I cannot ask more of a book than to give me some pleasure and things to think about.
Gilbert’s personal journey would struggle to be anymore different than my own but there are some common themes and feelings. I saw myself both in her moments of despair and in her moments of pleasure and joy. This may sound trite but there are so few people (dare I say few of us?) who actually do take the road and life less traveled that it is hard not to feel connected to those who make that choice and then share with others the life and journeys that stem from that choice.
I can’t recommend the book to everyone because for some it will seem too much like a fairy tale, too unrealistic though it is the author’s actual life. I can’t fault anyone for not wanting to read real life fairy tales but when they are well written and when the stories and prose touch me I can’t help but be one of those women not only loves fairy tales but also believes they can be real.