Well-told version of the ancient legend about the animal wife, captured against her will by an almost deliberately obtuse hunter and held until she manages to escape him and flee back to her ancestral home/original form. This version takes too long to get started: the animal wife doesn't appear unti...
Seeing the world with all its varied peoples and animals through the observant eyes of literary naturalist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas is both mind-altering and deeply satisfying. This memoir includes many phases of Thomas’s life, from her fascination with wildlife as a young girl, through her child-r...
I have an eighteen-month-old sable border collie mix named Yiya, who is the apple of my eye and more dear to me than I ever could have imagined. I mean, how could you not love her? I hold ridiculous and completely irrational beliefs about her: that she knows what I'm saying beyond basic command...
Couldn't finish this book. It was not what I was expecting. It seems to be more about big cats than housecats. Also writing is somewhat scattered; doesn't seem to follow a progression that made sense to me. And when she started talking about how and why lions in Africa declined, it got too depre...
It's reassuring to learn that there are people in this world who are ever so slightly nuttier than I am. I loved this book!
A very accessible ethnography for those of us with no background in the field. In the 1950s, Elizabeth spent long periods of time living with the Bushmen of the Kalahari and developed a deep love for them, and they for her. She presents them here as real people, and she made me care about them as i...
This woman first let her dogs roam freely across busy streets and highways, even a freeway, watching and observing but not protecting them. She and the dogs are fortunate none were injured or killed. Secondly, she then let them live outside with almost no human interaction or socialization and watch...
Yes, crazy cat lady does love to read about the cats, both big and small. Thomas writes well, and engagingly.
Stand very still. Breathe as softly as you can. See that little flicking movement? No, not over there, straight ahead, behind the bush. Keep looking. You will see it. I promise. There. Didn't I tell you? Cool, right? Isn
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