Book of the Bitch  - not Book of Pregnancy, Whelping, etc
929151
This book is a bible for many serious dog breeders out there.  When someone recently asked a group of people at a national dog show for recommendations on whelping books - we ALL had and suggested this one.  With that being said, this is NOT a book about pregnancy and whelping ( although that is covered of course).  This book is about the owning a bitch and all the things that go with it from purchasing the dog to medical problems to placing puppies.  It is complete and detailed.  I pull it off my shelf for any bitch concern for reference and it (and the kit that they suggest) has sat beside me with every litter I have ever whelped.
1534291
HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT.  If I could give zero stars, then I would. The tone of the author is almost condescending.  I read most of the first 6 chapters in hope that the book would get better, but it didn't and so I stopped wasting my time. If you're looking for a book that's empowering for women, I highly recommend Lost Women of the Bible by Carolyn Custis James.  My women's small group recently read Lost Women of the Bible and loved it. We thought Fashioned to Reign would be another similar experience, however it was a negative experience.
4660892
A book about manners by Bill O'Reilly, who sexually harasses women is not ok. Please don't enable this crass publication with your dollars.
4116770
I'm a poet.  I'm a dog lover.  I also very much enjoy quite a bit--but not all--of Mary Oliver's work.  so I thought, of course I'll love this book.

I pretty much hate it, and am glad it was a gift and I didn't pay for it myself.  First, it's sentimental, and no, that's not a good thing.  Sentimental=false emotion, and that's what this is book is full of.  Also, the dogs talk.  here's an example: " 'snort, snort,' said Henry. That's bad enough, but the language is so flat as to be simplistic.  I began to wonder if it was meant for children.  There were also lines like:  "A dog is adorable and noble./A dog is a true and loving friend." Seriously? This is the same Mary Oliver who penned Pulitzer prize winning poetry?

So my biggest problem was that it was simply not good poetry, or even particularly good writing on dogs, as it seemed to fall into all the tired tropes about dogs.  All that was enough to give it a bad review.

But then there is the author's repeated assertion that dogs that are on leashes aren't real dogs.  Instead they are "...a possession only, the ornament of a human life" and "can remind us of nothing large or noble or mysterious or lost."  Excuse me?  A dog changes because an owner is responsible enough to keep their restrained when it is appropriate to do so?  Frankly, I suspect Mary Oliver may be the kind of dog owner I particularly dislike, the one whose free roaming dog comes roaring up to my leashed dogs while the owner casually says "he's friendly."  I know a bit about dogs, as it happens, and dog behavior and training too, and I know that dogs care interesting and can be noble and mysterious and appealing, and this is all true whether they are leashed or not, and I also know the problems free-roaming dogs can cause, especially for people how have reactive dogs who do not take kindly to loose dogs approaching them, and I find this assertion that dogs should not be leashed annoying and perhaps even irresponsible.

Let me be clear:  I would give the book 1 star even if I didn't disagree with the foolishness about leashed vs. unleashed dogs, but that was just the icing on the cake of my distaste for this book, I'm afraid.  And I also know it's hard to write about animals and avoid sentimentality, but that doesn't mean one should wallow in it either.  Give this one a miss.
390574
My wife and I are reading this book as part of our preparation for parenthood.
This book is EXCLUSIVELY written from a feminist point of view, at page 50 her husband is almost incidental to the entire process of pregnancy. So if you are male, don't expect either too much practical input for you or being able to read this book without feeling queasy. There are enough references to other belief systems to make even the Buddhist connection tenuous in the extreme. Her website is even worse.
  The positive from all this is that we have decided to write our own book on pregnancy and parenting from a Buddhist perspective and we are not going to be including any references to Isis or Hestia. We will be presenting teachings directly from the Pali Canon.
I will finish reading this book, but it simply shows me the need for something that is both more rational and significantly less feminist/New Age in orientation.
But then another use for this book will be as toilet paper.
3140576
I just finished reading as much of Kitty Kelley's Oprah book as I can handle. I will divide this book into three parts. If half of what Ms. Kelley says in the first third of the book is true, Oprah is a pretty icky person. No one I can really admire. The second third of the book is devoted to Oprah does this and Oprah does that; really? Do I really care? She's becoming tiresome. I barely skimmed the last third of the book because it was just more blah, blah, blah, blah about Oprah, yeah, yeah, whatever, I have other things to do today plus six other new books to read and this wasn't holding my attention. I've always taken Oprah with a grain of salt in spite of her delusions of grandeur which are apparently grander than I would have suspected. If you absolutely think you have to read this book, please don't waste your own money on it. Get it at the library or borrow it from someone. Or buy it at a yard sale in a couple years for a buck or two. It's nothing you'll want on your bookshelf unless you are into tabloid trash.
3866320
This is a pleasing book to look through, but it offers less than the Storey Publishing books on goats.  I bought it because it offered a chapter on "Grooming."  This turned out to mean hoof trimming and castration.  Accurate info, just not a lot of it.  I returned it.  If you are interested in Angora goats, please note that the author's book on Angora goats is a better resource on that topic I do recommend it!
2945042
The premise is fine. The book is sadly sexist and perpetuates gender issues.

The only boar to be critiqued for how they look is the female boar, and she is the one to be labeled bossy.

Not sure parents realize how important it is to not add to the gender expectations of girls being pretty and submissive... but this book made me angry and honestly I will throw it away rather than hand it down and have it exist in the world.
4710349
Look, the book is horrible -but so was the last one- so I have no one to blame but myself for buying it. The characters have melded into one "cardboardy", preachy, predictable version of each other. And yes, the message is simplistic and transparent and frustratingly redundant. But, I LOVE those elements of the book compared to that freaking lousy goat. I'm embarressed for Mr. Goodkind's children when that bleating contrivance shows up. When they get old enough to read and find out that their daddy stuck that filthy goat down his readers throats they're going to claw their eyes out in shame. I can never be friends now with a woman named Betty because of you, Goodkind.  If Roy reads this thing while he's recovering, he'll hate the goat more than the white tiger, I can tell you that. The president of PETA even said that he hopes Jagang the Just ends up raping and eating Betty. Now having said that, I ADORED that goat compared to that devastatingly not-cute, forced-precocious, sickenly saccharin character of Rachel. The next time I read about Rachel I hope it's on a milk carton.
2942750
I felt cheated when I got this book.
It is not a book about Huskies. It's a book about general dog care, and not a particularily good one at that. Except for the photographs and a brief discussion of the breed, it  could be just about any breed. The emphase is on home and show, and  definitively not on Arctic dogs. For example, there is more than two times  more text on preventive dental care than on dog sledding.
The same  publisher has published essentially the same book with a different title  ('Alaskan Malamutes') and a different author name.
I'm sure that anyone  with a serious interest in Siberian Huskies would find this book next to  useless.
1228293
DEAD WITCH WALKING by Kim Harrison.

The biggest problem is the heroine Rachel.  She is not good at things.  She doesn't sweat the details.  She isn't successful.  Sometimes there are reasons she isn't successful, like her boss sabotaging her.  (Actually seeing details of her boss sabotaging her could have been good, but that wasn't shown.)  She is reckless and jumps to wrong conclusions.  She doesn't plan well.  She gets caught while spying on a bad guy - three times.  There's a contract on her with assassins attacking her.  Each time she doesn't do anything smart to get away.  Luck or someone else rescues her.  When she does get around to doing a witch-like thing, it's not impressive.  She wanted to make a potion to turn into an animal.  But she's in a hurry and uses a mouse hair because it's convenient.  As it turned out it was a mink's hair not a mouse hair, so she turns into a mink.  I like to watch someone do something well or in an interesting way.  But I wasn't interested in watching Rachel do mediocre things.

But I loved one part.  Rachel is in mink form and cannot change back to human.  She has been captured by a bad guy who plans to kill her by entering her in the rat fights.  Trained rats fight to the death.  What happened during the fight and after was very entertaining.  It was the best part of the book.  It had to do with meeting and interacting with another creature.

The narrator Marguerite Gavin was ok, but at times she talked too fast.  I would have liked occasional dramatic pauses.

The Hollows (Rachel Morgan) Series:
As of 2013 there are 11 books in the series.  Sadly it's not for me, but I gave it a try.  The three I read are:
3 stars.  Dead Witch Walking, Book 1
2 stars.  The Good, the Bad, and the Undead, Book 2
1 star.  Pale Demon, Book 9

DATA:
Narrative mode: 1st person Rachel.  Unabridged audiobook length: 13 hrs and 14 mins.  Swearing language: moderate but rarely used.  Sexual content: none.  Setting: time similar to current day Cincinnati, Ohio.  Book copyright: 2004.  Genre: urban fantasy.
4905003
I just finished browsing Carla Emory's "Encyclopedia of Country Living".  And when I say "browse", I mean it.  It is too painful to read directly.  The seventh edition is almost 600 pages.  But size is not the issue -- organization is.  For instance, there's a section entitled something like "why to move to the country."  Fine.  4 paragraphs start in on that, then the author starts writing about breast feeding, which goes on for 15 paragraphs or so -- how to, why to, Jesus this, and Holy Spirit that.  Ugh.  I'm a man, so my decision to move to the country is not so that I can breast-feed, thanks.  If the topic had been entitled "Breast-feeding and the Holy Spirit", I'd be fine with it, because being a man with grown children whose a Buddhist and Atheist, I'd know to just skip that part.  But when that takes up the majority of a section entitled "Why to move to the country," it indicates a problem.

However, there is plenty of useful information in this book.  Imagine 8 or 9 other books, about subjects like basic gardening, butchering, dairy farming, canning, candle-making, beekeeping, raising chickens/goats/cows, skinning rabbits, printing and selling your own book, how to live on pennies per day, bed-wetting, doing laundry by hand...  Okay, imagine maybe 20 small how-to books, and another 50 two to five-page "information pamphlets".  That type of content is what you will find here, and it's very useful.  Unfortunately, a good half of the book is her wandering off mentally, talking about whatever is on her mind, or whatever is happening in her life as she's writing: observations about her neighbors, or other random off-topic ranting or preaching.

It's annoyingly unfocused and unorganized.  She lost 1 stars for being wildly unfocused, and another for injecting Christian mythological and philosophical nonsense everywhere she can wedge it in.  If those two elements were removed, and the remains organized better, she'd get 5 stars.  There is indeed much good information throughout, and when it comes to the how-to subjects, no glaring misinformation.

For the modern back-to-the-land movement, there are some omissions, maybe because the book is now 30 years old.  But for the amount of coverage for the price, it's hard to beat.
698356
I really thought I'd read the summaries and reviews well, so I thought this book would have way more vegan options in it.  Alas, it has just one, maybe two.  I went ahead and read through the book (my sister is a pastry chef and I wanted to see if she might like to keep it for her collection), but by the end, I have to say, I was really tired of seeing drawings of the author with her voluminous bosoms popping out on every third or fourth page.  I realize this is a small thing, but for this reason, it's not something I'd give to my mom or let my niece or nephew make a recipe out of--they don't need to see "sexy" cartoon women in suggestive/sexualized poses with exaggerated cleavage splashed on the page of a cake recipe.  Come to think of it, I'm not sure that the drawings even add to the theme or tone of the book; I didn't even think they were cute or fun.  Couple that with the lack of vegan options, and this book just didn't do it for me.  I will say that it is written clearly and is easy to follow and understand, and it does include a nice variety of flavors and textures.  It's just not something I would have purchased if I'd been able to look all the way through it prior to purchasing.
3718290
This book was highly recommended to me by an extended family member and I bought it without reading the reviews (based on the recommendation).  The language is crude. Besides the over use of the F bomb,the name of Christ is used in the most disrespectful ways.  The main female character is raunchy.  Sometime the story was hard to follow.  If you like a book to leave you feeling happy, this isn't the book for you.
363937
Most of these reviewers are in over their heads. This is not an actual Bible. This is a commentary written in 1895 by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an Atheist and America's first radical feminist. She is the main reason women are able to vote in America. (She mentored Susan B. Anthony and wrote Anthony's speeches.)
Cady Stanton wrote The Woman's Bible as a commentary on the systematic oppression of women by the Church. She was not wrong, back then.
I'm just laughing at everyone who gave it one star, thinking this was a modern piece of work, or that this was actual religious text. Feminism isn't "taking over religion" or "corrupting society". This was written before the 19th Amendment. Good job sounding like you belong in the 1800s though.
IF you have an appreciation for historical feminism, or a great dislike for religion, you might enjoy it.
4274096
This book annoyed me because of a needless page in it about creation that says "One Flanimal believed that a weird creature called Grod who lives in the sky made all the Flanimals in one day. Mental!" This blip is accompanied by a picture parodying Michelangelo's "Creation" image in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. Mockery of major religious tenets just isn't appropriate for children's books...adult books, fine. Children's books, no.
4947973
First card I pulled was "The Father". The book reads (from memory, as I have since removed the deck from my home), "The father is very much the centre core of power of the family." Enough said, I am not interested in reading anything more by this "author".
Additionally, not all the cards have titles on them, just an obscure image of a person usually, making it difficult to do any sort of quick or overview/pattern readings without referring to the sexist book.