Rural Life Books - Page 2

Dogs I Have Met: And the People They Found

Ken Foster

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Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Animal Care & Pets -> Dogs -> General
Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Animal Care & Pets -> Dogs -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

As a dog lover in general 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

and an American Pit Bull Terrier lover in particular, I have a special place in my heart for Ken Foster and his experiences. He is not afraid to stand up for what he believes and take corrective action for injustices he observes. He is a patriot for the APBT breed. This book is very well written and brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion. Bravo, Ken!

Ken Foster and the pit bulls of New Orleans 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RIJ2ZYSOJDATB This isn't really a review, it's just the only way I could find to share this great video that was created at a party I had for the release of Dogs I Have Met. Among the many dogs who attended: Trap Jack and Dag, both of whom are featured in the book.

Editorial Review:

Ken Foster knows that a dog can change a person's life - and that several dogs can change it even more. His three adopted dogs have helped him overcome a number of difficult times in his life - including a heart condition that saw him land in hospital, and the death of two very close friends."Dogs I Have Found" is a collection of stories, from both the author and other owners of rescued and adopted dogs that show how man's best friend can provide love and friendship during the best and the worst of times.This is a heart-warming volume that is sure to find a place of the bookshelf of dog lovers everywhere.

Living With Chickens: Everything You Need to Know to Raise Your Own Backyard Flock

Jay Rossier, Geoff Hansen

List Price: $24.95 By: The Lyons Press Amazon Marketplace: 12 new & used starting at $5.93

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Great Read, Entertaining, Not Quite Complete 4 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

This is a great introduction to keeping chickens, and I found it very useful.

The author goes through all the basic info you need to know in order to raise chickens. It is a very easy and entertaining read - the author has a great writing style that is enjoyable. It is full of lovely photos that really add to the book. It is a fast read as well.

It is not terribly complete - you will need another source for information once you get into the chicken care part. I would recommend "A Guide to Raising Chickens" by Gail Damerow as a companion to this book. The Damerow book is *very* complete, but it also has the dryness of a textbook and isn't nearly as fun to read [think "dense" and kinda boring].

So, I would recommend buying this book if you are considering raising some chickens because this book will give you all the information you need to make an educated decision. Then, if you do decide to raise some chickens, get the Damerow book in addition to this one so that you have every single detail you need to know.

Editorial Review:

Straightforward prose and dozens of detailed illustrations offer advice on everything from choosing the best birds for your needs to suggestions for building a windowed coop.

The Egg and I

Betty Macdonald

Amazon Price: $13.67 List Price: $13.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harper Paperbacks Amazon Marketplace: 74 new & used starting at $0.52

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 68 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Crack this "Egg"--politically correct tight-asses be damned... 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

The Egg and I is a funny, well-written, and entertaining memoir by a very intelligent, perceptive, and candid woman. "Ma and Pa Kettle" are names which still float around the pop culture ether, and this is the book that introduced them to the world...and the reason why I initially decided to read it.

MacDonald is a very talented writer, with an uncommon gift for description and evocation, but not a genius. The book is a bit choppy, anachronistic, and abrupt in places, and the segues between vignettes could have been handled more organically. And while she has a definite facility with words, some of her sentences are oddly and conspicuously dissonant.

Technically, however, you'll have no trouble digesting this morsel. But you MAY have some difficulty with MacDonald's strong and uncensored opinions, which she gives freely and does not shy away from.

WAIT! Doesn't the zeitgeist CHAMPION strong, articulate, self-assured female authors with their own points of view?

Evidently not, when what they say goes against the grain of modern "enlightened" values. Not when they are politically incorrect. MacDonald, for example, does not care for Indians. FOR SHAME! My God, how DARE she write that she does not like Indians! She mustn't say THAT...even if that is exactly what she thinks, and she thinks that based on the fact that she was CONSTANTLY exposed to them, and saw first-hand their habits, culture, and way of life.

I appreciate her honesty, myself. If tight-asses today have a problem with her, and will, consequently, not read her book, their loss. There's always a bagatelle by Kate Chopin (or Dave Eggers) available for those people.

I would not hesitate for a SECOND to recommend this book, and think it would be great for young girls to read, as they could perhaps identify strongly with MacDonald herself, whereas I just enjoyed the quality of the writing, the depiction of the Kettles, and the one huge laugh that occurs about midway through the book. (You'll know it when you come across it.)

Editorial Review:

When Betty MacDonald married a marine and moved to a small chicken farm on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, she was largely unprepared for the rigors of life in the wild. With no running water, no electricity, a house in need of constant repair, and days that ran from four in the morning to nine at night, the MacDonalds had barely a moment to put their feet up and relax. And then came the children. Yet through every trial and pitfall—through chaos and catastrophe—this indomitable family somehow, mercifully, never lost its sense of humor.

A beloved literary treasure for more than half a century, Betty MacDonald's The Egg and I is a heartwarming and uproarious account of adventure and survival on an American frontier.

How Angel Peterson Got His Name (Yearling Books)

Gary Paulsen

Amazon Price: $15.30 List Price: $15.30 Usually ships in 11 to 13 days By: Topeka Bindery Amazon Marketplace: 3 new & used starting at $11.20

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

tottally kool 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I thought that I could totally relate to this book because I am also his age and I thought it was awsome to compare each other. This book always kept you on the edge of what they would do next.It was a funny book and was a book with morals. If your the type that likes funny and true stories, this is the book for you.

B-Money's review for Hw Angel Peterson Got His Name 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Pretty much all readers who have read this book say How Angel Peterson Got His Name by Gary Paulsen is a great quick read. It's a great book for reluctant and struggling readers. It's a good book for these people because number one it's a short book but long chapters which is good because it will make the reader read to the end of the chapter, number two it's a very funny book, and number three there's quite a bit of characters so there will be quite a bit of similarity between the reader and the characters.
There isn't really a main character in this story it's all about a group of kids and the things they do for fun or to get girls to like them. Some of the kids will do anything to get girls attention. For example, a memorable scene is when, this one kid tries to wrestle a bear at the carnival, but the first few times he doesn't do it, but then he tries one more time and succeeds by getting tortured by the bear, because the objective is to stay in the rink for 1 minute. And then there was when the kids were really bored they decided to skateboard in the street and hold on to the back of the cars to go really fast.
By the end of the book, readers are hung off with questions like what would happen if our world was just like this book, or what would happen if the people in our world were like the people in the book.

Editorial Review:

WHEN YOU GROW up in a small town in the north woods, you have to make your own excitement. High spirits, idiocy, and showing off for the girls inspire Gary Paulsen and his friends to attempt:

• Shooting waterfalls in a barrel

• The first skateboarding

• Breaking the world record for speed on skis by being towed behind a souped-up car, and then . . . hitting gravel

• Jumping three barrels like motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel, except they only have bikes

• Wrestling . . . a bear?

Extreme sports lead to extreme fun in new tales from Gary’s boyhood.

A New York Times Bestseller

It's a Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic Farmer Who Quit the Big City for the (Not So) Simple Life

Keith Stewart

Amazon Price: $11.53 List Price: $16.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Da Capo Press Amazon Marketplace: 50 new & used starting at $3.73

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Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Gardening & Horticulture -> Essays

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Twenty years ago, just beyond his 40th birthday, Keith Stewart exchanged life in New York's corporate grind for a farm in Orange County, NY, where he and a small crew of seasonal workers grow about 100 organic vegetables and herbs. What started as a yearning—"to live on a piece of land, closer to nature; to work outside with my body as well as my brain; to leave behind the world of briefcases, computers, corporate clients, and non-opening windows"—has become a life "more full, more varied" and often "more demanding and exhausting, but always more real." Stewart sells everything he grows directly to consumers and restaurateurs, and in doing so has developed loyal and growing ranks devoted to his Rocambole garlic, herbs, heirloom tomatoes, and other organic produce. Now, in It's a Long Road to a Tomato, Stewart presents interlocking, complementary essays, addressing his mid-life development as a farmer; some of the nuts and bolts and how-to's of organic vegetable growing and selling in an urban market; humorous and philosophical stories about domestic and wild farm animals and the natural world; and some of the political, social, and environmental issues surrounding agriculture today and why it matters to all of us.

The Secret Life of Cows

Glen Wexler

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 2 to 4 weeks By: Andrews McMeel Publishing Amazon Marketplace: 17 new & used starting at $3.99

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Cowabunga Mooed 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Glen Wexler sees things a bit differently than the rest of us....and thank god for that. Glen's work has always been discribed as 'visionary.' As in, have you seen Glen's 'visionary' Van Halen Album cover? In "The Secret Life of Cows" he harnesses his 'visionary' powers to bring out only the very best in bovine humor. If you don't smile, laugh out loud or even snort milk out of your nose when you read this book, you better call 911, because you proably don't have a pulse. And if that wasn't enough to get you to part with ten-dollars-and-seventeen-cents, it turns out that Eric Idle fella is pretty funny, too...

Editorial Review:

In one of the most imaginative books you'll pick up this year, photographic artist Glen Wexler fuses reality and fantasy to create an alternative world where cows can do just about anything. Awards and recognition for Wexler's work come from such prestigious sources as Communication Arts, ZOOM, French PHOTO, Creativity, Graphis, Photo District News, New York Art Directors' Club, Beldings, NPPA, and Key Art Awards. Wexler's digitally enhanced photo-illustrations are paired with udderly funny musings from the likes of Dave Barry, Ogden Nash, and Eric Idle, who authors the book's foreword and happens to "know a bit about cows in comedy." Wexler put more than 75 days of photography and over 600 post-production hours into this book, working with EmmyAward-winning production designer Anthony Tremblay, Muppet wardrobe designer James Hayes and pyrotechnic expert Joe Viskocil, among others. No detail or pixel has been overlooked in the creation of this "mooving" photographic expos©.

Outwitting Squirrels: 101 Cunning Stratagems to Reduce Dramatically the Egregious Misappropriation of Seed from Your Birdfeeder by Squirrels

Bill Adler

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Chicago Review Press Amazon Marketplace: 208 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

For Determined Bird Watchers 2 out of 5 stars.
18 of 22 people found this review helpful.

This book is a guide to keeping your bird feeder squirrel-free. Adler had a particularly pestiferous squirrel who found ways around every squirrel-barrier Adler could think of to protect his bird seed. The squirrel's notorious feats put Adler on the war-path. In writing this book, he is not only fighting that one squirrel, but all of squirrel-kind. If readers pull-off a successful squirrel battle because of ideas in this book, then Adler can declare victory.

Bird watchers, (or would-be bird watchers) are the intended audience for this book, so the book begins with some suggestions about how to attract birds, along with a list of suggested foods to offer and descriptive profiles of birds who commonly come to North American feeders. Adler then turns his attentions to squirrels and provides a supposedly thorough description of squirrels, their biology, and behavior. Next, he describes and compares common bird feeders according to how squirrel-proof they are. Following this are a list of anti-squirrel devices that can be added to a feeder, and a list of combative actions a bird-viewer can take to ward off squirrels. Adler concludes with "101 Cunning Stratagems" (an attempt at humor?), ideas for squirrel lovers, ideas for dealing with problem cats at feeders, and a list of resources for bird-watching and squirrel-fighting equipment.

It's hard to tell whether this book was intended to be humorous, or what. Certainly, the comparison of bird feeders is far too serious to be funny. (And unfortunately, the feeders are listed by brand-name, rather than by some grouping according to general type or shape.) Some of the "101 Cunning Stratagems" seem intended to be funny, but fall short of the goal. Overall, the entire book reads as if it could have been a decent magazine article, but Adler had to really work to come up with ideas enough to stretch his material to fill out an entire book. For instance, he fills out his list of 101 stratagems with a number of patent descriptions, which are neither funny nor descriptive enough to give you an idea how the devices being described actually work.

Even though he seemed desperate to add to his work count, Adler still left out some key information. Namely, he provides almost no information about different types of squirrels, and how their approaches to feeders differ. Adler lives in a city, where he apparently only sees gray squirrels, which is probably why he barely mentions any other types of squirrels. In our experience, red squirrels are much more aggressive and agile than the grays-with our large population of red hoodlums, grays wouldn't stand a chance in our neighborhood. We also see flying squirrels at our feeder, but they don't bother us since they only come out at night when the birds aren't in the feeder, and they don't seem to gobble as much seed as the reds. They sure can jump, though. Then there are the black squirrels, which are the big gorillas of the squirrel world. I've seen them in Toronto, and I've also heard they haunt Washington, D.C. after escaping from the National Zoo. Do they also make pests of themselves at feeders? Adler leaves us in the dark about these critters.

Adler interviews world-renowned squirrel expert Vaun Flyger in the chapter on squirrel biology, and Flyger assures him that the best way to outwit a squirrel is to treat them like chicken; i.e., use them in any recipe that calls for chicken. In other words, Flyger advocates the "final solution". Adler doesn't consider this approach seriously in this book (but speaking from experience, it works, and better than any squirrel bafflers. Once neighborhood squirrels get the idea you're out for blood, they quickly learn how not to eat from your feeder).

Editorial Review:

A book illustrating and explaining a series of strategems to keep squirrels from eating and ruining yards and gardens when more traditional tactics fail.

House Calls and Hitching Posts

Dorcas Sharp Hoover

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Dr. to the amish 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This was a wonderful book . Once I started reading it I could not put it down. It is amazing to realize that there are still Dr.'s out in the world that care so much for their patients.

Doctoring the Amish 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

If you are interested in Amish culture, this is a great book to read to get a snapshot of what types of challenges, ethical and medical, on a typical Amish farm. The writing style is easy to follow and very descriptive. The Amish people have such a strong faith and are very family oriented which is a refreshing change to read. If you are a nurse or a physician, you would really appreciate the ingenuity that is needed when dealing with blunt force trauma from a farming accident or just the challenge of getting to someone's rural home in 6 feet of snow.

House Calls and Hitching Posts 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

If you enjoy reading and learning about the Amish, you will enjoy this book.

Great Read 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I've always been interested in the Amish People and this book is good learning for anyone who is interested in the Amish. I've read this book 2 times already and I hope there will be a sequel.

Editorial Review:

Medical technology meets rural values of simplicity, home health remedies,and unwavering faith in divine providence when a country boy turned country doctor returns to his roots.

Colter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had

Rick Bass

Amazon Price: $22.00 List Price: $22.00 In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served. By: Houghton Mifflin Amazon Marketplace: 34 new & used starting at $0.84

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Dog lovers and naturalists will treasure this book 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I originally picked up this book because of the cover. The darling GSP pup is hard to resist. However, the beautiful imagery within is what stays with me.

I am a confessed dog-lover and outdoor enthusiast. I responded to Bass's descriptions of Colter's hunting skills and of the natural world. I enjoyed Bass's humility and sense of humor. Mostly, I could just relate to how much he loves his dog. I feel the same. I could not put the book down and have reread certain passages upon finishing Colter.

A great choice for people who appreciate the magic of working dogs-dogs that live to hunt or herd or help. Also, anyone who loves the Montana wilderness would like Colter, as well.

Editorial Review:

Colter was the runt of the litter, and Rick Bass took him only because nobody else would. Soon, though, Bass realized he had a raging genius on his hands, and he raided his daughters' college fund to send Colter to the best schools. Colter could be a champion, Rick was told, but he'd have to be broken, slowed down. Rick "could no more imagine a slowing-down Colter than a slow-motion bolt of lightning in the sky," and instead of breaking Colter he followed him. Colter led him into new territory, an unexplored land where he felt more alive, more intimately connected to the world, than he'd ever been before. In the course of telling us Colter's story, Rick Bass also tells us of his childhood fascination with snapping turtles and dirt, and of the other animals - including people - that have shaped his life. COLTER is an interspecies love story that vividly captures the relationship between humans and dogs. Like all of Bass's work, it is passionate, poetic, and original.

Hotel Pastis: A Novel of Provence

Peter Mayle

List Price: $23.00 By: Knopf Amazon Marketplace: 178 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 29 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Having delighted millions of Americans with A Year in Provence and Toujours Provence, Peter Mayle treats us to a wonderfully entertaining novel of escape, romance and adventure. played in the landscape he has made so irresistible.

Simon Shaw, a forty-two-year-old advertising tycoon, worn down by insatiable clients and a rapacious ex-wife, wants to get away from it all. On impulse he drives to the south of France. When an accident leaves him stranded in a small village in the Luberon, an enchanting Frenchwoman, who is between husbands, comes to his rescue and soon lures him into buying the local gendarmerie. Together they transform it into a little jewel of a hotel. And life seems idyllic.

But at the same time, a crook, recently released from the Marseilles prison, is plotting to rob the bank in the nearby town. Paths cross. schemes go awry -- and through it all Peter Mayle delights us with the intrigues of the haut monde that descends on the Hotel Pastis and the machinations of the bad guys, as everything conspires to threaten the heaven on earth that Simon Shaw has envisioned.