Staff Picks
#BroaderBookshelf 2022 - Non-Celebrity Memoirs with Animals
- Sara M.
- Tuesday, June 21, 2022
Collection
The #BroaderBookshelf challenge helps expand your reading habits to discover authors, genres and books you might not otherwise pick up. Check out one of these memoirs by somebody who isn't a celebrity - but who does have something to do with animals! Hawks, sheep, pigs, dogs (so many dogs) - even the occasional royal raven.
More #BroaderBookshelf booklists can be found here.
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My Dog Tulip
Published in 2010
Presents a sentimental and sometimes amusing portrait of a man's life with his favorite dog, an Alsatian named Tulip.
Homer's Odyssey
A Fearless Feline Tale, Or, How I Learned About Love and Life with a Blind Wonder Cat
Published in 2009
A pet rescue volunteer and literacy outreach coordinator describes her relationship with a three-pound blind cat whose daredevil character and affectionate personality saw the author through six moves, a burglary, and the healing of her broken heart.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Published in 1998
A collection of essays on the natural world during a year spent in the Blue Ridge Mountains reflects the author's interactions with her wilderness surroundings.
The Dogs Who Found Me
What I've Learned from Pets Who Were Left Behind.
Published in 2006
Reluctant dog rescuer Ken Foster finds himself adopting various stray dogs, from a beagle abandoned in a dog run to a pit bull at a truck stop. The dogs offer a grounding counterpoint to his own misfortunes in New York City after 9/11, in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and during his heart attack.
All Creatures Great and Small
[the Warm and Joyful Memoirs of the Worlds Most Beloved Animal Doctor]
Published in 2020
Thunder Dog
The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero
Published in 2011
Oogy
The Dog Only a Family Could Love
Published in 2010
"A heartwarming story of a puppy brought back from the brink of death, and the family he adopted"--Provided by the publisher.
H is for Hawk
Published in 2014
An award-winning best-seller from the UK recounts how the author, an experienced falconer grieving the sudden death of her father, endeavored to train for the first time a dangerous goshawk predator as part of her personal recovery.
Birds, Art, Life
A Year of Observation
Published in 2017
"A writer's search for inspiration, beauty, and solace leads her to birds in this intimate and exuberant meditation on creativity and life--a field guide to things small and significant. When it comes to birds, Kyo Maclear isn't seeking the exotic. Rather she discovers joy in the seasonal birds that find their way into view in city parks and harbors, along eaves and on wires. In a world that values big and fast, Maclear looks to the small, the steady, the slow accumulations of knowledge, and the lulls that leave room for contemplation. A distilled, crystal-like companion to H is for Hawk, Birds Art Life celebrates the particular madness of chasing after birds in the urban environment and explores what happens when the core lessons of birding are applied to other aspects of art and life. Moving with ease between the granular and the grand, peering into the inner landscape as much as the outer one, this is a deeply personal year-long inquiry into big themes: love, waiting, regrets, endings. If Birds Art Life was sprung from Maclear's sense of disconnection, her passions faltering under the strain of daily existence, this book is ultimately about the value of reconnection--and how the act of seeking engagement and beauty in small ways can lead us to discover our most satisfying and meaningful lives"-- Provided by publisher.
World of Wonders
In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments
Published in 2020
"From beloved, award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil comes a debut work of nonfiction--a collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us"-- Provided by publisher
Rough Magic
Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race
Published in 2019
"At the age of nineteen, Lara Prior-Palmer discovered a website devoted to "the world's longest, toughest horse race"--an annual competition of endurance and skill that involves dozens of riders racing a series of twenty-five wild ponies across 1,000 kilometers of Mongolian grassland. On a whim, she decided to enter the race. As she boarded a plane to East Asia, she was utterly unprepared for what awaited her. Riders often spend years preparing to compete in the Mongol Derby, a course that re-creates the horse messenger system developed by Genghis Khan, and many fail to finish. Prior-Palmer had no formal training. She was driven by her own restlessness, stubbornness, and a lifelong love of horses. She raced for ten days through extreme heat and terrifying storms, catching a few hours of sleep where she could at the homes of nomadic families. Battling bouts of illness and dehydration, exhaustion and bruising falls, she decided she had nothing to lose. Each dawn she rode out again on a fresh horse, scrambling up mountains, swimming through rivers, crossing woodlands and wetlands, arid dunes and open steppe, as American television crews chased her in their jeeps. Told with terrific suspense and style, in a voice full of poetry and soul, Rough Magic captures the extraordinary story of one young woman who forged ahead, against all odds, to become the first female winner of this breathtaking race."--Dust jacket flap.
The Shepherd's Life
Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape
Published in 2015
Some people's lives are entirely their own creations. James Rebanks' isn't. The first son of a shepherd, who was the first son of a shepherd himself, his family have lived and worked in the Lake District of Northern England for generations, further back than recorded history. It's a part of the world known mainly for its romantic descriptions by Wordsworth and the much loved illustrated children's books of Beatrix Potter. But James' world is quite different. His way of life is ordered by the seasons and the work they demand. It hasn't changed for hundreds of years: sending the sheep to the fells in the summer and making the hay; the autumn fairs where the flocks are replenished; the grueling toil of winter when the sheep must be kept alive, and the light-headedness that comes with spring, as the lambs are born and the sheep get ready to return to the hills and valleys.
The Ravenmaster
My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London
Published in 2018
"A narrative by the Tower of London's official Ravenmaster about what it's like to live among the ravens at England's most famous national monument, woven together with insight from folklore, history, and contemporary behavioral science about this unusual bird"-- Provided by publisher.
Gizelle's Bucket List
My Life with a Very Large Dog
Published in 2017
The author describes how she brought her giant English Mastiff to her first tiny New York apartment after college, while navigating boyfriends, first jobs, her mother's illness, and a bucket list that involves her dog's participation.