Every Living Thing by James Herriot

If you're an animal lover you have probably heard of James Herriot.  But on the off chance you haven't, he's a veterinarian that practiced in England in the mid nineteen-hundreds.  And he was an animal lover himself, in addition to being a writer.

Every Living Thing is part of a series that chronicles Herriot's experiences as a vet.  But it is not the type of series that you have to read in order.  This book is a collection of short stories from Herriot's practice and can range from stories about horses, to cows, to dogs and cats, and even some of his house hunting stories too.  And it's also a book about the owner of these animals, because ultimately, they are the ones that Herriot interacts with the most.

There are a wide range of characters in Herriot's books.  He works with a lot of strange creatures, and I'm not talking about just the animals!  The people are just as varied and seemingly dependent on their animals well-being for their own well-being, so much so that at times it doesn't seem authentic, but they're still nice stories.  There always seems to be a story where a human is downtrodden because their animal is not acting quite right, but there are just as many that are quirky on their own with their animal being ok.  And the animals are amusing as well; while the cows and sheep don't have too much of a personality, all of the dogs and cats he worked with seemed to.  I did enjoy the story of his two feral cats quite a bit.  He showed a lot of patience with them. 

These are all short stories but they had some kind of tie-in for all of them.  A lot of times this was just an arching story of Herriot wanting a better house, but it still eased the transition and made the book almost seamless.  Some of them were more interesting than others (I didn't particularly care for the story about the Tailor), but overall it was a very nice, pleasant read.  That is, pleasant if one ignores all the descriptions of Herriot reaching his hands insides all sorts of places on animals all the time.  I'm not saying that it ruined the story, for me it didn't, but to those who are a little more squeamish it might put them off the book.  Because Herriot doesn't hold any description back.  But even in doing so his love of animals is evident and he's out there no matter what trying to help them, and I think that's what makes this book charming.

Definitely a cozy read and one that most people can appreciate the warmth and approachability that Herriot gives veterinary work.

Every Living Thing
Copyright 1992
374 pages

The Lilac Bus by Maeve Binchy

I think I may have missed something. I've heard a lot about Binchy and that her books are fabulous, etc. But this was my first time reading something of hers, and I have to say, I'm not really impressed.

The Lilac Bus is a series of short stories that are all somewhat related in a way, but individual stories all the same. They involve a bus load of people that are driven from Dublin to their hometown on the weekend. In the hometown they all have their little secrets and things they're trying to cope with. The latter part of the book though deals with some other people who are living in Dublin and have issues all their own. I wish I could write a better description, but really, that's what the book is about.

Since we only get to see these people for limited amounts of time (even if they do appear in each other's stories) there is no real connection here. The first story was about a miserly girl who is finally told off for being miserly. There is a woman dealing with her drunken mother, another dealing with her drunken husband. A man who doesn't connect with his parents and can't tell them about his secret. And so forth. Everyone in this book has some kind of problem.

Yet all these problems are unresolved. For the people on the Lilac bus we only hear about their lives for the space of a weekend. The latter part of the book the stories encompass more time, but still have no resolution. It's very annoying and unsatisfying and to make it even worse, it's exceptionally depressing. There are only a few stories that ended with an upbeat note, and even then it wasn't so much upbeat as it was just average living. None of the stories are ever followed up on either so we don't know what happens. If I wanted to read unfinished stories, I would have just went to the file of documents I have on my own computer. I like to have a finish to my stories. But still, I'm giving this book at least two stars because Binchy's writing style is nice and clear and had she finished her stories, I expect they would have been good. It was the only redeeming feature of this book.

Not for me, and even though I have a couple of other books by Binchy sitting on my shelf, I may hold off on reading them as a result of having read this book.

The Lilac Bus
Copyright 1982
390 pages

Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Marty Becker, Carol Kline and Amy Shojai

I don't have a dog, but I like dogs.  They just require a lot of time, effort, which I don't really have an abundance of.  So I enjoy dogs through reading about them and this book was chock full of dog stories.

Like the other Chicken Soup books, this one was filled with little stories that were meant to inspire and create warm fuzzy feelings for you.  The stories ranged from dogs as rescuers, letting go of a dog, adopting dogs, and a whole lot more.  The dogs as rescuers was the most interesting because a lot were dogs that taught themselves how to help sick owners or alert them to danger.  It just shows how intelligent they can really be sometimes.  About the only story I didn't enjoy was the one where it described a dog going after a bunch of bicyclists.  The only thing that stopped the dog was quick thinking by one of the bicycle riders, but for some reason the story was presented as trying to be cute, instead of as a dog not properly supervised that almost hurt some people.

Dogs can be characters, but I didn't really get the goofiness I associate with dogs from this book.  In fact, none of them had a huge personality, despite their owners describing them and having lived with them.  The sense of the animals themselves just wasn't there, despite their stories being told.  I think the humans in the book came across more strongly.  Their love for the dogs and how they related to the dogs.  That seemed to be the bigger focus here.

The short stories were easy to read and you could read this over several nights or in one sitting because of the format.  I enjoyed most of the stories about the dogs and there were a few truly remarkable ones in there.  While some were just so-so and had more to do about the person than the dog, there weren't too many of that type.  And although this is a Christian publication, there wasn't much about religion in it, just a lot about dogs.

Not a bad read for people who like dogs.  There's a little bit of something in here for every type of dog lover.

Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul
Copyright 2005
398 pages

A 5th Portion of Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen

Too much of a good thing can make it bad. And as with five servings of real chicken soup, a 5th book of "general" Chicken Soup for the Soul makes you more queasy than cured. Like all of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, this one contains a 101 short stories that are meant to inspire.

In this 5th portion, the chapters are titled, "On Love", "On Parents and Parenting", "On Teaching and Learning", "On Death and Dying", "A Matter of Perspective", "Overcoming Obstacles", and "Eclectic Wisdom". There was a lot of variety in the stories as you can see from the chapter titles, but none really stood out. There were even a few I couldn't really see why they were included as there was nothing inspiring about them (like the story of a mom who paddled her daughter at the beach and then marveled how easily kids forgive). It was just kind of rambling without a true sense of purpose to the story.

I didn't find any of the people in the stories especially endearing. Because the stories are so short you don't really expect to get a connection, but even just reading about them I didn't get the usual tears or smiles that I get with some of the other books. I think I got more meaning from the stories that had pets in them, at least they're cute and furry. Or maybe I'm just feeling anti-social and heartless tonight, who knows.

As I said before, there aren't any stand out stories in this book. I just got done reading it and while I remember what happens in a good many of them, none of them really did anything for me. I think they were just trying to get another book out and didn't pay as much attention to the quality of the stories this time around. And some of them even seemed familiar to some of the other books, especially the one that goes around naming famous people and their failures before they were famous. They have a rendition of that in every book. But at least it was a quick read and easily read in one sitting.

I think that most people will be content to stop at the first or second book in this series (of the general ones at least) rather than go on this far. Only a few really die-hard fans of the series could appreciate this book.

A 5th Portion of Chicken Soup for the Soul
Copyright 1998
367 pages

Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Marty Becker, Carol Kline and Amy Shojai

I'm a cat person.  I currently have two of my own and could only wish for more.  So, on this streak of Chicken Soup books that I've been reading lately, it only seemed appropriate to read the Cat Lover's Soul book.

Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul is filled with the normal short stories of the Chicken Soup series.  They are broken down into different chapters titled, "On Love", "Celebrating the Bond", "A Furry RX", "Cat-Egorically Wonderful", "Cats as Teachers", "Farewell, My Love", "Rescue Me!", and "One of the Family."  Each of these chapters has several short stories relating to the themes and of course, they are all about cats.  There are stories of adopting special cats, cats alerting their owners to danger or illness, and many other things.  I especially liked the story "The Call of the Lobster" about a cat who talks to a special toy, because one of my mom's cats does the same thing with a fuzzy ball she carries around.  I knew she was strange, but at least she's not alone in her strangeness.  There were other stories I didn't like though, like the one about a lady who rescued a cat with FIV and then after treating it at the vet let it roam with her other cats (yes FIV can be contained and treated, but it can be infectious and it seemed an unnecessary risk to her other cats).

I'm of the opinion that all cats are pretty wonderful.  It's the owners that I sometimes don't care for.  There are a lot of people out there that are just cruel to animals (including a story in this book where four teenage boys are practicing target shooting on a cat) and it hurts to read about people like that.  Granted, there are just as many if not more wonderful people in this book who adopt cats and take care of them, so it does have that redeeming quality to it.  But really, it's the cats that make this book worthwhile and it showcases them.

I will admit that there were quite a few stories in here that made me laugh or cry.  The cat getting its head stuck in the garbage disposer (it was rescued successfully) made me giggle.  But, despite there being a specific chapter for cat death "Farewell, My Love", kitty death was rampant through this book.  I'm fairly convinced that the people at Chicken Soup aren't happy unless there's a death of a person, animal, plant, whatever, every ten pages or so in their books.  Not sure what's so inspiring about that, but they've sold a lot of books so it much be working.  I just wish there was more life than death in these books, especially this one since I appreciate my kitties being alive and don't want to think about their eventual deaths right now.  Still, they had a lot of good stories in this book.

Overall this is one of the better Chicken Soup books.  As a cat lover, I did enjoy it and read it in one sitting.

Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul
Copyright 2005
378 pages

Chicken Soup for the Gardener's Soul by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Cynthia Brian, Cindy Buck, Marion Owen, Pat Stone and Carol Sturgulewski

I live in a third story apartment with no porch or yard.  I miss gardening.  I've had a few gardens, but nothing like the garden of my dreams, so I thought with this book I would live vicariously.  And I did, a little bit.

Chicken Soup for the Gardener's Soul explores the love of planting and growing things, whether it be food, flowers or trees.  Just the act of getting in the dirt and making something come alive can be very satisfying.  This book explored many different topics about gardening from The Joy of Gardening, Blossoming Friendships, Love in Bloom, Making a Difference, Little Sprouts, The Seasons of Life, Overcoming Obstacles, The Family Tree & Potpourri.  One of my favorite stories was about a little girl and her birthday party, where instead of cake, everyone enjoyed home canned soup, and noone thought of her as being poor.  All the stories were very nice, and I did notice quite a few were about roses (which I don't particularly care for aside from their cooking uses), but luckily, just as many were about vegetable and fruit growing.  And there was even a story about lilacs, my favorite.

Gardener's are a special sort, and like to share.  And there area  lot of stories about people sharing the wealth of their gardens in this book.  But as much as we read about the Gardener's here, I never really got a sense of depth about any of them.  The stories were just too short to really explore the person who inspired them.  There are a wide variety of peple represented in this book; couples, single people, older people, children, etc.  I'd say there is probably a story for everyone.

As with there not being much depth of people, I also didn't feel that there was much depth of story in this book either.  Like the flowers, they were pretty to look at, but you're forever at a distance and don't get to experience them up close or get in the dirt and plant them.  It's almost like seeing a picture of a flower, nice, but leaves you wanting more.  This is a quick read though.  You can take one story at a time or read it all in one sitting.

I enjoyed this book but it didn't lessen my desire for a garden.  Guess it's time to go live vicariously at the greenhouses.

Chicken Soup for the Gardener's Soul
Copyright 2000
352 pages

Chicken Soup for the Couple's Soul by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Mark and Chrissy Donnelly and Barbara De Angelis

I am currently not considered part of a couple. But I once was, so I feel qualified to review this book. Chicken Soup for the Couple's Soul is all about relationships. Filled with short stories, it is meant to inspire and move you.

This book was filled with short stories over a variety of topics involving couples. These topics include: Love & Intimacy, Finding True Love, On Commitment, Understanding Each Other, Overcoming Obstacles, On Family, The Flame That Still Burns, & Eternal Love. Strangely enough though, the majority of these stories seemed to involve someone dying. I get that it's a true test to watch a loved one die. But it's depressing, and not uplifting in the least. There were stories in here that didn't involve dying of course, but a lot of them involved children. I never really got a sense of the true celebration of being a "couple" from this book. Now I'm not going to say a couple of these didn't make me cry, because a few did.

There was a lot of dedication in this book. But a couple of the stories just made me raise an eyebrow because of the people in them. I had to wonder if they were true because human nature makes it hard to find so many dedicated people. Now granted they weeded out some of the bad, so it's a possibility that all the people in here were good people and their relationships were true. Like with most short stories though, you're just starting to feel attached to the people when the story is over already.

I've already told you about my problems with the types of stories included in this book. As I said, there is just too much dying and not enough joy. I'm not inspired by death even if it does show the dedication and heart of the other spouse. It just makes me sad for them. And this one was also a rather religious book (it is a Christian publication) but it made it seem as if Christian relationships held together longer, and statistically that isn't the case. It just wasn't as approachable in that regard as some of the other Chicken Soup books are.

Two and a half stars for this one. It just wasn't the warm fuzzy type of book a book about couples should be. But if you're a die hard Chicken Soup for the Soul fan, you may enjoy it.

Chicken Soup for the Couple's Soul
Copyright 1999
350 pages

Chicken Soup for the College Soul by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Kimberly Kirberger and Dan Clark

Once, a long long time ago, I went to college.  And now I'm thinking about going back.  So it seemed fitting that I read this book.  Having somehow collected an unbelievable amount of Chicken Soup for the Soul books, I'm pretty convinced there is one for every subject, and this one just happens to be for the "College Soul".  Although I'm not sure what college these people went to, because their experiences sure weren't like mine.

The Chicken Soup for the Soul series deals in inspiring, heartwarming, and sometimes sad stories about human perseverance and kindness.  They are short stories, just enough to read a couple a night or sit down and read the whole book in one sitting because it does read fast.  This particular book is supposed to be about college, and there are a lot of college stories here detailing feeling overwhelmed at starting, dorm rooms, roommates, grades, and other such things you would associate.  There's the requisite story about drugs being bad and to avoid them on campus and stories of parents pride at seeing their kids go off to get their education.  And then there's just some random stories that have nothing to do with college at all, like the one of the mother explaining the meaning of sex to a little girl in a waiting room.  That one puzzled me.  But there were a few stories I liked, mainly the ones saying that if you try hard enough you can achieve anything, because I do believe that is true.

The majority of the stories in this particular edition of Chicken Soup are positive.  The people are mostly kind and want the best for each other or they impart valuable lessons to the reader and the protagonist.  But I couldn't really feel connected to any of them.  Sorority girls, class presidents, etc., they were all people that wouldn't even deign to talk to me during school let alone be something I had any reasonable hope of achieving.  And maybe that makes me a little bitter but I wish there had been more stories about the people who did what they could and got out of there straight into career.  More stories about people who went back after figuring out what life had in store for them.  Sure there were a few, but it just wasn't enough for me.

This is a Christian publication but religion didn't play much of a role in this one.  It mainly just focused on the different educational institutions and their students.  I do think it presented an unrealistic view of college.  A lot of times people are so busy working and the college classes are so big that close friends can't be made in the college classroom.  And roommates never seem to get along as well as they do in this book.  But I'm sure they were just trying to provide a positive outlook to a future college student so they wouldn't go screaming in terror at the thought of any negative aspects of their future.  It's meant to be sappy.  And I do wish they had stuck to just college stories.  There were a lot in here that I didn't understand why they were a part of the book, they just didn't fit.

Only an ok book.  I don't think it will prepare anyone for college, but for a few it may give them something to reminisce over.  And for another few, it may even be inspiring.

Chicken Soup for the College Soul
Copyright 1999
337 pages

Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Jennifer Read Hawthorne and Marci Shimoff

I'm a woman, so this book applies to me right? Or at least that's what I thought. However, I think the authors of this book have a very narrow sight on what it means to be a woman. But more on that later. This book is one of the very many versions of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books out there. These books are known for their uplifting short stories that are meant to inspire, make you feel good, or just make you cry.

Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul takes stories about women and fills a number of places with them. The chapters range from being about Overcoming Obstacles, Motherhood, Marriage, Attitude, and Love. There are stories about mother's doing whatever they can for their children, to becoming a mom for the first time, to finding the love of your life and marrying him. Far and few between however, are stories about women who stay single and don't have children. There are a few, but barely any. The majority of the stories focus on motherhood and marriage. One of those few that was not however, was about a woman pilot, and that actually was an inspiring story. But then there was one of the first stories in the book, about a man who was inspired by his wife to take his mom out to dinner and other activities, but kept calling it dating his mother, which was kind of creepy (the story may have been innocent but continual references to dating your mother just doesn't sit right).

Since these are short stories we don't really get a sense of all the people. After all, you're seeing them through biased eyes without a lot of description. Everyone seems to be glowing. And mothers and married women are especially revered (are you sensing a theme here). But there are a lot of good people mentioned in these books. People who do good for other people. And there's even a few that are inspiring.

So obviously my main complaints with this book are its representation of women. I'm not saying that it's wrong to have a section on marriage or on motherhood, but I think equal status (and a devoted chapter) should be given to the single career-oriented and the non-mothers. They do a lot of good in the world too. And there's already plenty of Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul books. It's almost like they're saying women who don't follow those choices in life aren't quite women. And that's heartbreaking. This is a Christian based publication, but this one didn't have too many stories that were preachy, which was nice. It was approachable in that way at least.

Not my favorite of the Chicken Soup books. Maybe I'm a little biased, but I just wish this book had been for ALL women.

Chicken Soup for the Women's Soul
Copyright 1996
328 pages

Chicken Soup for the Soul by Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield

So this is the original book. The one that started everything and spawned a series so large that most home libraries couldn't contain them all. Fortunately, since this is the first book it's not subject to a lot of the problems the others had. Although it does have it's cheesy moments, or maybe that's just me being older and more cynical than when I first encountered it.

The Chicken Soup for the soul books are compilations of stories, parables, verse, and other short writings that have a common theme of making you feel better about the world around you. Not all end happy but are meant to inspire. And this particular book has broken those different stories down into chapters titled, "On Love", "Learning to Love Yourself", "On Parenting", "On Learning", "Live Your Dream", "Overcoming Obstacles", and "Eclectic Wisdom". Sometimes the stories make sense in the chapters, like in the case of the parenting chapter containing a story "Why I chose my father to be my dad" which detailed the life of a dedicated parent. Others were not so obvious, like "Golden Buddha" in Learning to Love Yourself. Sure it was about finding that special something within, or they tried to tie it to that theme anyway, but it just didn't click with me in that chapter representation.

I'm not going to deny that some of the stories didn't bring tears to my eyes. They're meant to do that, just like those Budweiser commercials with the horses. They want to tug at your heartstrings. It's good advertising. And there were a lot of good stories in this book. At least half of them were positive, could make you cry, or had a good message. But then there were a lot of cheesy ones too. Or a lot that were quite obviously made up as opposed to being real life stories. A particular example of this would be the ones that mentioned a kind act preventing a suicide. I'm not saying that doesn't happen, but the stories here involving that theme just didn't ring as true.

This book also has undertones of religion, particularly Christianity. Sure there was a story about a Buddha, but it didn't go into that religion, merely used it as a fable of sorts. While there's nothing overt about the religion in these books, it is a common theme that they all share and some are more blatant than others. It's pretty sure that you'll never see a "Chicken Soup for the Atheist's Soul" coming from these publishers. But that's ok. It's their business and they can publish what they want. It's the reader's choice if they want to pick it up or not. But this first book is one where the religion isn't blatant and any reader can sit down and enjoy a few good short stories.

Probably one of the best of the whole series, before it got too big for itself. Sometimes the original is the one you need to stick with.

Chicken Soup for the Soul
Copyright 1993
308 pages