I Read, Therefore I Blog

The Blurb On The Back:

Lucile is on a search for her perfect cabin so she sets off on an exciting trip around the world, looking for ideas. Travelling from the forests of Sweden to the comfort of snowy Siberia and the enchanting caves in Turkey, will Lucile find her dream home?

A stunning book that shows how people live around the world, while presenting the beauty of our planet.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Emmanuelle Mardesson’s picture book (translated from French) is a thoughtful and informative look at the types of places where people around the world live. Sarah Loulendo’s illustrations are excellent - rich in detail and expression and really conveying the landscape in which each type of cabin is set. It’s a beautifully put together book that will make young readers think about the world around us and how people live.

MY PERFECT CABIN was released in the United Kingdom on 7th April 2022. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Man’s best friend, domesticated since pre-historic times, a travelling companion for explorers and artists, thinkers and walkers, equally happy curled up by the fire and bounding through the great outdoors: dogs matter to us because we love them. But is that all there is to the canine’s good-natured voracity and affectionate dependency?

Mark Alizart dispenses with the well-worn cliches concerning dogs and their masters, seeing them not as submissive pets but rather as unexpected life coaches, ready to teach us the elusive recipes for contentment and joy. Dogs have faced their fate in life with a certain detachment that is not easy to understand. Unlike other animals in a similar situation, they have not become hardened, nor have they let themselves die a little inside. On the contrary, they seem to have softened. This book is devoted to understanding this miracle, the miracle of the joy of dogs - to understanding it and, if at all possible, learning how it’s done.

Weaving elegantly and eruditely between historical myth and pop-culture anecdote, between the peculiar views of philosophers and the even more bizarre findings of science, Alizart offers us a surprising new portrait of the dog as thinker - a thinker who may perhaps know the true secret of our humanity.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Mark Alizart is a journalist, philosopher and dog owner. In this peculiar book (translated from French by Robin MacKay) he looks at the evolution of the dog and its representation through mythology and religion with some musing on why women are compared to bitches. There’s interesting material here but its overt intellectualism is quite alienating and I’m not sure it has the heart or enthusiasm to appeal to average dog lovers.

DOGS: A PHILOSOPHICAL GUIDE TO OUR BEST FRIENDS was released in the United Kingdom on 11th October 2019. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Antoine is twelve years old. His parents are divorced and he lives with his mother in Beauval, a small backwater town surrounded by forests, where everyone knows everyone’s business, and nothing much ever happens. But in the last days of 1999, a series of events unfolds, culminating in the socking vanishing without trace of a young child. The adults of the town are at a loss to explain the disappearance, but for Antoine, it all begins with the violent death of his neighbour’s dog. From that one brutal act, his fate and the fate of his neighbour’s six year old son are bound forever.

In the years following Rémi’s disappearance, Antoine wrestles with the role his actions played. As a seemingly inescapable net begins to tighten, breaking free from the suffocating environs of Beauval becomes a gnawing obsession. But how far does he have to run, and how long will it take before his past catches up with him again?
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Pierre Lemaitre’s standalone crime novel (translated from French by Frank Wynne) is a strangely unfulfilling affair that focuses on the nature and effects of guilt and internal rather than external consequences and while the first half is strong, I found the Antoine of the second half to be a slightly underdrawn and unsympathetic protagonist and his behaviour didn’t ring true which ultimately made this just an okay read.

THREE DAYS AND A LIFE was released in the United Kingdom on 13th July 2017. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the ARC of this book.