Book Review: Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?

Image grabbed from the interwebs

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death
by Caitlin Doughty

Hardcover, 222 pages
Published September 10th 2019 by W. W. Norton Company
ISBN039365270X (ISBN13: 9780393652703)
Edition Language: English
Literary Awards: Goodreads Choice Award for Science & Technology (2019)

Ha ha!

Grabbed you with that title, didn't it?!?

It did for me, and this is one terrific book!

Sure, sure...death and decomposition is not usually spoken of in polite conversation, but Caitlin Doughty brings it out into the open, with science and insight that is both entertaining and knowledgeable.  

Here is more from the Goodreads website:

"Best-selling author and mortician Caitlin Doughty answers real questions from kids about death, dead bodies, and decomposition.

Every day, funeral director Caitlin Doughty receives dozens of questions about death. What would happen to an astronaut’s body if it were pushed out of a space shuttle? Do people poop when they die? Can Grandma have a Viking funeral?"

I read this as an ebook, and I heartily recommend it to any and all.  We've all thought of these questions; why not find out the answers?

***

Does The Dog Die?

Friends, I've just discovered this fascinating website: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/.

I've been heartbroken when reading a book, only to discover some unsavory thing happen, that made me angry, sad, or some variation of upset.  Often, it's due to violence toward animals, but it can be other things.

Of course, I know that I'm reading a story, but why read stuff that makes me upset?  This website will save me from this problem in the future!  Type in the title of the book...or movie...and you'll find out what issues may come up!

Image from Does The Dog Die? website

I am a serious reader: I've already got 156 books under my belt this year (per my Goodreads account).  The majority are audiobooks, since I have a longish commute daily, plus I listen when on my evening neighborhood walk.  But dang it all, I get sick to my stomach when an author uses violence or other nasty thing that doesn't really help the story.  So, now I have Does The Dog Die? to help me choose what I want to read!

Disclaimer: I have not received any compensation from Does The Dog Die? website for this post.  I write about things that interest me, and that I believe will interest our readers, and I give my honest opinions.  

Unexpected Cats In Books

These two books couldn't be more different from each other!  Yet, cats are a binding factor in each of them; their feline wiles twist and snake around the storylines, to become an important parts of the plots!

A Dog's Way Home

Author: W. Bruce Cameron
Hardcover, 336 pages
Published May 9th 2017 by Forge
ISBN 076537465X (ISBN13: 9780765374653)

A Week in Winter

Author: Maeve Binchy
Hardcover, 464 pages
Published October 11th 2012 by Orion
ISBN 140911399X (ISBN13: 9781409113997)

I found both books by accident, by simply scrolling through the available MP3 audiobooks from my local library.  Neither blurb mentioned cats, so my delight at finding them on almost every part of these stories was just remarkable.  

W. Bruce Cameron's, "A Dog's Way Home" highlights the trials that TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return) activists face daily; ignorance and dislike.  Add a mother who suffers from PTSD after her service in the Middle East, and then mix in a stray dog who pushes everyone's lives onto new courses.  But then Bella runs afoul of Animal Control in Denver, Colorado, and the story grabs you and keeps you in suspense!  

"A Week In Winter" by Maeve Binchy, weaves an Irish story of love and regret, transgressions and redemption, youth and hard-won knowledge, wrapped around an old mansion that is converted into an inn.  And a wee kitten, named Sophia, loved by the elderly Queenie, moves through the mansion...and the lives of all of the characters in the book...while being a sweet, gentle cat.

Like me, you all adore cats, and probably really enjoy a good story too!  I highly recommend both of these books; they'll take you to places you've never been before, and into the minds and hearts of good people...and indifferent people, with a purring housecat, community cat clowder, or more (!) added into the mix.   

Book Review: The Ocean At The End Of The Lane

Title: The Ocean at the End of the Lane 

Originally published: June 18, 2013

Author: Neil Gaiman

Publisher: William Morrow and Company

ISBN 1472228421, 9781472228420

Length: 272 pages

Found this book by accident, as I was scrolling through available audiobooks at my local public library.  Now I am a NeilGaimanaholic!

Truly, I cannot describe the story line much, without giving a lot away, but it involves a man who remembers pieces of his childhood, beginning when an Australian opal miner steals his father's car.  The car is found later at the end of the lane.  During his youthful travels, the boy befriends a family of women, who say they lived before the moon was hung in the sky.  And, that the pond on their land wasn't a pond; it was really an ocean.

And here's the best part: there are cats in the story!  A black cat, with a spot over one ear, named...appropriately...Ocean, and who was a kitten at first, but age doesn't move linearly in that part of the world!  The boy loves his cat, and now that I've read a few other Neil Gaiman stories, I find that the author must be a huge cat-lover, because felines are sprinkled into all his tales.

I listened to a recording of this book, read by the author himself, so perhaps his own voice, reading his own words helped to sweep me along into this land of adults who don't understand, and children who do.  However, I heartily recommend it to anyone; you will find it a page-turner!