Tag Archives: animal domestication

The Dirty Life

Posted on June 13, 2023 by smellincoffee

The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love© 2011 Kristin Kimball287 pages When Kristin Kimball left her cozy confines in the big city to interview a passionate young farmer in the sticks, she had no idea her life … Continue reading →

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Pests

Posted on January 11, 2023 by smellincoffee

Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains© 2022 Bethany Brookshire368 pages Humans believe in and have attempted to create, a very orderly world. There are our cities and homes, where the only animals that belong are those there for our amusement, … Continue reading →

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On horses, septic tanks, and roving Spainards

Posted on January 14, 2022 by smellincoffee

I began the year by returning to a favorite subject of mine: horses! The Equine Legacy is a history of not only horses in America, but donkeys and mules, from the Age of Discovery to just after the Great War. … Continue reading →

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The Speckled Beauty

Posted on December 16, 2021 by smellincoffee

The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and his People© 2021 Rick Bragg256 pages There’s no bond like that between a boy and his dog – except, maybe, that of an old man and his dog.   Rick Bragg never meant to adopt “Speck”, the mangy and … Continue reading →

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From the horses’ mouth: Black Beauty and Traveller

Posted on April 26, 2021 by smellincoffee

This past week I’ve read two novels which feature a horse as the narrator, and I thought it might be fun to consider them together. The first, Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, is something of a re-read for me: I … Continue reading →

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COVID Reviews #3: Romans, Dogs, and Saudis

Posted on October 2, 2020 by smellincoffee

I don’t know if anyone misses my usual chatty, sometimes florid reviews, but they’re impossible to do on a phone. More mini-reviews it is! Continuing my onslaught of the TBR pile, I finished Lives of Famous Romans, by Olivia Coolridge. … Continue reading →

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Of love languages, cunning critters, epic battles, and cows

Posted on January 27, 2020 by smellincoffee

Time for some mini-reviews! Read but not reviewed in the last week or so have been: The Heart of the 5 Love Languages, Gary Chapman Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? Frans de Waal Shiloh: A … Continue reading →

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Of Neanderthals and dogs and extinction level events

Posted on July 8, 2018 by smellincoffee

Time for science short rounds! Last week I read The Invaders,  a much-anticipated work about how dogs gave humans a competitive edge over their neanderthal cousins. This brief book posits that human beings function like invasive species, and after establishing … Continue reading →

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TBR: And Then There was One

Posted on July 12, 2016 by smellincoffee

Dear readers,  we approach the end for the To be Read Takedown Challenge! Richard Francis’ Domesticated: Evolution in a Man-Made World proved disappointing, not because of the quality of content but the focus thereof.  Although Domesticated sells itself as a … Continue reading →

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White Fang

Posted on June 29, 2016 by smellincoffee

White Fang© 1906 Jack Londonpp. 1- 101, Tales of the North. “An’ right here I want to remark,’ Bill went on, ‘that that animal’s familiarity with camp-fires is suspicious an’ immoral.’‘It knows for certain more’n a self-respectin’ wolf ought to … Continue reading →

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