Make Sense of Animals: Animals Make Us Human

So my review this week is for all you animal lovers out there. Well, I guess you don’t actually have to love animals to read this book, but you should probably be at least mildly curious. After all, Temple Grandin’s (and Catherine Johnson’s) Animals Make Us Human is all about, what else, animals.

Anyway, let’s touch on some of the Pros and Cons of this book.  Pro: it gives you a great look into the behavior of domesticated animals—the ones we’re more likely to interact with on a daily basis. I mean honestly, for the average person, knowledge of giraffe behavior probably isn’t as useful as knowledge of dog behavior since it’s pretty unlikely you’re going to run into a giraffe just strolling down the street. That being said, this isn’t really a book that will teach you how to train your dog—though I personally think it’s great supplementary reading when you’re training your pets because it explores the motivations for why animals respond to certain types of training.

I will let you know up front though, this isn’t technically a “just for pleasure” read. If you have no use for more knowledge about animals, then you might want to skip this book (though, as a pretty serious animal nerd, I personally feel you’d be missing out).  If you do need to learn about animal behavior, for a class for example, this is probably a good book to check out, though you may have to supplement it with other, more extensive studies if you need to know more about a particular species. The people this book is perfect for are the people like me who, as I’ve mentioned before, just have a thirst for more knowledge about the world. It’s just detailed enough so you’ll know more than the average guy off the street, but not so much that you have to have a Ph. D. in animal science (like Temple Grandin does) just to understand it. I learned a whole bunch about animal learning and behavior that I now like to share with my friends, family and pretty much anyone else who will listen or pretend to listen (and all of whom probably couldn’t care less).

So, let’s just assume you’re either sort of like me, or you have a vested interest in animals. Why is this book for you? Well, for starters, the book is organized really well. Since Grandin and Johnson are dealing with a variety of domesticated animals in this book, they appropriately split it up into subcategories. While reading, you start with dogs, go on to cats, then horses, cows, pigs, poultry, wildlife, and zoos. This makes it a lot more manageable than some other books on the same subject because you can read about one species at a time rather than getting overwhelmed by a jumble of general animal behavior information. Plus, if you only want to learn about one of those categories and don't really have time to go fishing through the whole book, it's really easy to find and read just the section you're looking for.

Then, to make the book an even more manageable read, each section is also split into smaller sections so that you’re not just reading a huge blob of text. You get to look at each species and their behavior on a few different levels. And at no point did I really feel like I was drowning in excessive animal science jargon because another huge plus for this book is the writing in general--Grandin and Johnson take concepts that are quite difficult and talk about them in a way that is really easy to understand. 

Perhaps my favorite part about this book though, is that once you’re done you feel so much better able to understand animal behavior. Now I totally know what my cats are thinking!…yeah but on a less crazy-cat-lady note, it is nice to have a general idea of why cats, dogs, horses, cows, pigs poultry, wildlife, and zoo animals do what they do. Because you may think you're not really interested in what a pig has to say, but let me tell you, you'll find yourself intrigued anyway. I picked up the book mostly to learn about dogs and cats because I intend to own both throughout my life. A great part of the book for me was that it made me want to know more even just about animals I probably won't have in my lifetime. The knowledge of how one species communicates kind of informs our understanding of how the other species do. It reveals our expectations for how we think animals should communicate, and then shows us why we're wrong to simply assume that cats should behave like dogs, or pigs like poultry--they're each a whole separate species with different biological and instinctual motivations. And as far as practical applications go, knowing all this allows you to tailor your behavior so as to make both your own pets, and other animals more comfortable around you (and, I'd say, it also makes you more comfortable around them).

So basically, if you want to know what your pets are thinking (well, not really, but sort of) then this is definitely a book you’ll want on your shelf.

Indulge Your Inner Rêveur: The Night Circus

Yes, I realize I’ve been MIA the past two weeks, and I apologize profusely. I was dealing with some dental and medical issues that rather distracted me from reading and writing in general, and I was therefore temporarily poorly adapted for a blog that’s main premise is both of those things. I realize that many of you may have stopped following the blog in frustration, but I hope that you will, as I have, return with renewed vigor.

So, to start off my valiant return, we’re going to take a look at Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus. I could try to come up with a cute and amusing pun about how this book is appropriate for a valiant return because of its reoccurring appearance in various towns and it’s rebirth at the end, or something of the sort, but let’s not just throw ourselves back into things—it’s been a while, I’d better get warmed doing anything truly strenuous.

So, about The Night Circus: My overall impression of this book is that it’s definitely worth reading. Morgenstern starts off on my good side simply because of the fact that, although her book is technically about magic, she pulls a fast one on us by focusing on magicians rather than witches, wizards, faeries, or any of those other whimsical creatures who are typically enjoyable, but pop up way too often to be entirely original. Magicians you don’t come across too often and, as a fan of the movie The Prestige, I was immediately intrigued (though a little worried that the book would be too similar to that movie’s plot—I mean c’mon, magicians locked in a competition of skill? Sounds a little familiar). Morgenstern does not disappoint though—she builds a wonderful and unique circus, the appropriately named Le Cirque des Rêves (The Circus of Dreams), where two magicians are bound to compete, pitting their different magical styles against one another in an archaic, but hauntingly beautiful struggle.

Morgenstern’s writing is solid. The style of it helps perpetuate the mystery of the circus that she’s describing. She aptly chooses a third person narrator who is only partially omniscient so as not to give away too much. Morgenstern also employs the little used second person narrator in certain sections describing the circus, using the pronoun “you” to effectively pull you, the reader, into the story as though you are also a spectator at Le Cirque des Rêves. Meanwhile, she does a phenomenal job in general of relating the various scenes within the circus with enough detail to provide a framework of the circus’s appearance while still leaving room for the reader’s imagination to embellish. 

Thematically, the treatment of eternity and eternal life in this book is interesting and well done. The characters are trapped in this circus by the magic that makes it so mysterious and wonderful. Instead of reveling in their eternal youth, however, the lack of aging and changing is seen more as stagnation. Being stuck forever at one age, in one mindset, and not knowing why or how nearly drives a few of the characters mad. I think just throwing that idea in there—the exhausting nature of forever—strengthened the depiction of the circus as a whole. It showed the reader that even if you’re part of something amazing, and with amazing people, you still have to move on eventually—it is a curse to not be allowed to grow and change.

There are only two faults with this story that, I thought, kept it from being truly great. One is the pace. Morgenstern has so many characters and so much time to work with in her story that I think she got a little carried away. She jumps from character to character, time to time, in such a way that it can be hard to figure out when in the course of the plot what you’re reading takes place. The time jumps do accomplish some foreshadowing of certain events, but with a few characters who can tell the future, I’m not sure it was entirely necessary for accomplishing that. What I think she was mainly trying to impress upon the reader was the timelessness of the circus—that time itself does not function the same way surrounding the circus. But I think she forgets that we, as readers in this day and age, are usually pretty preoccupied with time. So removing it and jumbling it up causes confusion. The pace of the book is jarring and somewhat irregular—like a person skipping—it makes a sudden jump in time and then pauses there momentarily before suddenly moving on. And even though you’re making jumps in time, this pace actually makes reading the book a little slow, because you get caught up so often in trying to figure out when you are.

The other aspect of this book that could have been better is the characters. Morgenstern creates so many characters who catch your attention right off the bat—especially, in my opinion, Bailey, Chandresh, Tsukiko, and Freidrich. But unfortunately she doesn’t follow through and develop any of the characters enough. Because there are so many characters there wasn’t time to develop them all and Morgenstern didn’t sit down, recognize that, and pick the ones she could develop. Plus the circus itself is so much of a character that it almost took the spotlight away from the people. In particular the main characters, the magicians, Marco and Celia, were the most disappointing. There is so much more Morgenstern could have done with Marco and Celia. At the beginning of the book I even thought she might make them quite interesting. For example—as a child, Celia exhibits issues with anger and control. Throw in an overbearing and abusive father, and you’d have a character with anger issues who might sometimes snap and do very scary (and potentially much more interesting) things with her magic. Instead, Morgenstern keeps Celia as this character who is, in general, in control and passive, with only small outbursts and bitter remarks to indicate that she has any negative emotions whatsoever. 

Meanwhile, Marco really intrigued me because he is not really the nicest, most likeable guy (which, ironically, makes him a more original and likeable character). He is completely isolated from other people for pretty much all of his young life—which would leave him socially crippled and probably lacking in empathy. Fortunately, Morgenstern touches on that lack of empathy in the way Marco treats Isobel. The woman is completely infatuated with him and for a time, when it’s convenient for him, he indulges her. But we begin to see how badly he treats her—how little concern he has for her at all, in fact. Instead of cutting her loose, in an act that would be painful, but ultimately merciful, he lets her hang around doing his bidding until pretty much the last second when out of the blue he tells her he’s in love with someone else. This is the Marco I would have liked to see more of—a character with his upbringing, who would treat a woman like that, would also exhibit other, more severely self-centered behavior. I feel Morgenstern copped out a little by eventually showing him in a more positive light at the end because of his love for Celia.

Finally, Poppet and Widget are perhaps the most frustrating characters because they feel so one dimensional. At least Bailey has some hopes and dreams and concerns and confusion—though he would probably be even more interesting if we could see him in the future. Poppet and Widget, his friends from the circus, feel more like they came out of a children’s book than something young adult. They really only seem to serve as Bailey’s guides rather than their own characters, despite their momentary stand-alone status in other parts of the story. They are, however, partially redeemed by what they do bring to the table: the promise of a new generation of the circus. Though it might have been more interesting to learn a little more about Bailey, Poppet, and Widget, I can recognize that they are young and were not the focus of this story—they are simply the hint of the future, which makes their lack of growth almost excusable.

Don’t let my negativity towards the end fool you though, this really was an interesting book. Definitely worth reading, especially if you’re looking for something topically different. Plus, although she might have gotten a little carried away with a plethora of characters and some issues with timing, I commend Morgenstern for trying to share with the reader all aspects of the circus. She’s certainly not a lazy writer—she shows Le Cirque des Rêves not from only one perspective but many—touching on the experience of not only those behind the scenes of the circus, but also the general circus goers, the dedicated fans (the rêveurs), and the next generation. So, I think, because of my limited shelf space I will have to put this book in the box just to make room for others that might be more impressive, but it’s a good read and you may find it deserves a space on your shelf.