On Animals 
by Susan Orlean
2021/ 256 pages
Read by author 10h
Rating:  9  / “autobiography”?  
(both read and listened)

This is coming up for discussion in the All-Nonfiction Group at Groups.io starting May 1.  I neither nominated not vote for it, but it won a slot so I, as group leader, figured I should read it (a deal I have with myself).  

Lo and behold, at about 1/2 way I realized that it was so much better than I expected.  This is the third book I’ve read by Orleans, the others being The Orchid Thief (1998) and The Library Book  (2018) .  

The Introduction was okay albeit a tad shorter than usual.  It worked. It gave me a better sense of what the book was going to be “about.”  This is a personal story about how Orleans feels about animals, what she likes about them, how she loves them.

And the 1st essay, The It Bird, was mildly interesting, heartwarming maybe. And I knew by now this book was not going to be geared toward biology or big adventures. The 2nd story, “Show Dog,” was rather meh. Full disclosure: I am NOT an animal person. I haven’t had a pet around since 1983 or so and that belonged to a boyfriend.  But I kept reading and I’m so glad I didg because the third story, The Lady and the Tigers, told me I would finish the whole book in the usual 2 or 3 day time frame, and maybe go for a second read along with the group.  

This is the kind of book you might want to dip into for a chapter here and a chapter there. The chapters aren’t really sequential in building on each other – each is as discrete as a magazine essay. But I read them in order and I felt like there was a slight advantage to that – maybe the final chapters should be read last – they’re more of a summing up with generalizations and so on. 

There are 15 essays total and a couple may have been published as excerpts. Orlean writes very, very well. The narrative is not poetic; it’s more natural than that but she uses fresh metaphors and phrases which are spot on in describing something or someone. 

I think I’m now a fan of Susan Orlean.  

 I kept expecting something about general animal rights or vegetarianism or gun control, but no – there’s no stirring around in controversial pots here, although the articles do touch on the subjects. Mostly, it’s a fun book and great for relaxed reading. I did learn something in each chapter, though, and often these were rather surprising things. .Orlean doesn’t confine herself to the US – she goes to Morocco, Iceland, a couple places in Africa, and maybe even elsewhere – ? (Yup – I’ll have to read this again – lol.)

I think maybe an overarching theme in the book is the relationship between humans and those other creatures here we also call animals without differentiating between wild and tame because there’s a whole range between dogs and tigers and there may not be a “line.”