My Library
I love my library! Who doesn’t like trying on a book before buying? Support your local library, please.
For cheap used books, in Atlanta check out the Book Nook on N. Druid Hills Rd. (at Clairmont) or Goodwill Stores.
Training and Behavior
- All Dogs Need Some Training by Liz Palika
Liz is very easy to read, and no-nonsense. This is an easily portable book and a quick read to get you started. - Cesar’s Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding & Correcting Common Dog Problems
Cesar isn’t a trainer, and he knows problems aren’t solved in an hour-long TV show. He does have some good ideas, especially about creating a balanced dog. I don’t agree with it all, but you will find much that makes sense here. - Childproofing Your Dog by Brian Kilcommons and Sarah Wilson
This is a good little book for dog owners who are about to add a child to the family. It will teach you how to prepare your dog so that all of you can live happily ever after. If you are pregnant, or thinking about it, this book is a MUST. - Dog Talk: Training Your Dog Through A Canine Point Of View by John Ross and Barbara McKinney
John gives good, solid information in a straightforward way. Not only will you learn why dogs do what they do, but how to teach lots of behaviors. He also knows that a well-trained dog is one who has been trained using a balanced approach. I highly recommend it. - Dogs: A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior and Evolution by Ray and Lorna Coppinger
This scientific tome sheds interesting light on the origins and evolution of dogs, and will dispel many myths in the process. It isn’t written to be gripping, and the authors don’t pull any punches. - Good Owners, Great Dogs by Brian Kilcommons and Sarah Wilson
Brian and Sarah’s first book together. Really solid advice in most respects, though some is a bit out-of-date. - How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend: A Training Manual for Dog Owners by the Monks of New Skete
The updated version is the one to get. Some solid advice from an interesting standpoint. It explores some of the spiritual aspects of dogs, too. - How To Speak Dog: Mastering the Art of Dog-Human Communication by Stanley Coren
Though his more recent work for Psychology Today is lacking in scientific merit, these 2 books of Coren’s are fascinating reads. Understanding how our dogs “talk” is valuable to anybody who ever comes in contact with one. The stuff about different breeds understanding communication based on their distance from the wolf is interesting. - Inside of a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz
This intriguing book explains how dogs “see” the world. - Let Dogs Be Dogs by The Monks of New Skete and Marc Goldberg
- My Smart Puppy by Sarah Wilson and Brian Kilcommons
Still my favorite dog training book, and it’s not just for puppies. - So Your Dog’s Not Lassie: Tips for Training Difficult Dogs and Independent Breeds by Betty Fisher and Suzanne Delzio
Fisher and Delzio have worked with some of the most independent breeds out there, such as Bulldogs and Huskies, and they know their stuff. This is a good resource for those with more complicated dogs. - The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs by Patricia McConnell, Ph.D.
Dr. McConnell is a Certified Animal Behaviorist, and this insightful book is less about training techniques than paying attention to how we inadvertently signal our dogs with our behavior. It is an amusing look at our relationship with our canine friends, and full of information you can really use. For the Love of a Dog is pretty good, too.
Just For Fun
- Dear Mrs. LaRue: Letters From Obedience School and Detective LaRue by Mark Teague
Clever stories for a clever dog. Dear Mrs. LaRue collects a series of guilt-inducing letters sent home by the cat-chasing, chicken-pie-eating Ike to his “cruel” owner Mrs. LaRue, whom he hopes will come to her senses and spring him from obedience school. Detective LaRue is the funny follow up. In both, Ike’s version of events are quite different from what is really going on. The illustrations are priceless. - Made For Each Other by Meg Daley Olmert
A fascinating look at the human-animal bond. I highly recommend it. - Max Makes a Million; Max in Hollywood; Ooh-La-La, Max in Love; Swami on Rye: Max in India; and Smartypants: Pete in School written and illustrated by Maira Kalman
Kalman is my very favorite children’s book author. Some say her work is too advanced for kids, with its great vocabulary and tongue-in-cheek humor, and that may be so. The kid in me loves the stuff, though. Max is a poet and a dreamer who just happens to be a dog. Don’t wait for the kids; check these wonderful books out. - My Dog’s Brain by Stephen Huneck
The foreward in this wonderful book will make you cry, and the book, which is mostly pictures, will make you laugh out loud. This man was amazing, and he began several art galleries in different states, plus an actual dog chapel in Vermont. - Pack of Two by Carolyn Knapp
A poignant memoir of a woman and her dog, with keen insight as to why we women love our dogs so much. A very good read, and now bittersweet as she died of cancer in 2002. - Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon by Bronwyn Dickey
It doesn’t matter if you love this type of dog, fear it, or find yourself somewhere in between: this book will open your eyes in surprising ways. - Winterdance : Fine Madness of Alaskan Dog-Racing by Gary Paulsen
Paulsen has been writing books for young adults for years, and they are quite good. This tome for adults chronicles his first running of the Iditarod sled dog race in Alaska, and it is a fascinating, compelling journey.
Non-fiction/Memoir/Self Help
- 168 Hours by Laura VanderKam
- A Walk In The Woods by Bill Bryson
(much better than the insipid movie) - A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
- An Alchemy of Mind by Diane Ackerman
- An Unknown Woman (a true account of one woman’s search for self) and Stations of Solitude, her follow-up by Alice Koller
- Anything written by Temple Grandin
(and after you read her, watch the HBO movie with Claire Danes) - Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande, M.D.
In Being Mortal, best-selling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: How medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending. - Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things by Madeleine L. Van Hecke, PhD
- Caring for the Dying: The Doula Approach to a Meaningful Death by Henry Fersko-Weiss
Caring for the Dying describes a whole new way to approach death and dying. It explores how the dying and their families can bring deep meaning and great comfort to the care given at the end of a life. - Coming to Our Senses by Jon Kabat-Zinn
- Darkness Visible by William Styron
- Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath
- Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink
- Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
- Finding Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
(LOVE this book) - Good Without God: What a Million Nonreligious People DO Believe by Greg Epstein
- Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton
- Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
- Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell
Caldwell was best friends with Caroline Knapp, whose book Pack of Two I mention above; this is a searing book about their friendship and death and coping with loss. - Mary Oliver’s poetry (multiple volumes)
- Night by Elie Weisel
- Off The Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done by Laura VanderKam
- On Writing Well by William Zinssner
A delightful guide for the nonfiction writer - Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” - Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers; and really anything else by Mary Roach
- Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
- Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath
- The Everyday Work of Art by Eric Booth
- The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker
(learn to trust your intuition) - The Knowledge Illusion by Sloman & Fernbach
- The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
- The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
- The Social Animal by David Brooks
- The Tipping Point; Outliers; and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
- The Zen of Listening by Rebecca Shafir
- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
In the international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. - Truth and Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett
- When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink
- Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
- You Are Not That Smart and You Are Now Less Dumb by David McRaney
- Your Erroneous Zones by Wayne Dyer
(an oldie but very influential for me)
Fiction
- The Hours by Michael Cunningham
- The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- The Shell Seekers and September by Rosamunde Pilcher
- Watership Down by Richard Adams
Humorous
- Amphigorey; Amphigorey II; and Amphigorey Also by Edward Gorey
(the man was a brilliant artist with a lovely dark sense of the absurd) - Bossypants by Tina Fey
- Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
- Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz (a lovely retrospective of the best of his work)
- Pretty much anything written by David Sedaris
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