Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Category: Books

March 1, 2016

The Cockroaches of Stay More, by Donald Harington – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

CockroachesOfStayMoreThe Cockroaches of Stay More, by Donald Harington.
San Diego, CA, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, March 1989, hardcover $19.95 (337 pages).

“One time not too long ago on a beginning of night in the latter part of May, a middle-aged gent was walking homeward along the forest path from Roamin Road to the village of Carlott, behind Holy House in the valley of Stainmoor or Stay More. The six gitalongs that carried him were rickety, and there was a meandering to his gait that gave a whole new meaning to the word Periplaneta. This wanderer gave a smart nod, as if in agreement to a command, though no one had spoken to him yet. His wings were not folded neatly across his back and were neither tidy nor black but flowzy and brownish. Presently he was met by a plump parson whose wings were very black and long and trim like the tails of a coat, and who was humming a hymn, ‘The Old Shiny Pin.’

‘Morsel, Reverend,’ said the flowzy gent, and spat, marking his space.” (pg. 1)

Donald Harington was a prize-winning regional author who built his literary career on writing about the backwoods Ozark area of Arkansas. He specialized in the small rural communities that were never large to start with, and that have dwindled since to ghost towns; one of his best-known books is the non-fiction travelogue Let Us Build a City: Eleven Lost Towns (1986). He set more than ten novels in the fictional village of Stay More, Arkansas, chronicling its rise and decline over a hundred-and-fifty-year period. All except this one have featured Stay More’s human inhabitants. In The Cockroaches of Stay More, it has become a complete ghost town except for two human recluses – and hundreds of cockroaches.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment
February 29, 2016

Birdsong: A Story in Pictures, by James Sturm – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

birdsongBirdsong: A Story in Pictures, by James Sturm. Illustrated.
NYC, TOON Books, April 2016, hardcover $12.95 (60 pages).

This is my first furry book review of a little wordless picture book (9” x 6”) for pre-schoolers. Two thoughtless young children are playing warriors in a forest. The boy attacks a red bird singing in a tree. Wounded, the bird slowly flies up into a mountain, slowly enough that the children can follow it. They climb until the reach a cave inhabited by an angry hermit. The hermit magically transforms their bodies into monkeys. The children are captured and become a circus marvel: “They Read! They Write! Chimps Or Children?” Eventually (the implication is that several months pass) the circus owner gives them their freedom. They build a house in the trees. When they see another red bird, they do not disturb it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment
February 27, 2016

2040: Reconnection; a “Thousand Tales” Story, by Kris Schnee – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

20402040: Reconnection; a “Thousand Tales” Story, by Kris Schnee. Illustrated.
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, December 2015, trade paperback $4.99 (86 pages), Kindle $0.99.

This thin booklet is not a sequel to Schnee’s Thousand Tales: How We Won the Game (CreateSpace, June 2015), but it is set in the same world. Or rather Ludo’s world.

Ludo is the advanced Artificial Intelligence who can scan anyone’s brain and recreate it in “her” fantasy world, in the setting and body of their choice. Handsome men and beautiful women, noble warriors, flying griffins, anthropomorphic animals; anything, living in an ancient Greek or medieval European or sci-fi futuristic paradise. Of course, their original body in 2040 A.D. Earth is dead, and the consequences of this back on Earth may be unknown, but who in Ludo’s world cares?

Alma does. She’d been an old man dying painfully from cancer:

“She’d signed over her modest estate to Ludo in return for having her cancer-infected brain slowly diced, analyzed and recreated as software. As each chunk of brain matter got sheared away she’d lost parts of her memories, her senses, only to have them come back from that terrifying void. She’d gone blind in the surgical room, then seen test patterns and finally the vibrant colors of the digital world. The ruling AI’s voice had asked her, incidentally, what sort of body she wanted once the process was complete.

As an old man whose flesh was incurably ruined and destroying itself horribly, Alma had begged to become something different.” (p. 1)

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment
February 26, 2016

Cats on the Prowl, by Nancy C. Davis – book reviews by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

cats on the prowl book 1Cats on the Prowl, Book One, by Nancy C. Davis
Melbourne, Victoria, Collins Collective, August 2015, paperback $7.89 (iii + 176 pages), Kindle $2.99.

Cats on the Prowl, Book Two, by Nancy C. Davis
Melbourne, Victoria, Collins Collective, October 2015, paperback $7.98 (iii + 174 pages), Kindle $2.99.

Cats on the Prowl, Book Three, by Nancy C. Davis
Melbourne, Victoria, Collins Collective, November 2015, paperback $7.98 (iii + 170 pages), Kindle $2.99.

All three novels have the subtitle “A Cat Detective Cozy Mystery Series”. They are set in very large type. Make that:

They are set in very large type.

They would probably be less than 100 pages each in normal-sized type. Nevertheless, like most cat cozies, they are presented as adult novels, although they are more suitable for Young Adults.

It also depends upon how you define “cat cozy mysteries”. They are usually light mystery novels with a human young woman amateur detective, who is helped or at least followed in her investigations by her pet cats. The three Cats on the Prowl novels are unusual in having anthropomorphized cat detectives doing all the crime-solving.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment
February 23, 2016

Shady Hollow: A Murder Mystery, by Juneau Black – Book Review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

titleShady Hollow: A Murder Mystery, by Juneau Black.
Philadelphia, PA, Hammer & Birch, October 2015, paperback $12.95 ([1] + 197 [+1] pages), Kindle $4.99.

This is a stereotypical murder mystery except for the funny animal cast. Shady Hollow is a small forest animal town where everybody knows everybody else. They’re all friendly, except maybe for grumpy toad Otto Stumpf.  But he’s considered cranky but lovable – until the morning that he’s found floating face down in the mill pond with a knife in his back.

Almost all the reviews call Shady Hollow “a Murder, She Wrote with animals”. The book begins with a Cast of Characters:

“Otto Stumpf: The grouchy, taciturn toad of Shady Hollow. Not many folk admit to liking Otto. The better question is who hates him.

Vera Vixen: This cunning, foxy reporter has a nose for trouble and a desire to find out the truth. Can she trust anyone around her?

BW Stone: The cigar-chomping skunk of an editor of the Shady Hollow Herald. BW (“Everything in black and white!”) loves a good headline. Would he kill to create one?” (p. 1)

The Cast goes on to profile thirteen others such as the lazy bear police chief, his bear deputy who does all the work, the hummingbird town gossip, the moose coffee shop owner, the beaver industrialist, and the raccoon small-time thief. Each is described suspiciously. As the popular coffee-shop proprietor, “If gossip is spoken, Joe has heard it. Maybe he heard too much.” As Vera investigates, everyone turns out to have a secret that he or she would rather keep hidden. But are any of the secrets serious enough to lead to murder? And how would a recluse like Otto have learned them?

Read the rest of this entry »

2 comments
February 22, 2016

Lifeless, by Graveyard Greg – Book Review by Fred Patten.

by Smash Capps

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Lifeless, by Graveyard Greg.
Dallas, TX, FurPlanet Productions, January 2014, trade paperback $9.95 (105 pages).

Lifeless CoverIn the 2010 Deathless and this sequel novella Lifeless, the characters are all anthropomorphic animals, and species doesn’t matter. Ivan the Russian snow leopard (“‘You’re seven feet tall, weigh over three hundred pounds, and have a long, fluffy tail that I trip over too many times,’” complains his friend Tank the rabbit in a freezing Reno, Nevada winter) is an exchange student, living in a college apartment. He has a gay boyfriend, Tank the rabbit, who is a frequent visitor of his cousin Hopper and his roommate Darryl, a hyena. Tank lives with his nearby parents Nikki the rabbit, a martial-arts expert, and his father, a huge Greek bull of supernatural origins. Other friends are Scowl the cougar martial-arts trainer, Jolly the giant panda, and Brent and Brooks, the twin stallions. Everyone is easy with Ivan’s and Tank’s homosexual lifestyle.

Ivan has his own relationship with Russia’s mythology, and Deathless was about his pursuit to America by the Russian folkloric Koschei the Deathless with his undead monsters. All of Ivan’s new American friends rallied to save him. Now six months later in Lifeless, Ivan is again in supernatural danger after Tank and his parents have departed on an extended family vacation, and with the kidnapping of Brooks. Ivan is left to fight with the aid of Scowl, Brent, and new ‘morphs. New characters include … well, yarst! I can’t say much about Lifeless at all without giving away spoilers.

Let’s just say that Ivan and his friends now have a quest rather than a fight for their lives. New characters, good, neutral, and evil include anthro red foxes, a lion, and a monitor lizard. The hunt for an ancient mystic object leads them through Reno, Nevada’s glittery casinos. And what Ivan is holding on Donryu’s cover is not a cup of cappuccino.

Lifeless is complete in itself, but the booklet ends with a note that Ivan’s adventures will continue in Faithless, not yet published. Scowl, Tank, and the others will also have more adventures of their own in Graveyard Greg’s forthcoming Changes and Relationships.

–Fred Patten

Leave a comment
February 20, 2016

Shadow Walkers – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Shadow WalkerShadow Walkers, by Russ Chenoweth.
NYC, Charles Scribner’s Sons, April 1993, hardcover $13.95 (153 pages).

Shadow Walkers is one of those unillustrated novels that make it very difficult for the reader to decide whether the talking animals are supposed to be natural, unclothed quadrupedal animals or bipedal, clothes-wearing funny animals. Set on Cape Cod during winter, and featuring two rat children, Sara and her brother Peter, the different scenes imply both situations. Cover artist Gregory Manchess has prudently avoided depicting any of the characters.

“Rats are good climbers, but rats are good at many things that they are ordinarily too sensible to do. If Sara had told her parents what she planned, they would have asked her not to do it because it was dangerous and unnecessary. So she hadn’t told them, and that troubled her. […]

The trunk rose above her like a wall for thirty feet before the first great limb jutted out, as large itself as a good-sized tree. […] Sara climbed, carefully and surely, stopping every few feet to listen. She was exposed here and nearly defenseless, but still nothing moved in the woods. She felt safer when she had reached the limb and could stretch out for a moment on the rough bark and look and listen. […]

Two feet below the highest leaf, she had to stop. The branch had shrunk to less than half an inch and bowed slightly with her weight. It was high enough. […]

She never knew what made her glance down in time to see the shadow glide among the dim trunks with the silence of a moth and settle on a limb below her. It was an owl, a very big one, and he had decided for some idiotic reason to change his daytime perch and come to join her in her tree. […]

He couldn’t see her against the light – he or she. It didn’t matter – she’d get no concession either way. Owls had little sense of smell, but they could hear a seed drop on the forest floor. She’d better not shake off any acorns. He would hear her move or cough. […] He might wait all day, knowing she was there, and then in darkness come and pick her off the branch like a ripened peach.” (pgs. 2 and 4)

That certainly sounds like a natural rat and owl in a tree. But then:

Read the rest of this entry »

1 comment
February 19, 2016

The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

9568681512The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily, by Dino Buzzati. Translated by Frances Lobb. Illustrated by the author.
NYC, Pantheon Books, October 1947, hardcover $2.75 (146 [+1] pages).

The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily, by Dino Buzzati. Translated by Francis Lobb. Illustrated by the author.
NYC, New York Review Children’s Collection, December 2003, hardcover $18.95 (147 pages).

The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily, by Dino Buzzati. Translated by Francis Lobb. With an introduction and reader’s companion by Lemony Snickett. Illustrated by the author.
NYC, HarperCollinsPublishers/Harper Trophy, February 2005, paperback $5.99 (186 pages).

This is a book that I never expected to review. It was one of the first library books that I read, from the Los Angeles Public Library, presumably when I was seven years old since the American edition was published at the end of 1947. I loved it! I read and reread it, and memorized several poems in it. I still remember this, after almost seventy years:

One, two, three, four

These dark thoughts soar

Fear, sorrow, doubt, despair

Hover in the midnight air.

I eventually grew up and forgot about it. I was reminded of it this January when Jim Korkis mentioned in his column on animation history that Heinz Edelmann, the art designer of the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine animated feature (1968), had later seriously tried to produce an animated feature of The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily, but had failed to get financial backing for it.

This led me to see whether Wikipedia had any mention of the book. It does, but the Wikipedia article just says that it was a famous Italian children’s book, La Famosa Invasione degli Orsi in Sicilia, published by Rizzoli in 1945, and “The American hardcover edition was published by HarperCollins in 2003 and the paperback was published in 2005, also by HarperCollins and The New York Review Children’s Collection.” Not only is that slightly inaccurate, there is no mention of the 1947 American edition that I read! This seems unfair to me, and since the LAPL still has that 1947 edition, here is my review of it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment
February 13, 2016

Cat Crimebusters and Other P.I.’s On Paws, Part 3 – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Cat Crimebusters, Part 1.

Cat Crimebusters, Part 2.

cat on the edgeThis third animal crime series is what I consider to be the first in which the cats genuinely detect to solve human crimes. No pussyfooting in the background while the human amateur detective solves the crimes. This is the Joe Grey series by Shirley Rousseau Murphy. Joe and his feline assistants Dulcie and Kit are talking cats fully in the human world. They have their human helpers, but they do all the important detecting. There aren’t as many Joe Grey novels as there are Midnight Louie or Mrs. Murphy novels, but there are eighteen; and there will be a nineteenth next February.

Cat on the Edge. April 1996.

Cat Under Fire. November 1996.

Cat Raise the Dead. May 1997.

Cat in the Dark. January 1999.

Cat to the Dogs. January 2000.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a comment
February 12, 2016

Buckley and Bogey Cat Detective Capers – Book Reviews by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Case of the Cat ShowThe Case of the Cat Show Princess, by Cindy Vincent
Houston, TX, Whodunit Press, November 2011, trade paperback $9.97 (162 pages), Kindle $2.99.

The Case of the Crafty Christmas Crooks, by Cindy Vincent
Houston, TX, Whodunit Press, October 2013, trade paperback $9.97 (170 pages), Kindle $2.99.

The Case of the Jewel Covered Cat Statues, by Cindy Vincent
Houston, TX, Whodunit Press, September 2014, trade paperback $9.97 (242 pages), Kindle $2.99.

The Case of the Clever Secret Code, by Cindy Vincent
Houston, TX, Whodunit Press, October 2015, trade paperback $10.97 (222 pages), Kindle $2.99.

“Cat cozy” adult mystery series in which talking cats actively detect crimes have become very popular, though arguably more with cat-fanciers and some mystery fans (others revile them) than with furry fans. The Midnight Louie series by Carole Nelson Douglas, the Mrs. Murphy series by Rita Mae Brown, and the Joe Grey series by Shirley Rousseau Murphy have made cat-detective fantasies both popular and respectable. Here, then, is one for the kiddies that should also be called to furry fans’ attention, especially since it is not obvious on the Amazon.com listings that these are juvenile rather than adult novels.

These four Buckley and Bogey Cat Detective Capers by Cindy Vincent are attractive trade paperbacks published by Vincent’s own Whodunit Press, “A Division of Mysteries by Vincent, LLC”. They are talking-cat detective novels recommended for middle-grade readers, ages 8 to 12. Frankly, they are overly cute adventures mostly suitable for the younger end of that range, which is why I described them as for the kiddies rather than as for kids. As is typical with the most banal of this sub-sub-genre, all the cats can understand human language. In this series, they even regularly speak English as well, except when humans are listening.

“Of course, the humans aren’t exactly aware of our detective duties. Probably because us cats always switch to cat language whenever humans are around.” (The Case of the Clever Secret Code, p. 2)

Read the rest of this entry »

1 comment