List love: 10 animal books I enjoyed, part 1: Animals being animals

I’m not participating in Top Ten Tuesdays this week, so here instead is a little List Love:

Animals appeal to a lot of people for different reasons. They bring out in us both the hunting instinct and the mothering instinct, and to some of us they are the best friends we have ever had or the thing we are most afraid of. We have a strong tendency to anthropomorphise them by ascribing to them human emotions, abilities and personalities.

I have read my share of animal books and I have come up with some lists based on my reading. The one below covers books I have liked that are about animals or feature animals in pivotal roles as themselves without attempts to anthropomorphise them. Some time or other I will post the others.

Encounters with Animals by Gerald Durrell. Essays. Animals: Various. As much as I would have liked to put My family and other Animals on this list, it simply is not enough of an animal book to count here. I could actually have named several other Durrell titles, but this one is almost entirely about specific animal characters and not about one of his expeditions with animal characterisations thrown in.
The Cat Who Covered The World: The Adventures of Henrietta and Her Foreign Correspondent by Christopher S. Wren. Memoir. Animal: Domestic cat. The Wren family took their pet, Henrietta, with them to postings all over the world, including Paris, Moscow, Cairo and Beijing. That she managed to reach the age of 18 after being an outdoor cat in all of these places (even living as a stray in Cairo for several weeks) is testament to the resilience of cats.
Rosie is My Relative by Gerald Durrell. Novel. Animal: Elephant. Durrell claims that this is a “nearly true story” which he has merely embroidered, but whatever the truth of that statement might be, it is highly entertaining. About a young man who inherits a circus elephant and sets out to find her a new home.
Rascal: A Memoir of a Better Era by Sterling North. Memoir. Animal: Raccoon. I loved this book as a kid and am therefore putting it here even though I remember almost nothing about it except some snippets about the eponymous raccoon.
My Friend Flicka, Thunderhead, and Green Grass of Wyoming by Mary O’Hara. Trilogy of novels. Animals: Horses. A coming-of-age story about a boy on a farm in Wyoming and his horses.
All Creatures Great and Small and its sequels, by James Herriott. Novelised memoirs. Animals: Various pets and farm animals. Describing the life of a vet in the Yorkshire Dales, these books are based on the author’s life as a vet in Thirsk (named “Darrowby” in the books).
The Secret Life of Lobsters by Trevor Corson. Popular science. Animals: Lobsters.I couldn’t resist putting one science book on this list. He manages to make these crustaceans as endearing as cats or dogs, which is quite feat considering they’re primarily seen as food.
Born Free: A lioness of two worlds by Joy Adamson. Memoir. Animal: Lion. Another book I dearly loved as a child. About the a pet lion and her eventual release into the wild.
Travels on my Elephant by Mark Shand. Travelogue. Animal: Elephant. Shand bought an elephant in India and travelled around on her back in southern and central India.
Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand. History. Animal: Race horse. Seabiscuit isn’t just about Seabiscuit the race horse. It is also a portrait of three men – his owner, his trainer and his jockey - and the era they lived in, with the horse tying everything together.

Honourable mention:
Jaws by Peter Benchley. Novel - thriller. Animal: Great white shark. The shark is off-stage for most of the book, but when it does make an appearance - wow! Even when off-stage it permeates the book from beginning to end.

Why Marley and Me by John Grogan isn’t on the list: Because of all the maudlin “beloved pet as a teacher of life lessons” twaddle in the final chapters. I greatly enjoyed the book right up to that point but can’t really recommend it on this score.

An animal book I’d like to read:
Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron and Bret Witter.

Icelandic folk-tale: The Laughing Merman

Icelanders not only believed in the existence of selkies, but also in mer-people. The mermaids were said to be very beautiful, while the mermen were supposed to be ugly as sin but very wise and able to see things others did not. O nce upon a time a farmer went out fishing and pulled up a merman. He tried to get the merman to talk to him but he would not answer, except to beg him to release him back into the sea, but this the farmer refused to do. The farmer rowed back to land, taking the captive merman with him. When he pulled up the boat on the shore, his wife came to him and greeted him with tenderness and kisses, which he received with pleasure. This made the merman laugh. Then the man’s dog came to him and greeted him tenderly in the way of dogs, by jumping up to him, but the farmer hit the dog. Again the merman laughed. Then the farmer walked up towards his house, but on the way he tripped over a tussock and hurt himself. He got angry and gave the tussock a good kicking. Then...

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...

Reading in Reykjavík

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