Those of you who read my post requesting suggestions for October’s book will be surprised to see that the book I was so excited about & noted I would be including as my suggestion is absent from this month’s vote. This is because I have since found out it contains repeated animal abuse. While I understand that the author was under duress during the trip, I cannot stomach violence against animals. I wasn't a fan of the author taking camels from the wild & forcing them along with her poor dog on this grueling trek, but then it got far worse with animals being violently beaten.
In fact, the author herself even noted in the book that she was "ashamed" for repeatedly "beating the living daylights out of [her camel]" & stated that "I had been out of control when I beat him and began to recognize a certain Kurtishness in my behaviour. This weakness, my inability to be terrified with any dignity, came to the forefront often during the trip, and my animals took the brunt of it." Even just a search for the word "beat" in the book preview on Google shows some pretty disturbing scenes. While I would never stop someone from reading a book, I won’t promote such a book as my own suggestion.
However, I think my two new suggestions are even better as are the other 4 books included in the list this month. We had 3 suggestions from book club members so we performed a random drawing to select two as shown here. Thanks to Julie Jacobs & Karen Roberts for the book club member suggestions included this month!
THE VOTING
You can vote from now until Mon., Sept. 24 11PM ET. (That's NYC time. See this converted to your local time below.)
To participate:
1. Review the books.
2. Then, click here to vote.
We'll publish the anonymous results afterwards so you can get the book in advance.