Audiobook Review: All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: All Creatures Great and Small
Author: James Herriot
Narrator: Nicholas Ralph
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Publication date: Originally published 1972
Print length: 448 pages
Audio length: 15 hours 23 minutes
Genre: Memoir
Source: Library
Rating:

The first volume in the multimillion copy bestselling series.

Delve into the magical, unforgettable world of James Herriot, the world’s most beloved veterinarian, and his menagerie of heartwarming, funny, and tragic animal patients.

For fifty years, generations of readers have flocked to Herriot’s marvelous tales, deep love of life, and extraordinary storytelling abilities. For decades, Herriot roamed the remote, beautiful Yorkshire Dales, treating every patient that came his way from smallest to largest, and observing animals and humans alike with his keen, loving eye.

In All Creatures Great and Small, we meet the young Herriot as he takes up his calling and discovers that the realities of veterinary practice in rural Yorkshire are very different from the sterile setting of veterinary school.

James Herriot’s memoirs have sold 80 million copies wordwide, and continue to delight and entertain readers of all ages.

If you’re looking to let a little bit of sunlight and warmth into your soul, you couldn’t ask for more than this lovely classic (fictionalized) memoir.

All Creatures Great and Small, originally published in 1972, is the memoir of a country veterinarian, going back to the beginning of his career as a newly qualified vet in the late 1930s. James Herriot wrote a series of eight memoirs during his lifetime, which have been published and republished many times in the years since. All Creatures Great and Small consists of the first two of his books and a smidge of the third — and these stories have also been adapted for film and television (more on that later).

All Creatures starts with young James arriving in the Yorkshire Dales to become an apprentice at an established veterinary practice. James’s specialty is farm animals, and the practice’s clientele are largely the region’s farmer, although they do care for the assorted household pets of their village as well. James’s mentor is Siegfried Farnon, an oddball man who’s clearly very gifted at his work, but who has many personality quirks and a disturbing ability to disregard or forget anything that’s inconvenient to him.

Over the course of the book, James develops confidence in his veterinary skills, and slowly earns the grudging respect of the locals, who initially view him as an inexperienced outsider. James is gifted when it comes to the animals under his care, saving countless lives through his modern approaches and determination to see procedures through, no matter how hard.

One of the lovely aspects of the book is the description of the people themselves — from the curmudgeonly farmers to the eccentric mansion dwellers to the race horse owners, and more. The author describes them all with humor and kindness, and brings to life the oddities and personality traits that makes them all so unique.

Note: I mentioned above that this is a fictionalized memoir — a fact I didn’t actually realize until a book group friend provided some background. The author’s name is actually a pen name, the town where he sets the book is not a real place, but rather a made-up town based on the author’s experiences in the area of the Yorkshire Dales, and he’s altered/embroidered many of the chief characters in the book and/or based them on real people, but with different names and some different characteristics. Not that any of this truly matters to me. The book is so enjoyable that I don’t mind the blend of fact and fiction. For more on James Alfred “Alf” Wight, the man behind the James Herriot pen name, see articles here and here.

The audiobook edition that I listened to is a new version which has the star of the current PBS Masterpiece production as the narrator. Nicholas Ralph is terrific in the TV role, and he’s wonderful as the audiobook narrator too. His voice is so familiar at this point that it truly feels like sitting back and listening to James Herriot himself telling us his stories! The actor not only brings James’s character to life, but also delivers distinctive, enjoyable versions of all the various characters, and it’s a delight.

If you haven’t checked out the TV series yet, I highly recommend it! Two seasons have aired so far, and season 3 will be released in the US in January 2023.

I absolutely loved listening to the audiobook of All Creatures Great and Small (and once again, need to give a shout-out to my book group for picking it!). It’s a gentle, heart-warming, funny look at a bygone time, and James Herriot’s love for the community and his profession shine through on every page and with every story he tells.

Highly recommended… and as for me, I look forward to reading (or listening to) the next book in the series, All Things Bright and Beautiful.

9Oct2019

Shelf Control #186: The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah

Posted in Shelf Control by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Shelf Control — an original feature created and hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies.

Shelf Control is a weekly celebration of the unread books on our shelves. Pick a book you own but haven’t read, write a post about it (suggestions: include what it’s about, why you want to read it, and when you got it), and link up! For more info on what Shelf Control is all about, check out my introductory post, here.

Want to join in? Shelf Control posts go up every Wednesday. See the guidelines at the bottom of the post, and jump on board!

Title: The Coldest Winter Ever
Author: Sister Souljah
Published: 1999
Length: 351 pages

What it’s about (synopsis via Goodreads):

Renowned hip-hop artist, writer, and activist Sister Souljah brings the streets of New York to life in a powerful and utterly unforgettable first novel.

I came busting into the world during one of New York’s worst snowstorms, so my mother named me Winter.

Ghetto-born, Winter is the young, wealthy daughter of a prominent Brooklyn drug-dealing family. Quick-witted, sexy, and business-minded, she knows and loves the streets like the curves of her own body. But when a cold Winter wind blows her life in a direction she doesn’t want to go, her street smarts and seductive skills are put to the test of a lifetime. Unwilling to lose, this ghetto girl will do anything to stay on top.

The Coldest Winter Ever marks the debut of a gifted storyteller. You will never forget this Winter’s tale.

How and when I got it:

I bought this book at the beginning of 2019.

Why I want to read it:

After the PBS Great American Read list came out, my book group created a DIY challenge, where we all picked five books that we hadn’t read yet (from the list of 100), and made a commitment to read them by the end of the year. As I was looking for books I hadn’t read, The Coldest Winter Ever caught my eye. To be honest, I’d never even heard of it, and it doesn’t sound much like my typical reading material — but isn’t that the point of reading challenges, to get out of our comfort zones?

I’ve only read 3 of my 5 challenge books so far, but hey, I still have (not quite) three months to go!

What do you think? Have you read this book? Would you read it?

Please share your thoughts!

__________________________________

Want to participate in Shelf Control? Here’s how:

Write a blog post about a book that you own that you haven’t read yet.
Add your link in the comments!
If you’d be so kind, I’d appreciate a link back from your own post.
Check out other posts, and…

Have fun!

30Jul2015

Poldark!

Posted in Fun and Whimsy, Pop Culture by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Anyone else out there loving the glory of Poldark on PBS?

I mean, how can you resist?

I haven’t seen the two-hour season finale yet (airing this coming Sunday), but as for the rest of the season so far, I’m loving it.

To back up a bit, Poldark is adapted from a series of books by the late author Winston Graham (which were also made into a PBS series in the mid-1970s). Book 1, Ross Poldark, was published in 1945, and the author went on to write a total of twelve book in the Poldark saga. The books are historical fiction set in Cornwall, with the first book opening in 1783 as Captain Ross Poldark returns to his family home after fighting in the American Revolutionary War — on the losing side.

Ross finds much changed upon his return: His home is tumbling down and in terrible shape, his family’s copper mines are failing, the workers are starving, and his beloved Elizabeth has become engaged to marry his cousin Frances, who belongs to the wealthier part of the Poldark family. Ross deals with disappointment and hurt by throwing himself into the restoration of his estate and his mine, and eventually falls for the lower class girl he rescued from abuse and brought into his home as a servant.

Demelza is a breath of fresh air, not hung up on manners, full of impetuous good spirits, laughter, and a good heart. With Demelza’s love, Ross begins to find happiness finally, and the two make an unconventional couple who incite the gossip of the upper class throughout the area.

After watching the first episode of the TV series, I just knew I had to read the books. The 8-hour first season covers the content of books 1 (Ross Poldark) and 2 (Demelza), and I ended up reading both. Normally, I dislike reading books after seeing the TV or movie versions of a story, but in this case, it only added to my enjoyment. I found that I enjoyed the TV episodes best without knowing what was going to happen, but knowing what would happen didn’t at all detract from my enjoyment of the books.

The TV show is very faithful to the major plotlines of the books, with only slight changes here and there to heighten the on-screen drama. (For example, a character’s mine in the books fails due to a crumbling economy, whereas on TV, the character loses the mine in a card game.) Likewise, the show plays up the love triangle aspect of the plot more than the book does, although to be honest, it’s really not as big a factor as the early promos might have led us to believe.

The books were simply terrific! Even reading them after viewing the events on TV, the level of detail and beautiful writing in the books adds to what I already knew, so I was never bored or feeling like I was going over familiar ground. The writing is lovely, and the descriptions of landscapes, interior scenes, even clothing and candlelight, are so masterfully worded that there’s a sharply visual element to the words on the page. (See my Thursday Quotables post from last week, here, for an example of what I mean.)

The TV production is stunning to look at (and no, I don’t just mean the curls blowing in the breeze or the sultry, brooding stare). The sea and the fields, the hills, the farms — they’re all gorgeous. Of course, there are some episodes that feature about three too many scenes of Ross dramatically dashing off on his horse as the waves crash beside him… but that’s easy to forgive. It’s not all eye candy. The plot is engrossing, and the supporting characters are, by turn, sadly valiant (cousin Verity), tragically doomed (poacher Jim), and buffoonishly weak (ugh, cousin Frances). And don’t get me started on Jud and Prudie, Ross’s household servants who spend most of their time drinking, fighting, or drinking and fighting.

While there are moments of light and joy, and swoonishly romantic love scenes, the tone seems to get darker and darker as the season draws to a close. As I said, I haven’t seen the finale yet, but I have finished reading Demelza… and boy, it’s a doozy. No spoilers from me, but if the show is anywhere near as tragic, I’ll be a big soppy, weepy mess by the end.

My understanding is that Poldark has been a big success for Masterpiece, so I think we can feel confident that it’ll return for season 2 next year. Meanwhile, I already have copies of the next two books… and while I really should read other things for a while, I’m super tempted to dive right into book #3 (Jeremy Poldark — and no, I have no idea who Jeremy Poldark is), if for no other reason than to find out (I hope!) that there’s some sunshine heading back into the story.

Sigh. Are you watching? Have you read the books? What do you think?

And yeah, I know I said it wasn’t all eye candy, but — seriously! How can they show this on TV and expect people not to paste it all over the internet?