I recommend Lab Dog as compulsory reading for everyone. Whether many will read it or not, I don’t know. Melanie Kaplan adopted Hammy, one of Beagle Freedom Project’s rescued beagles from laboratories across the U.S. and the world. In the book, she chronicles without overt sentimentalism and without anthropomorphizing the dogs used and most often killed in laboratory testing. My own stance on this subject is that it is morally and ethically wrong to test on any animal, mice and rats included. Tests on animals have been shown to fail on humans over 90% of the time, a fact that Ms. Kaplan documents. Animals are physiologically different enough from humans to make their use in testing unreliable at best and dangerous at worst, yet they are similar enough to humans in that they suffer locked up in cages, and feel great fear and pain. What Ms. Kaplan does in this book is examine with a scientific and journalistic eye in great detail what goes on behind the laboratory doors. She explains the history of the animal rights and welfare groups as well as the horrendous history of humans use and insistence of testing on animals, often largely driven by profit. This can be difficult reading for an animal-lover or any person with compassion. And yet it is necessary reading and the author has made it easy for us, presented the facts clearly and accurately, all the while offering hope, and giving wonderful anecdotes of her adopted beagle, Hammy, who is the main protagonist and true hero of the story. The world of medicine is changing, and while animals are still used, one message is, they don’t have to end their lives in a laboratory; they can learn love, compassion, and comfort, at least for a brief time. You will cry, but equally, you will laugh! Highly recommended. And please, spread the word!

The Comfort of Crows, A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl. I haven’t fallen so much in love with a book in a long time. I’ve bought copies for my animal and nature loving family and friends and all say the same: “I feel like I wrote this.” Fifty-two entries taking the reader through the seasons of Margaret’s backyard and beyond in Tennessee. It clocks not only the changing seasons but also climate change, bird migration, animal behavior and so much more. Beautifully written, beautifully “felt.”

 When it comes to beautiful writing, it’s hard to beat Beryl Markham’s West With the Night, which also reads like a page-turning novel. I’ve read and reread this book over and over, and while there is some debate over whether she wrote it herself or not, the writing stands the test of time.

Alexandra Fuller’s “Africa” books takes the medium of memoir to another level. Writing about her childhood in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Malawi, and Zambia, Fuller writes about life and death in prose beautiful and unique to her. In her world, dramatic events become ordinary, yet there is not an ounce of melodrama in these pages. The worst that can happen in most people’s minds happens to the Fuller family on a regular basis, and yet Fuller’s books are some of the most hilarious I’ve ever read. I read these over and over.