Romance, Adventure And Random Moments.
Hello I’m DeeDee and I’d like to welcome you to my blog, please take a chair by the fire and if there are too many fluffy pillows just knock them off on to the floor! First of all thank you for visiting me, I don’t know what you’ve been told about me but I can tell you right now that almost 99% is untrue… what’s that??? What about my brownie addiction??? I have no idea what you’re talking about!!! So hopefully you’re here because you’ve heard that I write… no??? Oh well as I’ve got you here I’m going to tell you ALL about it anyway!!! Now you know why that armchair has restraints on it! I love to write, I always have, but it wasn’t until my Aunt suggested that I try writing a book that I began to think how great it would be to write something that people might read and hopefully enjoy. So I settled down to produce a masterpiece… predictably the 90.000 words of my first story, written at sixteen, was pretty poor… but I like to think that I learn a lot from it. In any case my failure didn’t put me off and my next attempt ‘Broken City’ was born! I’ve written five stories so far (plus a few short stories), three of which are published and the other two are awaiting editing. They will be available sometime next year. They are the second books in three different series! I also love to review! When I like a book I find it hard to stop talking about it!!! Now that’s out of the way would you like a nice cup of tea and a brownie???
Vet on the Loose: Review.
I wanted to like this book.
I love James Herriot and was delighted by the prospect of finding his female counterpart. Unfortunately I just couldn't warm to Gillian Hick, it seemed to me that she had a perpetual axe to grind.Farmers were misogynistic idiots, pet owners were either bimbos who shouldn't have been let anywhere near an animal or just plain unpleasant.
While I understand that the 'lady vet' no doubt met a lot of rotten clients who should never have been able to look after another living thing, it seems strange to me that those were the cases she chose to write about.
Surely there must have been some more upbeat stories she could have related???
It just seemed a little unbalanced; too much of the bad stuff that had happened and not enough of the good.
The whole 'when's the real vet coming?' gag was funny... for the first few stories, but it got old pretty quick. After a while it started to sound less like humour and a lot more like bitterness. Which again, I can understand, but it didn't make for fun reading.
The thing is that when you read James Herriot, however obnoxious the owner/farmer is being to him, James always paints himself in a ridiculous light. He's always inadvertently made a fool of himself in some way and THAT was why it's so funny. You feel for him because you know that he knows what he's talking about, it's just that something he's done is making him look silly.
My favourite example of this is the story where he's trying to deliver a calf and the cow is in difficulties. Everything's going wrong, the farmers are losing patience: yet what is James worrying about??? The fact that he added and over generous helping of his landladies bath salts to his bath water and now, with all his exertion, he's giving off a strongly feminine scent!!!
You really feel for James Herriot, but you can't help but laugh at him just the same.
I never felt that with Gillian Hick. I didn't feel sorry for her: her stories were a thin layer of humour, that by the end of the book, had pealed away to show an underlying thread of resentment.
Like I said: it's understandable, just not very entertaining. I kind of came away with the idea that she didn't really like her job at all.
Obviously this is all just my personal opinion and, like all opinions, it might be completely different to yours. So by all means, give the book a try. ;-D