Wild Goose, Brother Goose: This book features wonderful observations and descriptions of the natural world along with animal characters who have personalities without being turned into people. There's also just enough connection to the human world to show impact in both directions, but it never ceases to be a story about geese. There are only a few times when the author loses the tone a little bit as he imparts sidebar information. Really an outstanding book in the genre. Be warned though, there is a lot of death in this book, including a hunting sequence that can make for an upsetting read.
The Day of the Jackal: The Jackal. A tall, blond Englishman with opaque, gray eyes. A killer at the top of his profession. A man unknown to any secret service in the world. An assassin with a contract to kill the world's most heavily guarded man.
One man with a rifle who can change the course of history. One man whose mission is so secretive not even his employers know his name. And as the minutes count down to the final act of execution, it seems that there is no power on earth that can stop the Jackal.
A Day no Pigs Would Die: Out of a rare American tradition, sweet as hay, grounded in the gentle austerities of the Book of Shaker, and in the Universal countryman's acceptance of birth, death, and the hard work of wresting a life from the land comes this haunting novel of a Vermont farm boyhood. In the daily round of his thirteenth year, as the seasons turn and the farm is tended, the boy becomes a man.
That is all, and it is everything. The boy is mauled by Apron, the neighbor's ailing cow whom he helps, alone, to give birth. The grateful farmer brings him a gift—a newborn pig. His father at first demurs ("We thank you, Brother Tanner," said Papa, "but it's not the Shaker Way to take frills for being neighborly. All that Robert done was what any farmer would do for another") but is persuaded. Rob keeps the pig, names her, and gives her his devotion... He wrestles with grammar in the schoolhouse. He hears rumors of sin. He is taken—at last—to the Rutland Fair. He broadens his heart to make room even for Baptists. And when his father, who can neither read nor cipher, whose hands are bloodied by his trade, whose wisdom and mastery of country things are bred in the bone, entrusts Rob with his final secret, the boy makes the sacrifice that completes his passage into manhood.
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