I've been too busy to do a recommendation post for a while, but here I am again wtih recommendations for category 12: A book of fiction in which a non-human animal is a major character, or in which non-human animals feature significantly in the plot.
At first I didn't think there would be that many books that would fit this category, but then I realized that there's so much to choose from in this category. There are many books written from an animal's point of view, books about alien animal species, books in which animals figure significantly without being central characters, and science-fiction books about "uplifted animals" who have been genetically modified to have human-like intelligence.
I got some excellent suggestions for this category from members of the reading challenge Facebook group, as well as a new "bookish" social group that a friend of mine has created for his friends that like to read and talk about books without being members of a regular book club. It also just so happens that the science fiction book club that I'm in chose to read a book about uplifted animals for our March meeting, so I got some ideas from that list of options as well.
This post's theme-song is Foals' "Providence"
1. One of my favorite books,and one of the first to be recommended by a member of the challenge facebook group was the science-fiction book, Borne by Jeff VanderMeer. This book began a series and all of it includes significant animal characters, so any of them could count. VanderMeer's interest in animals and ecology would also make some of his other writings work for this challenge, including the excellent Southern Reach trilogy.
2. Another alien-animal series begins with Nicky Drayden's book Escaping Exodus which includes an organic space-ship. It comes recommended by another challenge participant. The same member of the group also recommends The Last Animal, which she described as addressing a number of fascinating issues such as cloning, research ethics, grief, and sexism.
3, Because I was reading their review of Borne, Publisher's Weekly's algorithm just suggested this forthcoming book by Julia Phillips, author of The Disappearing Earth. If you can wait until June to read this category, why not try out Bear, which sounds like it's influenced both by ecology and fairy tales.
4. Also from the facebook group, comes a recommendation for Bernard Malamud's God's Grace which, like some of the others listed here is also a dystopian novel, and according to the challenge participant "gets weird."
5. I thought of this entire category because I recently stumbled across the book Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth. It's not written from an animal point of view, at least as far as I know, but the whole thing is about a heist by two egg auditors to "steal a million chickens in the middle of the night." I bought it because the cover caught my eye and then the description made it sound like a lot of fun.
6. There are many classics written from the point of view of animals, and any of them would be great for this category. Consider, for example Watership Down, Animal Farm, Call of the Wild and White Fang; Charlotte's Web, the Metamorphosis paired with lesser-works by Kafka, such as "Josephine the Mouse Singer." There are many children's books in this category, including the Black Stallion books, or, more recently, the huge "warrior cats" series. Just remember that challenge books should be about 200 pages long, so you might need to read a couple to fill the category.
7. The most classic work in the "uplifted animal" sub-genre is Planet of the Apes, which began as a book in French in 1963. Other works to consider in this category, Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series, which features a terraformed planet populated by accidentally uplifted spiders and ants, Despite being pretty horrifying as a concept, this book, which I'm currently reading for the SF book club I mentioned, is really good. Some other good uplifted animal books you might consider are Clifford Simak's City, in which dogs narrate the end of human civilization, Lawrence Schoen's Barsk; The Elephant's Graveyard, and Robert Repino's Mort(e): War With No Name, featuring a house-cat turned assassin.
8. Many of the members of the bookish club recently read the short novel, Open Throat written from the point of view of a mountain lion in the Hollywood Hills, which is part of this year's Tournament of Books. They really, really liked it, finding the animal's point of view narrative very interestingly non-human.
9. I've already mentioned this book in my recommendations of Nobel Prize winners, but Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is another great book in which animals feature significantly in the plot without being point-of-view characters.
10. Sigrid Nunez's The Friend is another non-science fiction work in which an animal figures significantly in the plot. This book is as much about relationships among humans as it is about animals, but it explores the importance of animal companions to humans.
I think I'll stop there, but if you find something else that looks good, feel free to mention it in the comments.
