Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Abandoned:

First Dog on Earth: How It All Began by Irv Weinberg. I was an archaeology minor in college (or this close, just a couple credits short) and one of my favorite papers I wrote was titled "How Dog Began". So when I saw this book, about when wolves started to befriend man, I got so excited!

Unfortunately, every single aspect of it was horrible, and the facts were so so so wrong.

The story started with a wolf giving birth. Somehow every puppy in the litter was different (all of them seemed like half-dog wolves, even though dogs did not exist yet). The mother wolf hid her litter from the pack, because male wolves kill all the pups in the pack to show how strong they are. Why in the world would you write about wolves when you do not research even basic facts about them! I saved the exact quote:

She would not let the old alpha male or any of the other males of the pack vying for leadership prove their virility with the blood of her pups.

Seriously, WTF!

Add onto that, if I need more to rant about in this book, the author's review/praise section included a review from an "Advertising Creative Director", a CEO of Habitat Verde, Former Mayor Malibu, CEO of Independence Lighting Corp, and a voice-over/on-camera actor. What on earth do any of those people have to do with a book? Why would the former mayor of Malibu's opinion on a book about wolves matter in the least? UGH! DNF 3%

The Wild Lands by Paul Greci. I'm so tired of "world ends, only evil people left alive" books. What I'd give for a "world ends, survivors come together to help each other" story! Blah blah blah, world ends, family left in Alaska trying to survive. Bad people come to try to rob them. More bad people come. They flee. More bad people hurt them. Blah blah only bad people blah blah. DNF 7%

Shiftless by Linton Bowers. As bad as the last two books were, this one was actually worse. So so so SO many typos and editing issues. Front matter? Typos. Title page? Typos. Seriously stupid errors, like "To learn more about this author, see his face book page at..."

In addition to the countless errors, ...I've been sitting here trying to figure out how to describe it without being insulting to the author. Let's just say that I do not think he had any ability at all to describe women. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and say his inability to write a realistic female character was because of poor writing skills and not his personal opinion of them.

You can hold this book up as an example of all the bad things that come from self publishing. Just awful, horrible, waste of time. I'm sorry to anyone who paid money for this book. DNF 2%


Partial book credits:
Point reached in DNF books: 3 + 7 + 2 + = 12%
Previous abandoned book total: 56%
New total: 68% (zero books)