{"id":30249,"date":"2017-02-13T06:00:40","date_gmt":"2017-02-13T12:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=30249"},"modified":"2017-02-06T14:27:44","modified_gmt":"2017-02-06T20:27:44","slug":"we-are-all-completely-beside-ourselves-by-karen-fowler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/we-are-all-completely-beside-ourselves-by-karen-fowler\/","title":{"rendered":"We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Fowler"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>For me, this was an ideal book-on-cd. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves <\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by Karen Fowler was\u00a0an optimum balance between fascinating exposition – about animal behavior, the ethics of scientific theory and experiments – in and out of the lab, and novelistic appeal.\u00a0Rosemary, the narrator,\u00a0is an interesting mix of reliable (she addresses the reader and seems to be candid)\u00a0but also\u00a0unreliable (memories are faulty especially when critical parts of the story take place in early childhood).<\/p>\n

I love to be lectured to, not in the\u00a0you’ve-done-something-wrong\u00a0sense, but in the academic sense, where you are given information in a logical and well-thought-out way. I learned a lot about psychology, and \u00a0primate and human behavior, as well as memory.<\/p>\n

Sometimes this was difficult to listen to – Fowler does an amazing job of showing us our ability to minimize the pain of confusion of animals. The human and animal characters in this story are not abstractions; they are unique and complicated beings, and their pain is our pain. The humans behave in ways that are understandable but not always very likeable.<\/p>\n

It’s also a mystery. Early in the book, Rosemary says that she’s lost two siblings. Little by little, she reveals who went missing and why. Even the title is a bit of a mystery, and there’s an a-ha! moment when you realize it’s significance. There’s so much to think about, and to talk about; I’m dying to discuss!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For me, this was an ideal book-on-cd. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves \u00a0by Karen Fowler was\u00a0an optimum balance between fascinating exposition – about animal behavior, the ethics of scientific theory and experiments – in and out of the lab, and novelistic appeal.\u00a0Rosemary, the narrator,\u00a0is an interesting mix of reliable[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[361,1,8],"tags":[799,4064],"class_list":["post-30249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-books","category-reference","category-staff-picks","tag-animals","tag-chimpanzees"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-7RT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30249"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30263,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30249\/revisions\/30263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}