Hi and welcome to #BiteSizeSaturday!
It’s been forever and a day since I did one of these posts, but today I’m bringing back #BiteSizeSaturday to talk about two coffee table books about everyone’s favourite pets: cats and dogs. Both are out from Amber Books on 14 September and if you’d like to learn a little something about your pets, their habits and their cousins in the wild while also gazing at beautiful photos, these are books you will want to add to your wishlist.
As a lifetime cat slave owner, there was never any doubt I was going to read this book. Cats by Julianna Photopoulos zooms in on wild cats and the big cats, takes a look at various breeds of house cats around the world, and some of their origins, discusses feline behaviour and body language and dedicates a whole chapter to kittens with photos that will make you melt if you’re anything like me.
As far as the chapter on behaviour goes, I read multiple books on that topic these last couple of years, and while Cats is not the most comprehensive, I feel it does tackle the things about a cat’s behaviour that are most important to know in order to get a basic understanding of the feline body language.
I learnt quite a few things about wild cats and discovered a few domestic breeds I didn’t know existed. It’s also rather fun to look at the various breeds and try to figure out what heritage your own moggie might have. With its tons of absolutely gorgeous photos and fun facts and titbits, Cats was an absolute pleasure to read and look at and it’s definitely a must-have for any cat lover.
Dogs by Tom Jackson takes a look at wild dogs, hunting, working, and companion dogs, puppies and dog behaviour. I learnt quite a few things, for instance that there is a wild raccoon dog native to Siberia that has an uncanny resemblance to the North American raccoon although they are completely unrelated. I loved reading about all the ways in which dogs help people and some of the jobs they used to do. The chapter on behaviour was not all that informative, I’ve never had a dog but I did know most of the mentioned facts. However, that didn’t bother me at all since all the facts are captions to some gorgeous photos I loved looking at. I had a great time reading and looking at this book. It sports some absolutely stunning photos: the puppy section especially had me oohing and aahing, there’s a drop dead gorgeous image of a husky, one of my favourite breeds, and some of the action photos are simply magnificent. The perfect book to gift to yourself and/or any dog lover you might know.
Massive thanks to Amber Books and NetGalley for the eARCs. All opinions are my own.
They’re super books aren’t they!
They really are!
I saw these over at Nicki’s blog recently and with you mentioning them again I now want to get a copy too haha. If the covers are any indication of the quality of the photos inside, I’m sold. I would go for the cat book first, but the dog one sounds great too and it might be fun comparing the different breeds to our dog to see what his heritage could be beyond the suspected german shepherd and greyhound.
I went for Cats first and I loved it so much, I went back and requested Dogs as well 😂 The quality of the photos is impeccable, they all look like you could blow them up and hang them on your wall.
That sounds so good! It’s a shame I can’t request them…
I think they were archived mid-August 🤔