A Street Cat Named Bob (the film on DVD)

A Street Cat Named Bob
[DVD Street] 

This 2016 movie (released on DVD in 2017), is adapted from the first two autobiographical books by James Bowen, A Street Cat Named Bob and How He Saved My Life (2013) and The World According to Bob: The Further Adventures of One Man and His Streetwise Cat (2014). I loved both of those volumes, especially the first, which was a painfully honest account of Bowen’s struggles to recover from drug addiction and survive on the street of London, first as a street busker (musician) and later as a seller of The Big Issue. Bowen’s life was forever changed when a ginger tomcat adopted him and gave his life focus and a greater purpose.

For this film, the “plot” of the book is streamlined, and a lot of extraneous material, including Bowen’s time in Australia with his mother, cut out, in order to focus primarily on his interactions with Bob the cat, once Bob shows up in his life. Luke Treadaway gives a terrific performance as Bowen, and the actual Street Cat Bob performs as himself (with several other stand-in cats) in this film. There are some other good performances, including Ruda Gedmintas as Betty, the friend who helps James get his life together and develops a romantic attachment, Joanne Froggatt as Val, James’ social worker, and Anthony Stewart Head (Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer!!) as Bowen’s father.
This isn’t a deep film, but it has lots of nice “moments”, and for anyone who, like me, loved the books, this is a charming little nugget. There’s also some very nice original music that Treadaway as Bowen performs during his busking scenes. I definitely recommend this one for anyone looking for a “feel good” film with an engaging cat!

[If you enjoy this, you should absolutely read Bowen’s book. I found the first book to be far more interesting than the subsequent ones, but they’re all good reads: A Street Cat Named Bob and How He Saved My Life, The World According to Bob: The Further Adventures of One Man and His Streetwise Cat or A Gift From Bob.]

[ Internet Movie Database entry for A Street Cat Named Bob ] | [ official Street Cat Bob web site ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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Penguin the Magpie by Cameron Bloom

Penguin the Magpie: The Odd Little Bird Who Saved a Family
by Cameron Bloom and Bradley Trevor Grieve [Biography Bloom] 

A few years back, I gave a book talk to our Bethany and Gere BooksTalks groups entitled “Creature Comforts“, all about unique relationships between humans and the animals in our lives. Penguin the Magpie: The Odd Little Bird Who Saved a Family would easily have fit into that talk! When I saw this book on the New Books display at the downtown library, recently, the beautiful B&W photo on the cover, of a child holding a gorgeous magpie bird, immediately leapt out at me.

Author Cameron Bloom is an Australian photojournalist. He and his wife, Sam, are adventurers, preferring treks through unexplored spaces over sticking to “tourist” traps. While on a family vacation with their three young sons to a remote part of Thailand, Sam Bloom was the victim of a freak accident, that left her with a broken spine and fractured skull. Returning to their home in Australia, she was forced to adapt to a new lifestyle, filled with excruciating pain, partial paralysis, and the need for assistance with some of the simplest everyday tasks — torture for someone who had previously lived a very “active” life.

Around this time, one of the Blooms’ sons came across a helpless baby Magpie bird in a store’s parking lot, blown out of its nest and abandoned by its mother. The Bloom family adopted the bird, which the kids named Penguin, due to its black & white coloring, and decided to nurse it, at least until it could be released into the wild. This book features a variety of B&W and color photos of the family with the bird, as it grew up, acclimating to their family life and becoming like one of their kids. Sam, in particular, bonded with the bird, and the process of helping something even more fragile than herself to survive and then thrive contributed to her own rehabilitation. The photos are paired with text that is almost journal-like in format, chronicling Sam’s recovery and the impact it has had on her entire family’s life. There are afterwords, including a “letter” from Sam, herself, which are definitely worth reading, and which add to the emotional impact of the book.

The descriptions of Sam’s struggles are stark, but when contrasted with the beautiful photography of the family and their avian adventures, provide for a bittersweet exploration of how relationships with animals can have a healing quality. This was truly a moving story.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Wesley the Owl, by Stacey O’Brien, Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, by Vicki Myron, A Street Cat Named Bob and How He Saved My Life, by James Bowen, or any of the many other books on my Creature Comforts booktalk booklist.]

[ official Penguin the Magpie web site ] | [ official Cameron Bloom Photography web site ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!

a Big Little Life by Dean Koontz

A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog
by Dean Koontz (636.7 Koo)

The true story of the Koontz’s dog, Trixie.

She was three years old when she was retired as a service dog and adopted out to author Dean Koontz and his wife, Gerda. The best animal stories are humorous, poignant, relatable, and filled with many, many anecdotes and this one doesn’t disappoint. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll recognize your own pets in these stories, and you’ll love Trixie.

( official A Big Little Life video trailer on YouTube ) | ( official Dean Koontz web site )

Recommended by Charlotte K.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!

Unlikely Friendships

Unlikely Friendships: 47 Remarkable Stories From the Animal Kingdom
by Jennifer S. Holland [591.5 Hol]

I've enjoyed seeing posts in my Facebook and Twitter feeds, which shine a light on unusual and uplifting animal relationships, so I was quite please to find this book in the libraries' collection. Unlikely Friendships presents 47 short narratives, with incredible photographs to accompany them, which detail heartwarming and unexpected relationships between two different animals of two different species. You may think that the interactions between your household pets -- a dog and a cat, a cat and a hamster, etc. -- are cute. But you'll be astonished at the interspecies affection displayed by some of the pairings in this collection. Some of the stories have very short lives -- an orphaned infant of one species mothered by their potential enemy for the first few weeks of life. Others detail life-long relationships. But all will pluck at your heartstrings. Some of my favorite pairings include: The Elephant and the Sheep, The (wild) Leopard and the Cow, The Lion The Tiger and the Bear, The Nearsighted Deer and the Poodle, The Owl and the Spaniel, and The Rhinoceros the Warthog and the Hyena. -- recommended by Scott C. - Bennett Martin Public Library [If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Unlikely Loves, the sequel by the same author.]

[ publisher's official Jennifer Holland web page ]

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A Street Cat Named Bob

A Street Cat Named Bob
by James Bowen [Biography Bowen]

James Bowen's recent bestseller is a sweet "animal and their human" tale, that should appeal to anybody who loved the books about Dewey the Library Cat. Bowen was a recovering drug addict barely making a living at busking in the high-traffic areas of London, when he crosses paths with an injured male ginger cat in the hall of his flophouse. Despite attempting to avoid making the connection, Bowen feels drawn to the cat, and takes the stay in, nursing it back to health and finding a new purpose in his own life. In describing his rewarding new relationship with this extraordinary feline, Bowen reconnects with life -- leaving behind the life of a starving street musician and taking on the challenges of a licensed vendor of news magazines. He also reconnects with friends and family from his past and gets completely off of drugs. In his own works, Bob, the street cat, saves Bowen's life. Bob has become something of an internet celebrity, following the posting of some YouTube clips of James and Bob during their street musician days. You can now follow Bob's adventures on Twitter and Facebook, too! -- recommended by Scott C. - Bennett Martin Public Library [If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Dewey.]

[ YouTube videos associated with Street Cat Bob ]  

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New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!

New Customer Review - Nim Chimpsky

Nim Chimpsky, The Chimp Who Would Be Human
by Elizabeth Hess

Nim Chimpsky, The Chimp Who Would Be Human was a very touching story about a captive chimpanzee being studied for the ability of animals to learn languages. Nim Chimpsky was the chimp's name, a pun on a leading language researcher, Noam Chomsky. Nim was eventually able to learn American Sign Language, with the ability to communicate with other humans. Yet this project was looked down upon by some scientists, since they thought that this did not harness the chimp's true ability. -- review submitted by Felix C. - a customer of the Gere Branch Library

The libraries do not own this book -- you may wish to order it through our InterLibrary Loan service. The libraries do, however, have the movie Project Nim on DVD, which was based on this book.
 
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New Customer Reviews appear regularly in the pages of the BookGuide web site. You can visit the Customer Reviews page to see them all and/or submit your own, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually as we receive them.