Penelope's Reviews > Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals

I kind of want to give this book 3 stars, but when I try to think about what I learned from it...the title pretty much sums it up. If a book can't go beyond its 9-word title, that's a problem for me. Ultimately, Herzog's only certain conclusion seems to be that our relationship with other species is complicated. No kidding! I was hoping for more than that.

It seemed like there was a lot of emphasis on the "Some we love" aspect of the book. Lots of information about pets, including Herzog's speculations about why we have them and why they aren't consistent across cultures. As a dog owner and someone who works with dogs on a daily basis, I found these chapters interesting but the information was sometimes disjointed and didn't seem to contribute to a larger argument. I often felt like the author was presenting information (lots of reference to various studies and books) solely for the sake of saying "Look at all this cool stuff anthrozoologists have discovered!" That's not to say that the information isn't interesting--it is!--but I couldn't see how most of it contributed to explaining the paradoxes and hypocrisy that the author is investigating here.

I thought the most informative part was Chapter 9, in which Herzog discusses the philosophies of Peter Singer and Tom Regan, whose theories have laid the ground work for animal rights activists today. In this chapter he really gets down to the nitty gritty and I wish more of the book had been like this chapter. Herzog's discussion about experimenting on animals (and how the public views such practices) is also interesting.

Overall, I found this book compelling. It was a quick read, full of intriguing facts and interesting anecdotes. I think my rating might be a bit harsh but this book really didn't live up to my expectations (lots of information, few conclusions), and there was an emphasis on the more pleasant human-animal relationships (pets) rather than the more morally troubling relationship between, say, humans and factory farmed animals.