Rescue Ink: How Ten Guys Saved Countless Dogs and Cats, Twelve Horses, Five Pigs, One duck and a Few Turtles by Rescue Ink with Denise Flaim

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What do you get when you mix some tough, burly, tattooed bikers with the most vulnerable animals in need of protection and tender care?  You get Rescue Ink, a no-nonsense bunch of guys in New York who share interests in motorcycles, hot rods, tats, and helping defenseless creatures.  As seen on the National Geographic Channel, Rescue Ink is not afraid to confront the toughest, creepiest, most hostile animal abusers in order to secure the safety of neglected and maltreated animals.  Proud of their in-your-face approach, they use any means within the law, and occasionally some actions that are not entirely legal, to rescue animals in need, but it’s not all tough-guy bravado and glamorous, macho drama.  They can be as nurturing as they are pugilistic, and they spend a lot of time on the more humdrum tasks of animal care and adoption placement.  How else can they deal with 180 cats rescued from a single house?  Each chapter focuses on a different member’s story.  And yes, there are pictures!  You’ve got to see these guys.

The Girl in the Song: The True Stories Behind 50 Rock Classics by Michael Heatley

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What do The Beatles’ song “Something,” Derek and the Dominoes’ “Layla,” and Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight” have in common?  They were all written about the same woman.  What real-life experiences give rise to an enduring rock song?  If you’re into classic rock, you’ll know many of the songs in this book.  The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and David Bowie are well represented, with more than one song apiece.  Other artists include The Kinks, Pink Floyd, Bob Marley, Elton John, Crosby, Stills, & Nash, the Police, and U2.  Some songs were even written during your lifetime; you won’t find Death Cab for Cutie or Foster the People here, mind you, but there are songs from Coldplay, Counting Crows, and Oasis.  Many of the women who inspired these songs are famous in their own right; keep an eye open for Janis Joplin, Lisa Bonet, Joni Mitchell, Mia Farrow, Gwyneth Paltrow, Caroline Kennedy, Monica Potter, and Billie Jean King.  The bite-sized stories behind these 50 songs are great for skipping around, and the pictures are fascinating.

Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose

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With a name like Prose, how could she not be a writer?  With more than two dozen books to her credit (fiction and nonfiction; for adults, young adults, and kids), and having taught creative writing for two decades, Francine Prose has some insight into the writing process.  But she doesn’t want to just tell you how to write well; she wants master writers to show you.  Here she demonstrates how to read closely and study an author’s craft, and she recommends specific writers to read for particular purposes.  Study sentence structure with Philip Roth, characterization with George Eliot, and dialogue with John Le Carré.  Just what is Flannery O’Connor up to, using such small details to convey so much?  How does James Baldwin build such musical paragraphs?  What can Chekhov teach us about the “rules” of writing – and the joy of breaking them?  Warning: if you aspire to scale the heights of deconstructionist literary theory in order to deftly and smugly prove that works of literature – I mean “texts” – don’t have any actual meaning, this book may not be for you.  But if you’d like to read great books very closely in order to appreciate and understand what their authors are doing, and you don’t find the prospect of also loving those books to be quaint or naive, you might want to take this one out for a spin.