Palin protest: San Francisco bookseller will donate profits from 'Going Rogue' to Alaska Wildlife Alliance

Sarah Palin's new book, "Going Rogue," may have struck a chord with the former Alaska governor's many fans, but there don't seem to be many wildlife advocates among that group.  (We'd imagine Palin doesn't have too many fans among the vegan community, either, owing to her comments in the book that "If any vegans came over for dinner, I could whip them up a salad, then explain my philosophy on being a carnivore: If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?")

Shortly after the book's release, independent bookstore owner Don Muller (himself an Alaska resident, but decidedly opposed to Palin's often controversial positions on that state's wildlife management) decided that he'd donate the profits from "Going Rogue" sales to the group Defenders of Wildlife, which has gone head-to-head with Palin in the past.  (By using Palin's book sales as a way to support the group, Muller said, he was able to "carry the book and do something positive.")  Now, Ecorazzi reports, Muller's not the only one.

Alaska bookseller will donate profits from Sarah Palin's book, 'Going Rogue,' to Defenders of Wildlife

Now, this is mavericky.

An independent bookseller in Sarah Palin's home state is donating the proceeds he makes off her book to a group that is among the biggest critics of the former Republican vice presidential candidate.

Don Muller owns Old Harbor Books in Sitka. He's selling Palin's memoir, "Going Rogue," for $28.99, and says he will donate profits to Defenders of Wildlife.

The wildlife conservation group often butted heads with Palin over her support of the state's predator control program, in which bears and wolves are shot from aircraft.

Muller says he's not a fan of Palin. He tells the Daily Sitka Sentinel that donating proceeds to Defenders of Wildlife is a way to "carry the book and do something positive."

-- Associated Press

Photo: Palin listens as John McCain addresses supporters during his election-night rally Nov. 4, 2008.  Credit: Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images

Food fight: Sarah Palin ticks off vegetarians and vegans in her new book, 'Going Rogue'

Sarah Palin's highly anticipated book, "Going Rogue," is not likely to win any literary awards, but it's very likely to sell a gazillion copies.  (It's currently Amazon's No. 1 bestselling book, besting even the likes of Stephen King and Dan Brown.)  

But very few of those copies, we suspect, will be purchased by vegetarians or vegans.  In his review, our colleague Tim Rutten explains that a large portion of "Going Rogue" covers Palin's life before she emerged as a well-known public figure, "so there's a lot of winter, guns, fish guts, long hours at the nets under the midnight sun and a great deal about Palin's fondness for meat.... There's even a photo of her father teaching her to skin a harbor seal, an activity the caption informs is now forbidden for all but native peoples under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Ah, for the good old days."

That part about Palin's love of meat products, perhaps unsurprisingly, is raising the hackles of some animal-loving vegetarians and vegans, according to our colleague Johanna Neuman of The Times' politics blog, Top of the Ticket.  Especially offensive to the animal-byproduct-free set?  Palin's comment that "If any vegans came over for dinner, I could whip them up a salad, then explain my philosophy on being a carnivore: If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?"  (Humorous news-aggregation site Fark.com's snarky rejoinder: "In other news, Sarah Palin endorses cannibalism.")

'Eating Animals' author Jonathan Safran Foer: Visiting factory farms, slaughterhouses part of writing process

Author Jonathan Safran Foer's latest, "Eating Animals," represents a departure from his previous work (he's published several novels; "Eating Animals" is nonfiction), and it's getting tongues wagging about its subject matter -- factory farming and its effects on animals, human health and the environment.  Our colleague Carolyn Kellogg had an interesting question-and-answer session with Foer recently on The Times' books blog, Jacket Copy; here's an excerpt:

Jacket Copy: In your research, did you ever find yourself in a place you didn't want to be, or observing something you didn't want to look at?

Jonathan Safran Foer: All the time. I would say that was the better part of my research. I didn't especially want to go inside factory farms, certainly not in the middle of the night. And I didn't like being in slaughterhouses. But -- that's OK. It was more important to me to see with my own eyes, rather than trust somebody else's version, or watch a video. Who knows how representative videos are.

JC: Did you take notes when you were in the slaughterhouses? When you were in the moment, how did you document what you would be writing about later?

JSF: Often I would go back to the car and write everything down. I had a camera, but usually what would happen was I would get back in the car, and then spend however long was necessary to write everything down.

JC: As a writer, you set yourself a difficult task -- in order for me as a reader to understand how horrible those scenes are, you have to evoke them.

JSF: Well, they're naturally horrible. Sometimes just a simple description is enough. I think often, in the book, I am detailing some of the most horrible things in the most plain unadorned way.

THERE'S MORE; READ THE REST. 

Photo: Foer in a 2002 photo. Credit: Robert Spencer / For the Times

Novelist Jonathan Safran Foer tackles nonfiction with his latest effort, 'Eating Animals'

Animal advocates everywhere are talking about author Jonathan Safran Foer's latest book, "Eating Animals."  Foer, known primarily as a novelist whose prior works include "Everything is Illuminated" and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," went the nonfiction route with "Eating Animals," which tackles the issue of factory farming and the toll it takes both on animals and the environment.  Here's an excerpt from our colleague Susan Salter Reynolds' review:

Looking forward to your turkey dinner? Think twice. It's time, argues Jonathan Safran Foer, to stop lying to ourselves. With all the studies on animal agriculture, pollution, toxic chemicals in factory-farmed animals and exposés of the appalling cruelty to animals in that industry, he writes in "Eating Animals," "We can't plead ignorance, only indifference. Those alive today are the generations that came to know better. We have the burden and the opportunity of living in the moment when the critique of factory farming broke into the popular consciousness. We are the ones of whom it will be fairly asked, 'What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals?' "

Some of our finest journalists (Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser) and animal rights activists (Peter Singer, Temple Grandin) -- not to mention Gandhi, Jesus, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, John Locke and Immanuel Kant (and so many others) -- have hurled themselves against the question of eating meat and the moral issues inherent in killing animals for food. Foer, 32, in this, his first work of nonfiction, intrepidly joins their ranks, inspired by fatherhood, the memory of his grandmother (who survived the Holocaust by scavenging her way to freedom) and something else.

This something else is what made critics of Foer's fiction, the novels "Everything Is Illuminated" (2002) and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" (2005), fall over themselves to praise him. It is a kind of fearless modernity: one part "whatever," one part descendant of Holocaust survivor (we've only got this one life, if that, to get things right) and one part soaringly beautiful, annoyingly entitled liberalism. What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals?

THERE'S MORE; READ THE REST.

Photo: Jonathan Safran Foer in 2007.  Credit: Granta

Berkeley Breathed's new book was inspired by one of Michael Vick's former pit bulls

Beloved cartoonist Berkeley Breathed had an unusual inspiration for his latest children's book, "Flawed Dogs." No it wasn't one of the Santa Barbaran's many rescued pit bulls, but it was one of Michael Vick's infamous dogs who was set to be put down.

"The book happened because I came across both a picture and a quote at about the same time -- a picture of one of Michael Vick's fight dogs. It was set to be put down, but a shelter in Utah decided to take the dog and a few others at the same time and try to rehabilitate them," Breathed told CNN. "This was the first time the dog had ever received any affection in its life.... It's the most moving picture of a dog I've ever seen, having gone through an impossible transition and fallen back to where dogs naturally go, which is just loving people."

Best known for other animals, most notably the skittish penguin named Opus and utterly bizarre Bill the Cat, the Pulitzer Prize-winner sat down with Hero Complex blogger Geoff Boucher earlier this month and talked about his career so far, his regrets and his plans for the future.

Video of Breathed reading from "Flawed Dogs" after the jump.

The most heavily contested book in America? It's 'And Tango Makes Three,' children's book about penguins

Our friends at The Times' books blog, Jacket Copy, have alerted us to the fact that it's the 27th annual Banned Books Week.  

Now, in the good ol' days of book-banning, groups joined together to rid the world of filth such as Joyce's "Ulysses," Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" and Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five."

Nowadays, though, the most heavily contested book in the U.S. is not faulted by its critics for its use of strong language, violence or perceived vulgarity. It's "And Tango Makes Three," a children's picture book about two real-life penguins that live in New York's Central Park Zoo. Roy and Silo, to be sure, aren't the most common of penguin pairs -- both are male -- but the children's book about them, which emphasizes the importance of tolerance to youngsters, hardly seems contentious.

A few years back, Roy and Silo seemed so desperate to hatch a chick that, undeterred by the fact that neither of them had the necessary anatomy to lay an egg, they placed a rock in their nest and tried to incubate it. Eventually, keepers gave them a fertile egg to care for, and they successfully hatched and raised a female chick -- the Tango of the book's title. 

Hardly the stuff of Steinbeck, but the books critics have attempted to have it banned from schools and libraries citing reasons including homosexual and "anti-family" themes. (Anti-family? It seems decidedly pro-family to us -- and pro-penguin to boot.)  Poor penguins -- if it's not a female penguin homewrecker breaking up their same-sex partnership, it's someone trying to ban their book.  

RELATED:
Gay penguin dads in German zoo hatch their first chick

-- Lindsay Barnett

PETA president Ingrid Newkirk comes to Pasadena

PETA cofounder and president Ingrid Newkirk says she hopes her latest book will inspire readers to make compassionate choices to help animals rather than simply painting a bleak portrait of their suffering. 

"I don’t want people to just be depressed when you tell them how animals suffer in the various food and clothing and entertainment industries," Newkirk told Pasadena Now. "I wanted to point people in the right direction so they can feel good about being kind to animals and can actively participate in being kind."

Newkirk's organization is certainly controversial (witness its protest of the Westminster Kennel Club dog show earlier this year, which featured demonstrators dressed as KKK members passing out leaflets that read in part, "Like the Klan, dog breeders who subscribe to the AKC standards are all about the sanctity of 'pure bloodlines.' ")  But, according to one reviewer on Amazon, her book takes an approach more friendly than adversarial, offering "concise, straightforward information about how animals suffer in the entertainment, clothing, food, experimentation, and 'pet' industries; compelling stories; fascinating facts about animals; simple steps to take to stop cruelty; and frequently asked questions."  

In support of the book, "The PETA Practical Guide To Animal Rights," Newkirk will be making an appearance at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena on Friday at 7 p.m. to sign copies and discuss the topics covered in the book.  [Correction: Newkirk's appearance is Thursday, July 16, not Friday.] Vroman's is located at 695 E. Colorado Blvd..  (More information at Vroman's website.) 

-- Lindsay Barnett

Culinary delicacy foie gras inspires a war -- and a book

We're hard pressed to think of a more controversial food than foie gras, the fancy (and, many animal advocates argue, inescapably cruel) dish made from the fattened livers of ducks or geese. To produce foie gras, the birds are force-fed large amounts of food through tubes pushed down their throats.

"In a matter of weeks, [the birds'] livers swell up to ten times their normal size," according to the website NoFoieGras.org, which is maintained by the animal protection organization Farm Sanctuary.  "Breathing and walking become difficult as the liver pushes against other organs, causing respiratory stress due to decreased air sac space in their lungs, and forcing the legs to move outward at an unnatural angle."

Chicago Tribune reporter Mark Caro's new book, "The Foie Gras Wars: How a 5,000-Year-Old Delicacy Inspired the World’s Largest Food Fight," offers an in-depth look at the practices that produce foie gras. 

Caro's book "is so well-written and so balanced in its treatment that it is, improbably, a real page turner. It has everything: fascinating characters, devious deeds, wit, suspense, science," Times food critic S. Irene Virbila writes on the Daily Dish blog.  "Guaranteed, you’ll think and think hard before you take that next bite of foie."  (Coming from a food critic, that's saying quite a lot.)

The story behind 'Greyhounds'

Los Angeles Times film critic Betsy Sharkey has chronicled the adoption of her greyhound, Riley, for L.A. Unleashed. Today she has a different sort of  greyhound tale to share:

Barbara Karant is shameless when it comes to greyhounds, and that’s a very good thing for the rest of us. A professional photographer who usually has architecture, interior design or art in sharp focus, her world changed in 1997 when she got her first dog and her first greyhound, Easton. Although maybe it’s not so surprising that she was drawn to the breed since the architecture of these dogs is the essence of beauty and function, power and grace.

I’d put in a call to Karant to talk about “Greyhounds,” a beautiful new coffee table book that landed on my desk after she read about my attempts to teach Riley, my recently adopted 4-year-old rescued racer, to sit. (She promises that with the help of a little string cheese, we can get there. Progress reports on that to come.)

“Greyhounds” is a collection of her photos of these exquisite creatures -- both her own dogs and many others who have come through rescue organization Greyhounds Only’s doors--along with essays by author Alice Sebold ("The Lovely Bones") and singer-songwriter Neko Case, among others. Most of the proceeds go to help fund greyhound rescue; think of it as a “buy a book, save a dog” project.

Karant didn’t expect to fall in love with greyhounds when she adopted Easton in 1997. But she did, and soon she had three greys, “the perfect number,” she says, with Slim (the book’s coverboy) and Turtledove rounding out the family.

Easton has since passed on and Fancy, who came off the track with a badly broken leg, stepped in to help fill that empty space, though talking about Easton can still bring Karant to tears. “There’s something special about the bond with your first greyhound, I can’t quite explain it....” she says, her voice trailing off. “I started taking photos in 1999 when I wanted to help give Greyhounds Only a continuing revenue stream -- they were totally broke,” she says of the nonprofit she now heads. It is based in Chicago, where Karant lives with her greys in a renovated/expanded 1890s-era grocery store in Bucktown. (For a peek at her house and just how fabulous a space can be even when you’re sharing it with three greyhounds, check out this Chicago Magazine article.)