I Love Dean Koontz

Mom and I have a favorite author of all time and that's Dean Koontz. We love his books because of the characters. He is known as a horror writer but his books are so much more than that. He also has lots of really good dog characters.

His non-fiction account of his life with his beloved Golden Retriever (A Big Little Life), Trixie, is a book we highly recommend. I knew from the beginning that Trixie was already OTRB with so many of my other friends but mom and me still cried our hearts out for Dean and Gerda Koontz and all who loved Trixie when she went to the bridge. Definitely a three handkerchief ending!

Dean and Gerda are huge supporters of Canine Companions for Independence, a wonderful organization that trains service animals for people with disabilities. Their dog Trixie was a CCI dog who had to retire from service due to elbow surgery. Their current dog, is a descendant of Trixie.

Dean doesn't do many interviews so I wanted to share this one with my pals. He was on CBS Sunday Morning last week.




If you have never read Dean Koontz before, here are some great ones with dog characters to check out. You can find more info on all of these on his site.

Watchers

The Darkest Evening of the Year

Breathless

One Door Away from Heaven

Fear Nothing

The Taking

Relentless

Mom's absolute favorite is one of Dean's earliest books: Lightning


Check out Dean Koontz on his website, Facebook and Twitter. There is also an App and he has a You Tube page. Trixie has her own page and you can link to that from the main website. When you watch the video you will see that Dean isn't on the cutting edge of technology (really, did you see that 'puter?) but someone who works for him definitely is as he has some cool sites!

Sample Sunday Yoda Style

Mom got a Kindle for Christmas and she really loves it. She already had an iPad and she read books on that but the Kindle is so much lighter and she can even download Kindle books on the iPad if she wants.

One of her friends at work clued her in to a great website called Pixel of Ink. This website features free or deeply discounted (like $1.99 or $.99) books for the Kindle. Mom and I get their blog delivered everyday and peruse the available books and download some.

Today we found out about a cool thing called Sample Sunday. Apparently it happens every Sunday and authors share samples of their work and we lucky book lovers get to find out about new books and authors. You can follow the hashtag #samplesunday an now Pixel of Ink has started a special Facebook page and an event for Sample Sunday.

So Sunday we are going to plunge into Sample Sunday and find some new books to read. I think that's going to be fun!

You don't have a Kindle? That's okay because there are free Kindle reading apps for most devices.

I Like Chet

I confess that I do not know how to read. Maybe when I get older and there aren't so many exciting distractions, I might be able to concentrate on the task. In the meantime, mom reads me stuff she thinks I would be interested in.

Mom does lots of driving each week. She works 70 miles away from where we live and she has to drive 140 miles 4 days a week (Friday is telework day - almost as good as the weekend - since she works from home). Apparently humans can't drive and read at the same time, well not exactly. Mom gets other people to read to her while she drives. In the morning she listens to NPR and Morning Edition (unless she is running late) and at night all these different people read to her. She is lucky that her library has a service where she can download the books to her little music player - I guess it is a book player for her! Her car has a plug that the player attaches to so the reading comes over the car stereo.

Well, mom found a really cool book called Dog On It! by Spencer Quinn. This book caught my attention right away. It's about Bernie and Chet, two private detectives. What's different is that Chet is a dog AND he does all of the story telling. We aren't finished with the book yet but Chet has already been in some tough spots - attacked by a knife wielding perp, kidnapped by some Russian mob types, attacked by a mountain lion and almost euthanized at a kill shelter. Mom claims that Chet being in harms way seems to bother her more than the humans in the books she reads.


This Spencer Quinn guy really understands dogs. In fact, I'm convinced that his dog wrote that book and he is taking the credit. Or mom says that sometimes authors say their name is something different. I don't quite understand but maybe the real dog author wants to be disguised as a human to avoid the pupparazzi. Check Dog On It! out. I am happy to see that there is already a sequel.

Up until now, Dean Koontz has been my favorite dog writer. Mom has a couple of new dog books by him we need to read (but she has the books not the ones where people read them for her) and she hasn't gotten to them yet.