Overall Opinion and Thoughts

Discuss the September 2016 Book of the Month, A Spiritual Dog: Bear by J. Wesley Porter.
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godreaujea
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Re: Overall Opinion and Thoughts

Post by godreaujea »

I think this book is a bit dry and overall a not very interesting children's book. This is a sweet memento for the author and his family, but I do not find it to be substantial to readers in the long run.
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Kdonegan91
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Post by Kdonegan91 »

I thought this book could have been better. I did like the pictures and the loving and sweet tone of the book. However, the book was kind of boring and contained way too many spelling and grammatical errors. My 14 year old step sister liked the book so it depends on the audience.
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Post by AA1495 »

yayramabel wrote:As I opened "Bear: A Spiritual Dog," I was very excited to dive in. I really wanted to love this book! Unfortunately, although I wasn't sure what to expect, the book simply didn't speak to me. I am a dog lover, have had pets all my life and my two dogs are my babies, so stories about dogs or pets in general really get to me. But this book, although a nice memento for the family -with sweet pictures, as others have said-, failed to move me.

Not only was I not impressed or affected by this book, but there were several aspects that actually bothered me, which I'm sure are part of the reason why I didn't shed a tear reading this. The biggest offenders were:
-Grammatical errors: There were way too many of these... I mean, the book is very short - so, no excuse!
-The writing: as others have said, it was dry, almost clinical. It felt a bit robotic, there was no rhythm or emotion to it. I thought it was going to be quirky or funny, or emotional, etc... but, it wasn't.

All in all, to me, it was uninspired.
I love dogs too. Agree with your points on the grammatical mistakes and the writing style. I like the way you expressed your thoughts about the book!
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Post by princess-bookworm »

I loved that it included pictures, I agree with what most were saying about that - that it really allows the reader to connect with the story. It felt very realistic and relatable as a dog owner myself.
That being said, I was a little disappointed! I was hoping that it would be a little quirky, silly, light hearted... I felt like the language used and the way the author portrayed bits of the story was really dry, overall.. It was virtually emotion-less, so I was bummed about that.
And the grammatical errors... nothing frustrated me more than that!
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Post by NhkeiraT »

Seems like a touching story.
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Dat real dice
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Post by Dat real dice »

:eusa-think: on see the book i felt so quick to go through it, it was too short,but on the contrary the picture's where really facinatin..the grammaticall error killed my sprit...which is nt substencial for readers.
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Post by Namaste23 »

I thought this book would make a better brochure for the local animal shelter, but I also agree it would make a great personal scrapbook or memento for the authors family. I think to make it a children's book, it would need to be visually stimulating and edited.
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Post by Abi McCoy »

This book felt like a family's personal scrapbook more than a children's story to me. It was a simple, easy read, but the text was stilted and lacking emotion, which was disappointing since this was an emotional topic. There were also many errors, so I wasn't very impressed overall.
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Post by photosynthesis19 »

I recently reviewed the book and unfortunately found it pretty underwhelming. I thought the story was very sweet and I could really feel the love the author had toward their dog. However, the book was riddled with grammatical errors, which made it difficult to enjoy the reading experience. I'm therefore unlikely to recommend this book to others.
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Post by Micheal Ukewuihe »

The storyline is relatable and quite touching but the story itself and how it was organized didn’t hold my attention. I expected the book to be captivating and keep me invested and that wasn’t the case with this book.
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