The Silence of Animals by John Gray

To be honest I picked this up because I thought it would be about how animals communicate, but instead it is about how we as human animals view ourselves as above other members of the animal kingdom and the pitfalls of viewing our human history as a progression from the past to the present.  Gray really made me think, about the basic assumption many of us hold that as time goes on and humans become more educated and exposed to 'civilization' that we naturally will become less savage and more altruistic, when all the evidence is against that thesis.  He writes of the silence of humans and its qualatitive difference from the non-language and silence of animals, and why we search silence out.  Challenging, difficult and rewarding.

Rags and Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales by Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt

On the one hand this is a really interesting collection, who wouldn't like to see some of their favourite authors rewriting the stories that have influenced them.  However, because most of these are not fairy stories I didn't know the inspirations, it would have been useful to have either a reprint of the stories included in the case of shorter ones or good summaries.  I did like the actual stories and found them moving, disturbing and haunting in turn, but I just felt this book was missing a trick.