All Creatures Great and Small (All Creatures Great and Small #1 & 2) by James Herriot

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot and narrated by Christopher Timothy was recommended me to as a riveting audiobook. Since I have recently become road trip lady, I was excited that it was available to immediately download and listen and spent the last weekend listening to it.

I had very vague memories of watching the show on PBS when I was a child, but as with most things I watch, this memory is mostly old cars going up and down hills and an occasional cow. 

This book was cozy and delightful, filled with whimsical anecdotes of Herriot's first few years as a veterinarian apprentice in the Yorkshire Dales. It's pretty low stakes, unless you're really concerned about whether or not cows died a century ago, but that doesn't mean that there weren't chapters where I was deeply concerned about the safety of other people on the road because I was crying (I'm mostly thinking of chapter eleven, if you need to know). There's a bit of medical grossness, but there were only one or two instances where I made a face because it was pretty gross. Most of it was very PG. 

I didn't love this narrator. He talked pretty slowly and even I, a loyalist to regular playback speed (it's how the performance was intended to be listened to - you don't speed it up when you listen to the Beatles or watch Dirty Dancing, do you?) was tempted to bump that up. But I did listen to the normal speed and sort of enjoyed the leisurely pace after a bit. It's a great antidote to the go go go world of 2024, especially the scenes where he just gets out of the car and looks around. 

I think you'll know from the above description if this is the right book for you or not. It's over fifteen hours on audio, so it's not a short listen, but it was an interesting one if you're into that sort of thing.

4/5 stars

Lines of note:

They had a toughness and a philosophical attitude which was new to me. Misfortunes, which would make the city dweller want to bang his head against the wall were shrugged off with "ah, well, these things happen." (timestamp 1:44:50)

I need to cultivate this attitude.

When Siegfried got an idea, he didn't muck about. Immediate action was his watch word. (timestamp 3:22:00)

I also need to cultivate the ability make and act on decisions quickly.

...seemed always to be at my elbow, filling up the enormous glass or pushing dainties at me. I found it delightful.(3:56:12)

Who doesn't like to be treated to the good life?

If only vetting just consisted of treating sick animals, but it didn't. There were so many other things. (timestamp 6:10:12)

People. By "other things," he means people.

Over my thirty odd years in practice I can recall many occasions when I looked a complete fool, but there is a peculiarly piercing quality about the memory of myself, bare to the waist, the center of a ring of hostile stares..(timestamp 10:44:35)

Do you have a memory that haunts you? It's not the big things that haunt me (the time I wrecked the car, CCed everyone in our department on an email with FERPA-protected information, or fell and broke my leg), but what keeps me up at night is an incident where I accidentally turned in a paper in college that had one page of a draft copy that had my copyediting marks on it instead of the final draft. Serious nightmare material there. 

I often had trouble identifying people outside their usual environment. (timestamp 14:22:46)

This is me. I am terrible about it. One time I saw a woman with a tiny baby in a coffeeshop and I knew that I knew her from somewhere, but I couldn't place her. She was so excited to see me and asked me if I wanted to hold her baby (and I did because I'm not a monster and this baby was teeeeeeeeny) and we had an entire conversation and I left feeling like maybe I was a monster because I still never figured out who she was.

She was a woman who worked at the organization where I had volunteered and had been on maternity leave for a few months and I only realized it when she returned to work. Apparently this is the post where I share with you all of my embarrassing stories. 

Hat mentions (why hats?):

When I first entered the hillside barn, I'd been surprised to see a little, bright-eyed old man in a porkpie hat settling down comfortably on a bale of straw. (timestamp 5:57)

Uncle took off his hat and scratched his head in disbelief. (timestamp 13:50)

I might have been in an office with the windows tight shut against the petrol fumes and the traffic noise, the desk light shining on the columns of figures, my bowler hat hanging on the wall. (timestamp 1:50:50)

A mass of curls, incongruous and very dark, peaked from under her hat. (timestamp 3:14:06)

...wore an ancient hat with a brim which flopped around his ears.  (timestamp 4:01:34)

"Don't you ever think of wearing a hat?" (timestamp 4:44:28)

...had removed his hat and was beating the dogs off with it. (timestamp 6:12:16)

...lashed out again with his hat and was gone. (timestamp 6:13:53) 

...but he had a stripy top hat, too, and a stick. (timestamp 6:34:52)

There should have been a beautiful woman in one of those pointed hats peeping out from that mullioned casement. (timestamp 9:59:26)

"I'll get me hat." (timestamp 11:37:53)

...expensive tweed coats and fur-trimmed hats. (timestamp 14:00:49)

The man looked down at the hat. (timestamp 14:48:14)