Vet on Call: My First Year as an Out-of-Hours Vet by Marc Abraham

Book 36, Vet on Call: My First Year as an Out-of-Hours Vet, was a lighthearted book about Marc Abraham's first year of working nights and evenings as a vet in Brighton.

It's not a serious book at all, I am sure there are much weightier tombs than this about life as a veterinarian. In fact it's written more in the tone of s semi-autobiographical comedy romance set in a vet's surgery. It even has a cast of characters because the same people, even the animal and humans who use the vets, crop up throughout the book. There are probably only about a dozen serious animal casualties described in the 300+ pages.

How much of this book is true and how much is fictionalised is a moot point. If you've read A Million Little Pieces, a controversial "autobiography", packed with quire a few long tales, you might get a feel for what this book is like. It's vastly inferior to A Million Little Pieces however and I award Vet on Call 5 out of 10. I'd have preferred something a little more "serious" but there's no pleasing me because I describe "serious" books like Regent's Park and A History of St Martin's Dorking as boring as dull. I admit I am hard to please!

Next up for Book 37 is the third book in the Homes/Gardens/Pets section which is about hedgehogs, a sort of wild pet I suppose that the book is encouraging you to attract to your garden.

It's an old book from the dark and distant days of the 1990s when nobody had home computers, the library had date due back stamps (though they still do at the Performing Arts Library!) but hedgehogs and gardens haven't changed much, so I would imagine most of it will still be relevant in our ultra modern world. My garden is rather wild at the moment because I spend too long indoors and rarely set foot in it, there's probably not much more I could do to encourage hedgehogs but there's only one way to find out!