Kelly Conaboy Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Kelly Conaboy
Kelly Conaboy is a writer living in Brooklyn. She was a writer-at-large at New York Magazine’s The Cut. Before that she was a writer at the Hairpin, Gawker, and Videogum, some sites that no longer exist, though that’s not Kelly’s fault.

Her work has also been published by the New Yorker, The Atlantic, and the New York Times.

For Videogum she was hired as junior editor in the year 2011, where she got made fun of for her disliking a movie called “You Can Count On Me”.

Kelly built herself up thinking that she was going to get Peter, and she’d obviously be in love with him instantly. But she knows that’s going to happen so maybe if she knows it’s going to happen she can set it aside. She was trying to do that for a little while, then she realized, about the second day she had him, that it wasn’t really an experience that she had with other dogs before.

As Kelly would walk dogs at some other rescue everyday. And that was hard, too, taking them back. She realized pretty quick that she had to beg to allow her to keep this dog because Peter was her dog. It just felt like they were on the same exact wavelength and was a good fit.

While writing “The Particulars of Peter”, she did a ton of interviews for the book, and she put them all in when she was doing the first round of writing the chapters.

And a bunch of them, when you read through them, would look like you’re reading five thousand words only on the science of diseases that you can contract from different animals just by sleeping with them. She gets bored rather easily, so if she’s reading something that she wrote and she feels herself getting bored, she uses that as a guide for where to pull back and decide to just use two scientists rather than six.

She’d also been a blogger for around ten years by that time, and it is something that Kelly’s done for a long time: attempting to be funny but offering something that is also not just a joke.

Every day she had new questions about Peter and about how to best take care of him, so it wasn’t that tough to come up with some areas that she wanted to explore. It was truly about narrowing it down to what was actually possible.

One of the many things she didn’t write about was having parties for dogs. You hire people and they’ll come to your house and throw this lavish event for you dog. She wanted to do it for Peter, but it fell apart when she couldn’t figure out how it would work and the price.

Then there was a scent worth class, which Peter really enjoyed, that she ultimately didn’t write about.

Peter was named after Peter Parker. It is a name that came from Badass Brooklyn Animal Rescue, where she adopted him from. They give all their dogs celebrity or famous names. And it fits for her dog. Before he was at Badass, Peter was just a stray in southeast Georgia. He was picked up by Badass on one of their many trips to the area that is densely populated with stray dogs.

Kelly finds the best part of having a dog is just having the chance to be with them, to get to know them, and to know that they are kind of perfect beings that you are able to take care of. Just being able to be around them, and care for them, and experience their life right alongside your own.

“The Particulars of Peter” is a non-fiction book that was released in the year 2020. A trip through the weird corners of obsessive dog ownership and the writer’s own infatuation with Peter, her perfect dog.

Kelly met Peter during the spring of 2017. He (puppy-eyed, calm, with the heart of a poet, and the soul to match) came to her first as a foster. He wasn’t able to stay with his previously assigned foster for reasons that aren’t any of your business, but are related to frequent urination. The rescue needed somebody free of the kind of responsibilities which would force her to leave the house for either socializing or work, and a writer was the natural choice. Thus started a love story for the ages.

This is an exploration of the joy that is found in loving a dog so much that it makes you feel as though you are going to combust, and the author’s possibly codependent relationship with her sweet dog, Peter. Readers will follow the dog and his owner to Woofstock, “the largest outdoor festival for dogs in all of North America”, and then accompany them to lessons in Canine Freestyle, which is a sport where dogs perform a routine set to music and creating the illusion that they’re dancing with their owners.

From seeing if dogs are able to sense a ghost’s presence, to learning about Peter’s DNA, this book will give readers a trip into the little world of dogs.

Fans of the book loved Kelly’s writing, as it is comical, satirical, and self-deprecating in all the best possible ways, and readers like the way that she is able to laugh at herself. Her love for Peter is made very clear with every page of the book. The book is lighthearted fun that you can read one or two chapters of before taking the dogs out for a walk before coming back to.

There are a few emotional scenes, when Kelly is worried about Peter that hit home for dog owners. Or the funny part when she describes the time she gets him a sweater and his reaction to all. This book is quite a treat and written in the familiar dialogue that many neurotic dog parent has got running through their minds. It’s also super relatable to anybody that has ever loved a dog. If you have ever cried over how much you love your dog, then this is the one for you.