Every cat owner has wondered why their cat is acting the way it does. This book likely has the answer. It provides an in-depth understanding of the underlying reasons for a cat’s problem behavior. Armed with the science on cat behavior and real-life examples, this book helps cat owners understand why their cats act the way they do and addresses behavior problems. It gives owners insight on promoting their cat’s physical and psychological health and wellness in order to maintain a good relationship. It can help you understand how to deal with unwanted behaviors and in general help your cat live a longer and fuller life.
When Horace the elephant turns eleven, he celebrates in style by inviting his exotic friends to a splendid costume party. But a mystery is afoot, for in the midst of the games, music, and revelry, someone has eaten the birthday feast. The rhyming text and lavish, detailed illustrations each provide clues, and it's up to the reader to piece them together and decide whodunit.
Publishers Weekly: "The fun of poring over the pictures is matched by the enjoyment derived from the text witty, ingenious verses."
Quindlen writes about a woman’s life, from childhood memories to manic motherhood to middle age, using the events of her life to illuminate ours. Considering and celebrating everything from marriage, girlfriends, our mothers, parenting, faith, and loss, to all the stuff in our closets, Quindlen says for us what we may wish we could say ourselves. As she did in her columns in the New York Times and in her book A Short Guide to a Happy Life (2000), she uses her own past, present, and future to explore what matters most to women at different ages. She mentions marriage, girlfriends, stuff crowded in our heads (like memories of work, home, appointments, news, gossip, plans) so that our heads are not only full, they’re overflowing."
Quotes to remember:
1. ". . . reading . . . books and poetry and essays make us feel as though we're connected, as though the thoughts and feelings we believe are singular and sometimes nutty are shared by others, that we are all more alike than different." (p. x).
2. ". . . it's sometimes more important to be nice than to be honest." (p. 32).
3. ". . . Donna was my best friend, what my daughter calls her bestie, what is now referred to as a BFF, or Best Friend Forever." (p. 34).
4. "One study of college students showed that both men and women valued friendship, but they were deeply divergent when asked what friendship entailed. Guys thought it meant doing things together, women that it meant emotional sharing and talking. Another study showed that while stress produced the old familiar fight-or-flight response in men ― or, as we women often think of it, lash our or shut down ― it produces what the researchers termed a tend-or-befriend effect in women. When things go wrong, they reach for either the kids or the girlfriends. Or both." (p. 35).
5. "Asking why is the way to wisdom. Why are we supposed to want possessions we don't need and work that seems beside the point and tight shoes and a fake tan? Why are we supposed to think new is better than old, youth and vigor better than long life and experience?" (p. 41).
6. "My mother was a housewife, a rather reserved person with a sweet nature . . . But the truth was that once upon a time my mother had been someone else. . . . I know this because of the drafting table in the basement. . . . Apparently for a short time after high school my mother worked as a draftsman ― that's what she said, draftsman, not draftswoman ― at General Electric." (pp. 43-44).
7. "How did I forget for so many years about my mother's drafting table? Where did it go?" (p. 49). (MY NOTE: My husband had a drafting table at home, which I used for drawing illustrations for a book. One of my daughters wrote for an assignment in third grade that "my mother doesn't go to work, but she works for a man . . ." Yes, drawing the illustrations to be used in his book.)
8. Eldest children are often much more understanding of the need to be alone; I am an eldest child, as is my husband, a marriage of two executive-function humans that I sometimes joke should be outlawed by Congress." (p. 78).
9. "My grandmother used to recite a little ditty: A son is a son till he takes a wife, but a daughter's a daughter the rest of her life. I always thought it had ominous undertones. When my father demanded that I quit college to care for my mother when she was ill, I occasionally made bitter comments about the tradition of Irish Catholic households sacrificing their daughters for the greater good. But it wasn't just my father, and it wasn't just the Irish, and it wasn't just then." (p. 134).
Michele Harper is a female, African American emergency room physician in a profession that is overwhelmingly male and white. Brought up in Washington, D.C., in a complicated family, she went to Harvard, where she met her husband. They stayed together through medical school until two months before she was scheduled to join the staff of a hospital in central Philadelphia, when he told her he couldn’t move with her. Her marriage at an end, she began her new life in a new city, in a new job, as a newly single woman.In the following years, as Harper learned to become an effective ER physician, bringing insight and empathy to every patient encounter, she came to understand that each of us is broken — physically, emotionally, psychically. How we recognize those breaks, how we try to mend them, and where we go from there are all crucial parts of the healing process.The Beauty in Breaking is the story of Harper’s journey toward self-healing. Each of the patients Harper writes about taught her something important about recuperation and recovery.
As she shines a light on the systemic disenfranchisement of the patients she treats as they struggle to maintain their health and dignity, Harper comes to understand the importance of allowing ourselves to make peace with the past as we draw support from the present. In this book, she passes along the necessary lessons that she has learned as a daughter, a woman, and a physician.
"This charming fable is at once a love story that skips through six centuries, and also a love song to the timeless craft of glassmaking. Chevalier probes the fierce rivalries and enduring loyalties of Murano's glass dynasties, capturing the roar of the furnace, the sweat on the skin, and the glittering beauty of Venetian glass." – Geraldine Brooks, author of Horse
