Meow … we
have a special book purrfect for cat lovers everywhere!
A true treasure of a book, The Big New Yorker Book of Cats, is an irresistible anthology chock full of cat articles, humor, poems, fiction, covers and cartoons, in gorgeous full color. The contributors to the volume include an amazing list of writers including: Elizabeth Bishop, T.C. Boyle, Maeve Brennan, Roald Dahl, Jules Feiffer, M. F. K. Fisher, Hendrik Hertzberg, Ted Hughes, Jamaica Kincaid, Patricia Marx, Steven Millhauser, Paul Muldoon, Haruki Murakami, Jean Rhys, James Thurber, Calvin Trillin, John Updike, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and E.B. White.
Last year the magazine published the critically acclaimed The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs, it became a national bestseller. It was the “must have” (Booklist) gift for Christmas 2012 for the dog lover in your life.
Praise for The Big New Yorker Book of Cats:
“Covers, cartoons, authors of pieces both longer and shorter, reflect current views of the feline subject in all its glory…. The quality, humor and variety make for another successful New Yorker collection.”—Kirkus Reviews
“An eminently giftable anthology.”—Publishers Weekly
Tucked between the essays and short stories are also a number of delightful poems, such as this 1960 gem by Ted Hughes:
TOMCATS
Daylong this tomcat lies stretched flat
As an old rough mat, no mouth and no eyes.
Continual wars and wives are what
Have tattered his ears and battered his head.
Like a bundle of old rope and iron
Sleeps till blue dusk. Then reappear
His eyes, green as ringstones: he yawns wide red,
Fangs fine as a lady’s needle and bright.
A tomcat sprang at a mounted knight,
Locked round his neck like a trap of hooks
While the knight rode fighting its clawing and bite.
After hundreds of years the stain’s there
On the stone where he fell, dead of the tom:
That was at Barnborough. The tomcat still
Grallochs odd dogs on the quiet,
Will take the head clean off your simple pullet.
Is unkillable. From the dog’s fury,
From gunshot fired point-blank he brings
His skin whole, and whole
From owlish moons of bekittenings
Among ashcans. He leaps and lightly
Walks upon sleep, his mind on the moon
Nightly over the round world of men
Over the roofs go his eyes and outcry.
(The poem was penned the year Frieda, his daughter with Sylvia Plath, was born — a child nursed on nursery rhymes — so one can’t help but find in Hughes’s playful verses the hint of an irreverent nursery rhyme.)
Here are a few favorite cartoons and cover from the book:
