Avoid Grammatical Minefields with this Entertaining GuideConfused about when to use "its" or "it's" or the correct spelling of "principal" and "principle"? My Grammar and I...or Should That Be me? is a refresher course for anyone who has ever been stumped by spelling confusion, dangling modifiers, split infinities, or for those who have no idea what these things even are.Clever, informative, and fun, this delightful little handbook offers practical and humorous guidance on how to avoid falling into language pitfalls.* Sentence Structure: Let's ponder the subject or object: Is it "I" or is it "me"?* Parts of Speech: "whose" or "who's"? "which" or "that"?* Punctuation: So where does that comma go, anyway?* Spelling and Confusables: There are times when the spelling "rules" confuse.* Elements of Style: You'll find there's lots more to know about grammar.* ...and for grammar know-it-alls, there are entertaining "Smart Aleck" tidbits throughout.

    The Calm Birth School teaches and supports modern women (and their families) how to create calm and positive birth experiences that make them want to shout from the rooftops for all the right reasons. This comprehensive how-to guide will teach you all you need to know about hypnobirthing without morphing you into a new-age hipster. You’ll learn: The science and psychology behind why you don’t have to give birth in agony. How to work with your body and breath, defying the birthing horror stories you’ve heard and allowing your body to do what it was designed to do. A total mindset overhaul that will not only create a calm, positive birth but which will also empower you in every area of your life.Breathing techniques to enable you to deal with any stressful situation calmly and effectively: before and during birth, and beyond.Exactly what you need to do to enjoy every step of your pregnancy and birth, whether things go according to plan or not.So if you are a control freak; if you’re scared out of your mind about giving birth; if you believe in your body but do not want to waft a joss stick around your lady parts… This book is for you. With lots of juicy bonuses like birth preferences planners, a confidence building Mp3, practice schedule and lots more included you'll have everything you need to create the positive birth experience you deserve. Suzy Ashworth is a pregnancy coach, hypnotherapist and psychotherapist with two children and a growing bump. She has a passion for showing women exactly why they can and should believe in themselves, empowering them to create mind-blowing birth experiences.

    And if any is left, I buy food and clothing." — --Desiderius Erasmus — Those who share Erasmus's love of those curious bundles of paper bound together between hard or soft covers know exactly how he felt. These are the people who can spend hours browsing through a bookstore, completely oblivious not only to the passage of time but to everything else around them, the people for whom buying books is a necessity, not a luxury. A Passion for Books is a celebration of that love, a collection of sixty classic and contemporary essays, stories, lists, poems, quotations, and cartoons on the joys of reading, appreciating, and collecting books.This enriching collection leads off with science-fiction great Ray Bradbury's Foreword, in which he remembers his penniless days pecking out Fahrenheit 451 on a rented typewriter, conjuring up a society so frightened of art that it burns its books. This struggle--financial and creative--led to his lifelong love of all books, which he hopes will cosset him in his grave, "Shakespeare as a pillow, Pope at one elbow, Yeats at the other, and Shaw to warm my toes. Good company for far-travelling."Booklovers will also find here a selection of writings by a myriad of fellow sufferers from bibliomania. Among these are such contemporary authors as Philip Roth, John Updike, Umberto Eco, Robertson Davies, Nicholas Basbanes, and Anna Quindlen; earlier twentieth-century authors Christopher Morley, A. Edward Newton, Holbrook Jackson, A.S.W. Rosenbach, William Dana Orcutt, Robert Benchley, and William Targ; and classic authors such as Michel de Montaigne, Gustave Flaubert, Petrarch, and Anatole France.Here also are entertaining and humorous lists such as the "Ten Best-Selling Books Rejected by Publishers Twenty Times or More," the great books included in Clifton Fadiman and John Major's New Lifetime Reading Plan, Jonathan Yardley's "Ten Books That Shaped the American Character," "Ten Memorable Books That Never Existed," "Norman Mailer's Ten Favorite American Novels," and Anna Quindlen's "Ten Big Thick Wonderful Books That Could Take You a Whole Summer to Read (but Aren't Beach Books)."Rounding out the anthology are selections on bookstores, book clubs, and book care, plus book cartoons, and a specially prepared "Bibliobibliography" of books about books.Whether you consider yourself a bibliomaniac or just someone who likes to read, A Passion for Books will provide you with a lifetime's worth of entertaining, informative, and pleasurable reading on your favorite subject--the love of books.A Sampling of the Literary Treasures in A Passion for BooksUmberto Eco's "How to Justify a Private Library," dealing with the question everyone with a sizable library is inevitably asked: "Have you read all these books?"Anatole Broyard's "Lending Books," in which he notes, "I feel about lending a book the way most fathers feel about their daughters living with a man out of wedlock."Gustave Flaubert's Bibliomania, the classic tale of a book collector so obsessed with owning a book that he is willing to kill to possess it.A selection from Nicholas Basbanes's A Gentle Madness, on the innovative arrangements Samuel Pepys made to guarantee that his library would survive "intact" after his demise.Robert Benchley's "Why Does Nobody Collect Me"--in which he wonders why first editions of books by his friend Ernest Hemingway are valuable while his are not, deadpanning "I am older than Hemingway and have written more books than he has."George Hamlin Fitch's extraordinarily touching "Comfort Found in Good Old Books," on the solace he found in books after the death of his son.A selection from Anna Quindlen's How Reading Changed My Life, in which she shares her optimistic view on the role of reading and the future of books in the computer age.Robertson Davies's "Book Collecting," on the difference between those who collect rare books because they're valuable and those who collect them because they love books, ultimately making it clear which is "the collector who really matters."

    Whether you're writing a rags-to-riches tell-all memoir or literary journalism, telling true stories well is hard work. In You Can't Make This Stuff Up, Lee Gutkind, the go-to expert for all things creative nonfiction, offers his unvarnished wisdom to help you craft the best writing possible. Frank, to-the-point, and always entertaining, Gutkind describes and illustrates every aspect of the genre. Invaluable tools and exercises illuminate key steps, from defining a concept and establishing a writing process to the final product. Offering new ways of understanding the genre, this practical guidebook will help you thoroughly expand and stylize your work.

    This text introduces students to the principles and techniques of creative thinking; teaches them how to evaluate their own ideas, as well as the ideas of others; and shows them how to persuade. Organized into four parts - "Be Aware, " "Be Creative, " "Be Critical, " and "Communicate Your Ideas" - The Art of Thinking presents students with a step-by-step process for problem solving that involves searching for issues, expressing the problem, investigating the issue, production ideas, and evaluating and refining the solution. Special features in the fifth edition include new sections on the importance on thinking, testing ideas, and conducting one's own research; and expanded discussions of the problem of remembering and of the distinction between language and reality. These new features, in addition to those retained from previous editions, continue to make The Art of Thinking a valuable and effective tool for promoting excellent critical thinking and writing.

    Out of sheer necessity, he developed a method called the Bullet Journal that helped him become consistently focused and effective. When he started sharing his system with friends who faced similar challenges, it went viral. Just a few years later, to his astonishment, Bullet Journaling is a global movement. The Bullet Journal Method is about much more than organizing your notes and to-do lists. It's about what Carroll calls "intentional living:" weeding out distractions and focusing your time and energy in pursuit of what's truly meaningful, in both your work and your personal life. It's about spending more time with what you care about, by working on fewer things. His new book shows you how to... • Track the past: Using nothing more than a pen and paper, create a clear and comprehensive record of your thoughts. • Order the present: Find daily calm by tackling your to-do list in a more mindful, systematic, and productive way. • Design the future: Transform your vague curiosities into meaningful goals, and then break those goals into manageable action steps that lead to big change. Carroll wrote this book for frustrated list-makers, overwhelmed multitaskers, and creatives who need some structure. Whether you've used a Bullet Journal for years or have never seen one before, The Bullet Journal Method will help you go from passenger to pilot of your own life.

    From Brooke Jarvis on deep-ocean mining to Elizabeth Kolbert on New Zealand’s unconventional conservation strategies, this is a group that celebrates the growing diversity in science and nature writing alike. Altogether, the writers honored in this year’s volume challenge us to consider the strains facing our planet and its many species, while never losing sight of the wonders we’re working to preserve for generations to come. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2015 includes Sheri Fink, Atul Gawande, Leslie Jamison, Sam Kean, Seth Mnookin, Matthew Power, Michael Specterand others  REBECCA SKLOOT's award-winning science writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and elsewhere. Her book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, was an instant New York Times bestseller. It was named a best book of 2010 by more than sixty media outlets, including Entertainment Weekly and NPR, and by the National Academies of Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, among others. Skloot is currently writing a book about humans, animals, science, and ethics.   TIM FOLGER, series editor, is a contributing editor at Discover and writes about science for several magazines.

    . . if only for a little while.   In an age when it’s the rare child who walks to school on his own, the thought of sending your “little ones” off to sleep-away camp can be overwhelming—for you and for them. But parents’ first instinct—to shelter their offspring above all else—is actually depriving kids of the major developmental milestones that occur through letting them go—and watching them come back transformed.   In Homesick and Happy, renowned child psychologist Michael Thompson, PhD, shares a strong argument for, and a vital guide to, this brief loosening of ties. A great champion of summer camp, he explains how camp ushers your children into a thrilling world offering an environment that most of us at home cannot: an electronics-free zone, a multigenerational community, meaningful daily rituals like group meals and cabin clean-up, and a place where time simply slows down. In the buggy woods, icy swims, campfire sing-alongs, and daring adventures, children have emotionally significant and character-building experiences; they often grow in ways that surprise even themselves; they make lifelong memories and cherished friends. Thompson shows how children who are away from their parents can be both homesick and happy, scared and successful, anxious and exuberant. When kids go to camp—for a week, a month, or the whole summer—they can experience some of the greatest maturation of their lives, and return more independent, strong, and healthy.

    Michael Theune's breakthrough concept encourages students, teachers, and writers to use structure as a tool to see the fundamental affinities between strikingly different kinds of poetry and radically different literary eras. The book includes examination of the mid-course turn and the elegy, as well as the ironic, concessional, emblem, and retrospective-prospective structures, among others. In addition, 14 contemporary poets provide an example of and commentary on their own work.