Trixie steps lively as she goes with her father to the laundromat, down the block, through the park, past the school, to the Laundromat. For the toddler, loading and putting money into the machine invoke wide-eyed pleasure. But, on the return home, she realizes that her stuffed bunny has been left behind. Because she cannot talk, Trixie cannot explain why she is upset to her daddy. Despite his plea of "please don''t get fussy," she gives it her all, bawling and going "boneless." They both arrive home unhappy. Mom immediately sees that "Knuffle Bunny" is missing. After several tries, dad finds the toy among the wet laundry and reclaims hero status. The toddler exuberantly exclaims, "Knuffle Bunny!!!" Those were the first words Trixie ever said. This book was also made into a musical (Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale) by Mo Williams, Michael Silversher, and Deborah Wicks La Puma. It toured with the Kennedy Center to cities all across the United States. http://www.kennedy-center.org/events/?event=KKTBD

Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale

In the Philippines, Chua explains, the Chinese Filipino is 1% of the population but controls 60% of the economy, with the result being envy and bitterness on the part of the majority against the Chinese minority—in other words, an ethnic conflict. Similarly, in Indonesia the Chinese Indonesians are 3% of the population but control 70% of the economy. There is a similar pattern in other Southeast Asia nations. According to Chua, examples of what she calls ethnic market-dominant minorities include overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia; whites in Latin America; Jews in Russia; Croats in the former Yugoslavia; and Ibos, Kikuyus, Tutsis, Indians and Lebanese, among others, in Africa. In her book, Chua discusses different reasons for the market dominance of different groups. Some groups achieve market dominance because of colonial oppression or apartheid. In other cases, it may be due to the culture and family networks of these groups. For many groups there is no clear single explanation. Americans can also be seen as a global market-dominant minority, in particularly when combined with using military might and flaunting political domination, cause resentment. She believes that democratization can increase ethnic conflicts when an ethnic minority is disproportionately wealthy. "When free market democracy is pursued in the presence of a market-dominant minority, the almost invariable result is backlash. This backlash typically takes one of three forms. The first is a backlash against markets, targeting the market-dominant minority''s wealth. The second is a backlash against democracy by forces favorable to the market-dominant minority. The third is violence, sometimes genocidal, directed against the market-dominant minority itself.". Also, "overnight democracy will empower the poor, indigenous majority. What happens is that under those circumstances, democracy doesn''t do what we expect it to do – that is, reinforce markets. [Instead,] democracy leads to the emergence of manipulative politicians and demagogues who find that the best way to get votes is by scapegoating the minorities." She writes, "Ballot boxes brought Hitler to power in Germany, Mugabe to power in Zimbabwe, Milosevic to power in Serbia -- and could well bring the likes of Osama bin Laden to power in Saudi Arabia." Chua states that she is a "big fan of trying to promote markets and democracy globally," but that it should be accompanied by attempts to "redistribute the wealth, whether it''s property title and giving poor people property, land reform .... Redistributive mechanisms are tough to have if you have so much corruption."

World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability

Becka was a crossbreed - the daughter of Draco Dragon and a lovely human woman who met, by chance, at a Love Spring. Now fourteen, Becka was beginning to wonder where in Xanth she belonged, on the ground with her mother''s people or flying the skies with her father''s kind. So she journeyed to the Good Magician Humfrey to discover her true purpose in life. Much to her astonishment and surprise, the Magician told her that a great Destiny awaited her, one that would affect the future of all of Xanth. To unravel the mystery of her Fate, Becka did as Humfrey bade her: traveling on foot to the statue of the dreaded Sea Hag to meet the man who would be waiting for her there, and offering him her assistance. But to her dismay, Becka discovered that the one who awaited her there was a dangerous, despicable libertine who called himself the Dastard. Once a common country boy, the Dastard had sold his soul to a detestable demon in exchange for the power to erase events and rewrite history to suit his own devious ends. Lacking a conscience and filled with craven self-loathing, he roamed the width and breadth of Xanth in search of anyone happier than he was. Once he found them, he used his malevolent talent to "unhappen" their happiness so that others could share in his misery. Determined to honor her vow but despairing of her ability to help this man and still preserve her virtue, Becka set out on a wide and perilous journey that led from the mists on Xanth''s distant past to the tiny planetoid of Ptero, where everyone in Xanth who might have been actually existed. There she discovered a magic that was far stronger than the Dastard''s: the awesome power of the human heart.

The Dastard

The evil sorcerer Beelzebub Preposteror has contracted with His Excellency the Minister of Pitch Darkness to perform a certain number of evil deeds each year. This year, however, he did not meet the requirement, because the High Council of the Animals has sent the cat Maurizio as a spy, which forces Beelzebub to be more cautious. On New Year''s Eve he joins forces with the evil witch Tyrannia Vampirella, who has the same problem due to the raven Jakob who is spying on her. Together they try to brew the eponymous Notion Potion that will grant them all wishes, in order to fulfill their part of the contract before midnight. If they succeeded to brew the potion they wouldn''t even have to keep it secret from the animals, because due to the nature of the potion every wish they make will have the exact opposite effect - i.e. if they wish someone good health, he''ll become sick instead. The plot starts on New Year''s Eve at 5 pm and the chapters each represent one hour until midnight to illustrate the increasing time pressure that the characters are under. On the one hand, the sorcerers have to complete a five-meter-long recipe to brew the potion, while constantly getting in each other''s way. On the other, the cat and the raven must find a way to stop their evil plan while tackling their own problems, namely the obesity of the cat and the chronic diseases of the raven. Nevertheless, they devise a plan to exploit a weakness of the potion: when the potion has not been fully drunk up before the first ring of the bell at midnight, the potion won''t reverse the meaning of the wishes - as expected by the two sorcerers - but instead grants them as wished.

The Night of Wishes

Shade''s poem digressively describes many aspects of his life. Canto 1 includes his early encounters with death and glimpses of what he takes to be the supernatural. Canto 2 is about his family and the apparent suicide of his daughter, Hazel Shade. Canto 3 focuses on Shade''s search for knowledge about an afterlife, culminating in a "faint hope" in higher powers "playing a game of worlds" as indicated by apparent coincidences. Canto 4 offers details on Shade''s daily life and creative process, as well as thoughts on his poetry, which he finds to be a means of somehow understanding the universe. In Kinbote''s editorial contributions he tells three stories intermixed with each other. One is his own story, notably including what he thinks of as his friendship with Shade. After Shade was murdered, Kinbote acquired the manuscript, including some variants, and has taken it upon himself to oversee the poem''s publication, telling readers that it lacks only line 1000. Kinbote''s second story deals with King Charles II, "The Beloved," the deposed king of Zembla. King Charles escaped imprisonment by Soviet-backed revolutionaries, making use of a secret passage and brave adherents in disguise. Kinbote repeatedly claims that he inspired Shade to write the poem by recounting King Charles''s escape to him and that possible allusions to the king, and to Zembla, appear in Shade''s poem, especially in rejected drafts. However, no explicit reference to King Charles is to be found in the poem. Kinbote''s third story is that of Gradus, an assassin dispatched by the new rulers of Zembla to kill the exiled King Charles. Gradus makes his way from Zembla through Europe and America to New Wye, suffering comic mishaps. In the last note, to the missing line 1000, Kinbote narrates how Gradus killed Shade by mistake. The reader soon realizes that Kinbote is King Charles, living incognito—or, though Kinbote builds an elaborate picture of Zembla complete with samples of a constructed language, that he is insane and that his identification with King Charles is a delusion, as perhaps all of Zembla is. Nabokov said in an interview that Kinbote committed suicide after finishing the book. The critic Michael Wood has stated, "This is authorial trespassing, and we don''t have to pay attention to it," but Brian Boyd has argued that internal evidence points to Kinbote''s suicide. One of Kinbote''s annotations to Shade''s poem (corresponding to line 493) addresses the subject of suicide at some length.

Pale Fire

The novel is somewhat unconventional and non-linear in its construction. It begins with a group of travelers disembarking on a small island in the Irish Sea after their ship runs aground. There they stumble upon a house inhabited by Professor Kreutznaer, his assistant Licht, and an unnamed character who figures centrally in the novel and who is referred to only as "Little God." It is later revealed that Little God can be identified with Freddie Montgomery, the narrator of The Book of Evidence, and much of the latter half of the book focuses on his account of his experiences after having been released from prison, his reflections on the crime (the murder of a young woman) he committed that landed him there, and his continuing struggle with the ghosts of his past and the nature of his perceptions. Kreutznaer''s relationship to a painting entitled "The Golden World" by a fictional Dutch artist named Vaublin plays a central role in the novel, and it is revealed that he and one of the travellers—a man named Felix—are acquainted with one another, and that Felix had been involved in art forgery. The novel ends with the travelers reembarking and leaving the island and many of the central issues and tensions addressed in the novel are left unresolved.

Ghosts

Lauren Hartke and her film director husband, Rey Robles, are occupying an isolated house outside New York City. They have a sparse verbal exchange over breakfast before Rey leaves for work. Later that morning, Rey is found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his first wife''s Manhattan apartment. An obituary detailing the frequently ambiguous details of Rey''s life ensues, where Rey''s age (64) is revealed, along with his history of depression and the fact that Lauren had been Rey''s third wife. A bereaved Lauren remains alone in the house against the advice of her friends and relatives. She becomes disconnected from the temporal world and from her own body, experiencing frequent and inexplicable déjà vu. Lauren spends the subsequent hours, days and weeks exploring this disconnection. She practices her trademark ''bodywork''-- aerobic and stretching techniques she has developed to prepare her body for performance pieces. Lauren also integrates a sequence of daily rituals, including chopping firewood and gazing for hours at webcam footage of a road in Kotka, Finland. One morning, Lauren hears a noise coming from the upper floor of the house. She goes upstairs to investigate but finds no one there. Lauren goes upstairs again the next day. This time, she finds a man sitting in one of the bedrooms. The man''s appearance varies each time Lauren sees him, but in this first incarnation, he is described as "smallish and fine-boned [resembling] a kid, sandy-haired and roused from deep sleep" (43).

The Body Artist

The book is a compilation of 10 short stories from various authors taking place in the fictional world of Krynn: 1. "A Good Knight''s Tale" by Harold Bakst. Told by a Knight of Solamnia, this is a tale that of a selfish father, Aron, who is overprotective over his daughter, Petal, which ultimately leads to a broken heart. 2. "A Painter''s Vision" by Barbara Siegel and Scott Siegel. When a passionate artist Seron dies in an accidental fire, his widow Kyra, finds the strength to carry on his memory through a painting. Kyra carries on a strange relationship with a dragon named Tosch, who had befriended her husband before he died. 3. "Hunting Destiny" by Nick O''Donohoe. This is the tale of the undead who haunt Darken Wood, in another of Donohoe''s interpretation of an event that took place in the novel, Dragons of Autumn Twilight. 4. "Hide and Go Seek" by Nancy Varian Berberick. Starts with a captive boy named Keli who is captured by a man named Tigo and a goblin named Staag. No sooner is Tasslehoff Burrfoot captured. They are later rescued by The Companions. 5. "By the Measure" by Richard A. Knaak. 6. "The Exiles" by Paul B. Thompson and Tonya C. Cook. It is the story of Sturm Brightblade''s childhood as he and his mother are captured by a ship with guards from an island called Kernaffi. 7. "Heart of Goldmoon" by Laura Hickman and Kate Novak. 8. "Raistlin''s Daughter" by Margaret Weis and Dezra Despain. The mysterious tale of the legend of a daughter fathered by the mage, Raistlin Majere. This tale is also reprinted in the novel, The Second Generation. 9. "Silver and Steel" by Kevin Randle. 10. "From the Yearning for War and the War''s Ending" by Michael Williams.

Love and War

Due to the detailed nature of the overall story within the novel, the plot has been divided into Backstory and Modern Day respectively in order to provide a more coherent timeline for the events depicted in the novel. In the 13th century, there once existed a circle of authors and playwrights known as the Order of Psion (a parody of the Knights Templar), most of whom were females writing under male pseudonyms, who once predicted the coming of "the ultimate book" that would render publishers obsolete. The formula for the making of the ultimate book - known as the Asti Spumante Code - is contained within the Mure de Paume (French: "The Blackberry of the Palm"), otherwise known as "the legendary keystone". Fearing the consequences of the ultimate book, a group of publishers named The English Book Guild was established in Stevenage, England to try to counteract the progresses made by the Order. The book itself focuses on American Prof. James Crack - a professor of "Paraliteral Metasymbolist studies" - and Belgian Emily Raquin, a "bibliotechnical cryptologist", as they discover a set of clues left by the deceased Grand Master of the Order of Psion that will ultimately lead to the discovery of the Asti Spumante Code. However, the two are hindered by the efforts of Uxbridge Road Group, a fanatical off-shoot of the English Book Guild situated in Brussels, whose members encourage Sadomasochism and segregate works of fiction by gender stereotyping (e.g.: men read only adventure fiction, women read only romance novels), who wish to destroy the Asti Spumante Code before it can be put to use by anyone.

The Asti Spumante Code

Emilia Greenleaf is an attorney living in New York city with her husband, Jack Woolf. Emilia is stepmother to Jack''s remarkably intelligent four-year-old son, William. William lives primarily with his mother, the medical doctor Carolyn Soule. It is Emilia''s job, however, to pick up William from his nursery school every Wednesday afternoon. When she picks him up, Emilia is often subjected to snide glances and whispers from the other mothers because, it transpires, her relationship with her husband began when he was still with his wife. They had an office affair, and eventually the marriage dissolved. The reader also learns early on that Emilia and Jack recently lost their own child together, a girl they named Isabel. They had the baby home for only one day, as she died overnight of SIDS in Emilia''s arms after being fed. The bulk of the story deals with the results of Isabel''s death, including the strain this puts on Emilia and Jack''s marriage, as well as Emilia''s feelings towards William. Emilia does not particularly like William (in fact, she describes him as "insufferable" early on in the story), but tries to be a good parent to him. This is hindered by the fact that William serves as his mother''s mouthpiece, and sometimes speaks in a very matter-of-fact way about Isabel''s death.

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

Born in New York in 1917, attractive Clarabel Hoyt, the heroine of the book, is encouraged by her ambitious mother to marry "a great man," a man able and willing to make a success of his life. She succeeds in persuading her daughter to end her relationship with a young teacher with a promising career ahead of him and marry into one of the pre-eminent, old money families instead. Eventually succumbing to her mother''s wishes, Clara, still a virgin, marries Trevor Hoyt, a banker, and in due course their daughter Sandra is born. Clara, however, is not content spending her husband''s money and living a life of luxury and ease. When her old school friend Polly suggests that she should work for Style, a fashion magazine, Clara eagerly accepts the offer and soon becomes a household name as a trendy journalist. During World War II, while Hoyt is stationed in London and Clara remains in New York, both spouses are unfaithful to each other. On her husband''s return, however, Clara is faced with the double standards of morality which exempt the man from any consequences of his infidelity while ascribing to the woman the role of sinner, of the "war wife who cheats on her fighting husband" or, as Trevor puts it, of the "cool bitch". Subsequently, and much to her mother''s dismay, Clara divorces her husband, a generous divorce settlement ensuring that she does not quite have to "face the chilling prospect of depending on her own talents to support herself". She becomes editor-in-chief of Style by exposing her predecessor''s alcoholism and eventually starts an affair with Eric Tyler, the owner of the magazine. At the same time she gently but firmly turns Tyler Publications into an empire aligned with the Democratic Party. She also pulls the strings in making Eric Tyler a candidate for the U.S. Senate. However, driven by some inexplicable force, Tyler holds the "wrong" speech on tax reform, voicing what he really thinks on the matter and thus forfeiting all his chances of ever becoming a politician. It is with considerable difficulty that Clara answers Tyler''s question whether she loves him&mdash;she is aware of the fact that her rather forced "Of course, I love you" is actually a lie. At this point in her life she very strongly questions her ability to love at all. Nevertheless Clara marries Eric Tyler, but the ailing tycoon suffers two strokes and dies. Clara is now faced with a lengthy lawsuit brought on by Tony Tyler, Eric''s son by his first wife, who feels cheated out of the family money. Determined to fight to the end rather than compromise, Clara justifies, and also disguises, her luxurious lifestyle by continuing her late husband''s foundation and openly and generously supporting philanthropic causes so that her public image turns into that of an "angel of beneficience". Clara also likes to see herself as a patron of the arts, and it is in this capacity that she meets, and gets to know more intimately, Oliver Kip, an expert on the Italian Renaissance. She genuinely falls in love with him and wants to "belong to Oliver, to be appreciated by his cool, appraising eyes, to be added to his collection of beautiful objects". Their affair, however, is short-lived because he informs her that his life "is not the kind that can be improved by being shared" and also because the abuse of his power within the Tyler Foundation forces her to pay him off and hush up the scandal in order to save the foundation''s reputation. In the final scene of the novel, set in 1961, Clara is on the phone with John F. Kennedy, whose election she has supported, accepting Kennedy''s offer to be made ambassador to the (fictional) island of Santa Emilia in the Caribbean.

Her Infinite Variety

The Man Who Would Be Queen is divided into three sections: The Boy Who Would Be Princess, The Man He Might Become, and Women Who Once Were Boys. It starts with an anecdote about a child Bailey calls "Danny." Bailey writes of Danny''s mother, who has been frustrated by other therapists she has seen about her son''s "feminine" behavior. Bailey discusses psychologist and sexologist Kenneth Zucker''s work with children whose parents have noticed significant gender-atypical behaviors. Bailey uses the anecdote about Danny to describe gender identity disorder, a label applied to males with significant feminine behaviors and females with significant masculine behaviors, such as cross-dressing. For example, this class includes boys that prefer to play with dolls and regularly identify with female characters in stories or movies, and girls that prefer to play with toy cars and identify with male characters. This section of the book also discusses some case studies of men who were, for varying reasons, reassigned to the female sex shortly after their birth, and emphasizes the fact that, despite this, they tended to exhibit typically male characteristics and often identified as men. The second section deals primarily with gay men, including a suggested link between childhood GID and male homosexuality later in life. Bailey discusses whether homosexuality is a congenitally or possibly even genetically related phenomenon. This discussion includes references to Bailey''s studies as well as those of neuroscientist Simon LeVay and geneticist Dean Hamer. He also discusses the behavior of gay men and its stereotypically masculine and feminine qualities. In the third section, Bailey summarizes a taxonomy of transsexual women that was proposed by Ray Blanchard about fifteen years earlier. According to Blanchard, there are two types of transsexual women: one described as an extreme form of male homosexuality, the other being motivated by a sexual interest in having a female body. Bailey also discusses the process by which transition from male to female occurs. On the last page of the book, Bailey meets "Danny", who no longer has gender identity disorder, and is living as a gay man.

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale

By Mo Willems

World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability

By Amy Chua

The Dastard

By Piers Anthony

The Night of Wishes

By Michael Ende

Pale Fire

By Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

Ghosts

By John Banville

The Body Artist

By Don DeLillo

Love and War

By Margaret Weis

The Asti Spumante Code

No Author Listed

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

By Ayelet Waldman

Her Infinite Variety

By Louis Auchincloss

The Man Who Would Be Queen

By J. Michael Bailey