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Does your spouse's need to alphabetically organize books on the shelves puzzle you? Do your boss's tsunami-like moods leave you exasperated? Do your child's constant questions make you batty? If you've ever wanted to change your mate, your coworkers, or a family member, then "Put down your chisel," advise David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates in this book of personality types. We are different for a reason, and that reason is probably more good than bad. Keirsey and Bates believe that not only is it impossible to truly change others (which they call embarking on a "Pygmalion project"), it's much more important to understand and affirm differences. Sounds easier than it is, you might say. Well, this book is a guide for putting an end to the Pygmalion projects in your life and starting on the path to acceptance.

For anyone acquainted with the ubiquitous Myers-Briggs personality test, Please Understand Me will be familiar territory--but gone over with a fine-toothed comb. And for the uninitiated, this book will be a quick introduction to personality typing the Myers-Briggs way--with a Jungian accent. After presenting a brief rundown of 20th-century psychology movements, Keirsey and Bates encourage you to take the 70-question "Keirsey Temperament Sorter," a sort of mini-Myers-Briggs test that places you in 1 of 16 personality types. Like the Myers-Briggs system, this test sorts your personality into groups of extraversion/introversion (E/I), sensation/intuition (S/N), thinking/feeling (T/F), and perceiving/judging (P/J). Unlike the Myers-Briggs system, Please Understand Me also presents four easy-to-remember temperament types--Dionysian (freedom first), Epimethean (wants to be useful), Promethean (desires power), and Apollonian (searches for self)--that underlie the 16 possible personalities identified by the test. The book then delves into a detailed analysis of each type, with sections on mates, children, and leaders. An appendix paints portraits of the 16 possible personality types.

Unless you're already a true personality-typing devotee, this book may seem a little esoteric, especially the somewhat "in" references to psychological theory that few laypeople will be likely to understand. But give it a chance and you may find that you'll begin to understand why you always know where to find Anna Karenina on the shelf (you have an ESTJ husband), why your boss is sarcastic one day and praises your achievements the next (she's an NF), and why knowing the reason that the sun comes up in the same place every day is important to your little one (he's Promethean). You may even find that once you accept quirks and ticks in others, they will understand you a little better, too. --Stefanie Durbin.
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Embraced by the Light is an inspirational map of the afterlife framed in the moment of Eadie's death, and presents a possible answer to the big question, "Why are we here?" An easy read, its subtitle could have been "The Average Person's Guide to Near-Death Experiences." Although heavily filtered through Eadie's Christian worldview, her vision of the afterlife does not include a wrathful deity, but a figure of love and compassion. Some readers may find Eadie's repeated Christian references bothersome, and Embraced by the Light will undoubtedly raise a lot of questions along the lines of "What about reincarnation?" and "What happens to people who are not Christians?" --Brian Patterson.
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Janet Woititz, mother of the recovery movement, sensitively addresses the barriers of trust and intimacy that children learn in an alcoholic family. She provides suggestions for building loving relationships with friends, partners, and spouses.

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Warm Fuzzies is filled with techniques, tips and patterns for creating over 30 cute and colorful felted items made from cast-away sweaters, including cozy pillows and throws as well as comfortable hats, scarves, pincushions and handbags. There's something to make for everybody in this book, including four-legged friends. Your pup will look adorable in the Haute Dawg Doggie Sweater with an applique dog in a bun on the back. And kitties will flip for the sunflower-shaped cat bed with an attached mouse toy. You'll also find lots of cozy hats, fabulous bags and clothes for little ones, too. Any little guy would love the Robot Sweater Vest, and your favorite princess would adore wearing the Teacup Jumper with the playful mouse finger puppet in the pocket.

The best thing about these projects is how easy they are to make...and there's no knitting involved! Simply throw old wool sweaters into the wash to make fabulous felted material, then cut the pieces apart and use them to make felted goodies. Start with the sweet Cupcake Pincushion--they're so easy, and so very cute!.
Price: $10.63 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In this memoir of her buying, renovating, and living in an abandoned villa in Tuscany, Frances Mayes reveals the sensual pleasure she found living in rural Italy, and the generous spirit she brought with her. She revels in the sunlight and the color, the long view of her valley, the warm homey architecture, the languor of the slow paced days, the vigor of working her garden, and the intimacy of her dealings with the locals. Cooking, gardening, tiling and painting are never chores, but skills to be learned, arts to be practiced, and above all to be enjoyed. At the same time Mayes brings a literary and intellectual mind to bear on the experience, adding depth to this account of her enticing rural idyll..
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The classic work on the 16 major personality types as identified in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator .
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Lalita Tademy's riveting family saga chronicles four generations of women born into slavery along the Cane River in Louisiana. It is also a tale about the blurring of racial boundaries: great-grandmother Elisabeth notices an unmistakable "bleaching of the line" as first her daughter Suzette, then her granddaughter Philomene, and finally her great-granddaughter Emily choose (or are forcibly persuaded) to bear the illegitimate offspring of the area's white French planters. In many cases these children are loved by their fathers, and their paternity is widely acknowledged. However, neither state law nor local custom allows them to inherit wealth or property, a fact that gives Cane River much of its narrative drive.

The author makes it clear exactly where these prohibitions came from. Plantation society was rigidly hierarchical, after all, particularly on the heels of the Civil War and the economic hardships that came with Reconstruction. The only permissible path upward for hard-working, ambitious African Americans was indirect. A meteoric rise, or too obvious an appearance of prosperity, would be swiftly punished. To enable the slow but steady advance of their clan, the black women of Cane River plot, plead, deceive, and manipulate their way through history, extracting crucial gifts of money and property along the way. In the wake of a visit from the 1880 census taker, the aged Elisabeth reflects on how far they had come.

When the census taker looked at them, he saw colored first, asking questions like single or married, trying to introduce shame where there was none. He took what he saw and foolishly put those things down on a list for others to study. Could he even understand the pride in being able to say that Emily could read and write? They could ask whatever they wanted, but what he should have been marking in the book was family, and landholder, and educated, each generation gathering momentum, adding something special to the brew.

In her introduction, Tademy explains that as a young woman, she failed to appreciate the love and reverence with which her mother and her four uncles spoke of their lively Grandma 'Tite (short for "Mademoiselle Petite"). She resented her great-grandmother's skin-color biases, which were as much a part of Tademy's memory as were her great-grandmother's trademark dance moves. But the old stories haunted the author, and armed with a couple of pages of history compiled by a distant Louisiana cousin, she began to piece together a genealogy. The result? Tademy eventually left her position as vice president of a Fortune 500 company and set to work on Cane River, in which she has deftly and movingly reconstructed the world of her ancestors. --Regina Marler.
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Finally in paperback, the story of the musical revolution that happened right under the nose of the Reagan Eighties when a small but sprawling network of bands, labels, fanzines, radio stations, and other subversives reenergized American rock with punk rocks do-it-yourself credo and created music that was deeply personal, often brilliant, always challenging, and immensely influential. Our Band Could Be Your Life is a sweeping chronicle of music, politics, drugs, fear, loathing, and faith that is already being recognized as an indie rock classic in its own right. Among the legendary bands Azerrad writes about: Black Flag, the Minutemen, Mission of Burma, Minor Threat, Hsker D, the Replacements, Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers, Big Black, Dinosaur Jr. Fugazi, Mudhoney, and Beat Happening. The story of the American indie underground has never been told in depthuntil now..
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Dr. Wayne W. Dyer reveals how we all can prevent ourselves from being victimised by others and begin to operate from a position of power at the centre of our own lives. Asserting that we alone are responsible for how much we will be controlled by others, Dyer offers his practical plan for developing new attitudes toward the most common sources of victimisation and manipulation, such as family members and authority figures in the workplace.

For example, families can be tremendously coercive and demanding, but they can also be an immensely rewarding part of your life. Dyer shows how to cope with the negative side and contribute to the positive.

Also, in their working life many people stay in unfulfilling jobs because they feel constrained by their present experience or because they fear change. Dyer shows that by being enthusiastic and flexible, you can find the work that makes you happy.

In this modern–day classic, Dyer shows you how to stop being the victim in all aspects of everyday life and to take charge of your destiny.

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