Alexandra Sellers

"How to Speak Cat" is a book that targets such a narrow audience that I'm surprised it was ever published, but being part of that audience, I'm glad it was. The conceit throughout is that cats are sentient creatures with a language all their own which, critically, human beings can learn. In fact, humans have their very own place in the grammar of this language, and it is a subservient place.

The theme of the book is that the cat worldview, encoded in their language in a Sapir-Whorf style way, show more views humans as servants and cats and godly beings. The author is at pains to say this does not reflect actual cat belief, but is rather just a feature of their language and grammar, but she does so with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

The rest is an exercise in constructed language, where consonants are few and tone reigns supreme, where pronouns are restricted to Cat and non-Cat in meaning, where agitation can change the tonal form of a word beyond recognition and give it other, profane meanings. It is a fully featured textbook, with exercises and answers in the back, which makes me wonder if anyone has gone to the effort of learning this language, and if so, what the result was.

Recommended for: Linguists who are also cat lovers/haters. show less

I read this years ago and rebought it on a whim. It was much more charming and moving than I expected. I really enjoyed the premise - a so called desperate mother puts an ad in the local paper, wanting to run a small scam on her son and Sam, a journalist responds. So Sam meets Ben. Sam struggles because she is seriously dating Justin but Ben is so charismatic and wonderful that it is hard to resist him. The reader falls in love with him too. This is a very satisfying romance, with no silly show more misunderstandings or weird plot convolutions. This is one of Alexandra Seller's best (don't pay attention to her later Sheik books, I think she was sending her kids to private school. Her earlier stuff really is very good.) show less

One of the very few 'sheik romances' I've ever seen that features an Arab woman as well as a man. That alone makes it worth a read. Also, the plot deals with political/refugee issues - very different indeed! The plot does a lot in very few pages. And I'll never let water out of the tub the same way again...

This was a nice light read comprising 3 stories where the male lead is a Sheik. I particularly enjoyed the last story which also involved reincarnation and genetic memory. A little bit of a different twist.