Welcome to Middle Age! Please check your functioning internal thermostat and razor-sharp memory at the door and pour yourself a nice, stiff drink... Jenna McCarthy might be forty-something, but she doesn’t feel forty-something. She certainly doesn’t look forty-something. (Actually she does, but she’s in denial so maybe don’t mention it?) And between complaining about how tired she is, trying to remember what she came in here for and wondering whether she drinks too much, she does not have time for a crisis. She has, however, had time to crack the mysterious midlife code. She’s figured out how to tame her muffin top, keep the spark in her marriage and probably not die a fiery hoarder’s death. She’s learned the trick to looking ten years younger and the secret to feeling ten times happier (and it only cost $14.99 plus shipping and handling). And she’s discovered the one thing she will need to do for the rest of ever if she’s going to continue to refuse to “dress her age.” Tackling everything from cosmetic surgery and financial panic to skinny jeans and the meaning of life, I’ve Still Got It... is a middle age manifesto filled with hilarious misadventures, humiliating confessions and occasional (hot) flashes of genius.

I bought a new wrinkle cream. If you use it once a day, you look younger in a month. Twice a day, you look younger in two weeks. I ate it. As the years go by, and the decades begin to pile up, people will do just about anything to reverse the signs of aging: LASIK surgery, industrial-strength hair dye, seven consecutive forty-ninth birthday parties. Rita Rudner is no exception. When she turned fifty, she couldn’t even bear to say the word. In I Still Have It . . . I Just Can’t Remember Where I Put It, Rudner writes with humor and candor about all of the small indignities and everyday absurdities that have become standard fare. From the perils of catalog-ordering addiction to the challenges of keeping up with the latest in electronics, lingerie, and reality television to the joys and worries of being an older mother to the long search for the perfect retirement house, Rita covers it all. So put on your bifocals and power up your sense of humor! Just don’t blame Rita when your laugh lines get visibly deeper. Refreshingly honest and undeniably hilarious, I Still Have It . . . I Just Can’t Remember Where I Put It is a laugh-out-loud look at the wonders and the surprises of life on the dark side of fifty.

The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.

Following the first volume of Remembering the Kanji, the present work provides students with helpful tools for learning the pronunciation of the kanji. Behind the notorious inconsistencies in the way the Japanese language has come to pronounce the characters it received from China lie several coherent patterns. Identifying these patterns and arranging them in logical order can reduce dramatically the amount of time spent in the brute memorization of sounds unrelated to written forms. Many of the “primitive elements,” or building blocks, used in the drawing of the characters also serve to indicate the “Chinese reading” that particular kanji use, chiefly in compound terms. By learning one of the kanji that uses such a “signal primitive,” one can learn the entire group at the same time. In this way, Remembering the Kanji 2 lays out the varieties of phonetic pattern and offers helpful hints for learning readings, that might otherwise appear completely random, in an efficient and rational way. Individual frames cross-reference the kanji to alternate readings and to the frame in volume 1 in which the meaning and writing of the kanji was first introduced. A parallel system of pronouncing the kanji, their “Japanese readings,” uses native Japanese words assigned to particular Chinese characters. Although these are more easily learned because of the association of the meaning to a single word, the author creates a kind of phonetic alphabet of single syllable words, each connected to a simple Japanese word, and shows how they can be combined to help memorize particularly troublesome vocabulary. The 4th edition has been updated to include the 196 new kanji approved by the government in 2010 as “general-use” kanji.

"Practical and accessible, this book provides the first step-by-step guide to cognitive strategy instruction, which has been shown to be one of the most effective instructional techniques for students with learning problems. Presented are proven strategies that students can use to improve their self-regulated learning, study skills, and performance in specific content areas, including written language, reading, and math. Clear directions for teaching the strategies in the elementary or secondary classroom are accompanied by sample lesson plans and many concrete examples. Enhancing the book's hands-on utility are more than 20 reproducible worksheets and forms"--

My earliest memories are only fear. A great hurting fear that made my heart as big as a pumpkin that welled up into my throat, choking me, dizzying my head, turning my legs to rubber. Fear of moving and making noise, fear of sleep that was invaded by terrible nightmares, fear of waking up to the daily beatings for wet beds, fear of the dark, fear of guns and knives, fear of loud noises, fear of making a mistake, fear of forgetting, fear of Mom going away, and most of all, fear of the constant presence we called Daddy. These are my oldest sister's words. Dancing on His Grave is a memoir set on an eastern Montana ranch between 1930 and 1955. My four sisters, my mother and I all contribute first person narrative to this story, along with excerpts from the extensive journals my mother kept throughout her life. It is the story of five sisters who survived unspeakable deprivation and abuse, sexual and physical, at the hands of our sadistic father. A friend gave me his strong opinion. As the psychologist for the prison in Deer Lodge, he said, I meet inmates with stories like yours all the time. What makes your story unique is the outcome. This story is not about him. This is about five little girls who literally survived him, excelled in school, married and raised families of normal, productive, contributing citizens. My father was not an alcoholic or drug addict. All his abuse was administered cold sober. I am convinced he was not mentally ill, in the legal or moral sense of the phrase. He knew right from wrong, but as a narcissistic sociopath, he believed that the world revolved around him, so the rules of decency that other people follow did not apply. The only rule he held himself to, was 'Don't get caught'. The state of being purely evil does not constitute mental illness. By my estimation, he was born without a conscience, and perhaps without a soul. The most important message of this story is the resilience and strength of the human spirit.