Author: Margaret Hawkins
Release date: October 2009
206 pp.
Publisher: The Permanent Press
The thing about living with animals is you’re never alone. When your partner your sweetie your main squeeze your baby your heart your one your only your love your life your husband your wife moves out you think you’ll go crazy or at least be lonely and you do and you are at first but then mostly you’re not. The animals close in around you, good company that keeps you busy and warm in bed, and they are never critical.
When I left my job five years ago, feeling like the walls were closing in on me, I immediately started taking classes toward a nursing degree. Basically I segued from one unhappy situation to a highly stressful situation and nearly had a mental breakdown. In A Year of Cats and Dogs, Maryanne leaves her rather dreary day job with every intention of living off her savings and doing “nothing” for a while. She’s 49-years-old and recently divorced, which has proved rather stressful of late, and she feels that she deserves this sort of break from reality and routine. She figures she’ll be happier on her own timeclock. Maryanne approaches her life in a very Zen way. Things are going to happen and she cannot change the outcome but she can make everything more bearable, more enjoyable, and more entertaining in some manner. She finds that animals can communicate with her through telepathy [she’s basically an “animal whisperer”]. This special talent leads to a job at the animal shelter and a romance with the veterinarian. Maryann also finds out that her father, who she cooks dinner for every week, has late-stage prostate cancer. Though she is surrounded by death, Maryann finds hopefulness in her own life. A Year of Cats and Dogs reads like a memoir instead of a novel as debut author Margaret Hawkins uses coin throws from the Chinese book of changes, I Ching, as headers for each chapter and intersperses comforting recipes throughout the book. A Year of Cats and Dogs is a quirky, engaging story about resilience, empathy and love.
Posted by Amy Steele 
Art for Obama
Hamish Linklater plays Matthew, the somewhat goofy, co-dependent brother of Christine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) on The New Adventures of Old Christine. If you haven’t seen the show, Matthew is endearing and sweet, an uber-geek and devoted to his sister. (Of his character, Linklater told me by phone: “I like that he dresses in clothes I like to wear too. He’s fun. They give me a lot of fun stuff to do. The writers are really generous with me.”) Their relationship borders on absurd and almost too close at times, but is always hysterical to watch. Christine struggles with personal and professional challenges while dealing with those around her: Matthew, her tween son Ritchie (Trevor Gagnon), her ex-husband Richard (Clark Gregg), and her best friend Barb (Wanda Sykes). Certainly the appeal of The New Adventures of Old Christine rests on Louis-Dreyfus, who holds a special place in our hearts as Elaine Benes of <em>Seinfeld</em>.
Linklater has been acting in plays since childhood. His mother, Kristin Linklater, is a professor of acting at Columbia University and founded 
