The Big New Yorker Book of Cats

Here comes the effervescent counterpart to 2012's Big New Yorker Book of Dogs, an anthology of short fiction, articles, photographs, and of course, cat cartoons%E2%80%94an unassailable gift for the cat-lover in your life. The non-fiction spans from the fanciful%E2%80%94a lovely little piece from the %E2%80%9880s about a cat therapist operating in Manhattan%E2%80%94to the bizarre%E2%80%94Ariel Levy's excellent 2013 piece about exotic cat fanciers%E2%80%94people who will pay "as much as thirty thousand dollars for the privilege of owning a hybrid that looks like it could prowl the wilderness"%E2%80%94like, for example, the "Savannah cat, a cross between a domestic and a serval, an African native that preys on gazelles and springbok." The book spans the entire New Yorker history, and it's interesting to see how profiles have evolved, from a whimsical piece about a chorus girl turned cat-catcher from 1938 to Susan Orlean's masterful 2002 profile "The Lady and the Tigers," about a woman who owned up to two dozen tigers in Jackson Township, New Jersey. Readers will also enjoy a short story from Haruki Murakami, "Town of Cats" as well as fiction from John Updike, and Jean Rhys. Here is the rare coffee table book that is also a pleasure to read. (Oct.)