This is the perfect gift book for the cat lovers in your life. It's snarky and witty and has a very vintage, retro edge. It's just fun!

Love this little book - sums up what my cat is like in an instant. I love the design of these little books. Not much to the book but a little piece of fun all the same - laughed quite a lot - friend of mine bought me a copy after reading review copy

Published in the US as “The Fireside Grown-Up Guides” and in the UK as “Ladybird Books for Grown-Ups” these amusing little books with their vintage Ladybird illustrations are great fun and make wonderful presents. Covering a range of topics they rarely fail to raise a smile, but essentially they’re not the sort of book that reward multiple readings so once read soon forgotten. Nevertheless, a laugh or even a smile is always worthwhile aiming for so I do in fact recommend them. This one in particular I enjoyed, as anyone who has a cat surely will, and I found it one of the more amusing ones.

Finally, Sophie picked up The Fireside Grown-Up Guide to the Cat by Jason Hazeley & Joel Morris. This light-hearted book is one of a series that helps “break down the most pressing and complex issues of our day into easy-to-digest pieces of information, paired with vivid illustrations even a child could understand.” Other titles in the series include The Hipster, The Hangover, The Meeting, and more.

The books were originally published as Ladybird Adult books in the UK. Ladybird was an enormously popular publisher that nearly all British children grew up with since the first title–Bunnikin’s Picnic Party—was published in 1940. Sophie herself had well over a hundred thanks to her mother collecting them, with titles covering everything from classic fairy tales to building and using CB radios to the monarchs of England. Each Ladybird book measured 4.5×7 inches, thus allowing the entire book to be printed on a single standard size sheet of paper without any waste, which meant they could be sold cheaply and nearly everybody could afford to purchase them. The consistent sizing and style of artwork meant that the Ladybird book soon became a British icon. The company began producing titles for adults that parodied their classic children’s books in 2015. The artwork in the adult books comes from the enormous Ladybird picture archive, meaning that each one appeared in a classic Ladybird children’s title at some point and has now been given a new lease of life.

The Cat introduces us to the internet’s favorite creature in a funny, if distinctly adult, way with dry and sarcastic humor throughout. “Nasmin loves every one of [her cats] equally, to no discernable effect,” one early page states, while a later page informs us that “it is a good idea to buy a lot of your cat’s favorite food, that way you will have something to throw away when she changes her mind.” Many of the pictures have come from titles that originally had nothing to do with the subject matter but have been captioned to make them relevant. One of Sophie’s favorites was a picture of two men in Ancient Egypt discussing a nearby sarcophagus, the caption informing the reader that Imhotep’s cat has climbed inside and refuses to come out, leading the men to consider whether it might be easier to just leave it in there and “convince everyone that cat burials are a thing now.” Although not every page is laugh-out-loud funny, Sophie recommends this book to anyone who has ever owned a cat and needs a little bit of extra joy in their lives.

This is my favorite of the Fire-side parody books so far. Clearly written by someone who has been owned by a cat. You simultaneously love them, and are painfully aware that they are the living embodiment of the soul of Satan.

Hilarious and fun.

This little book is comprised of humorous blurbs about cats with accompanying drawings proving what all cat owners - or cat’s staff - know: Cats rule.

The very clever names for the cats mentioned in the book will make the reader laugh.

A short book, this is a quick read guaranteed to leave cat lovers everywhere nodding their heads as they chuckle.

Copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Not as great as it might be, this entrant to the series is fun, just like its subject, but also temperamental and not completely reliable, again much like its subject.

Hilarious and oh so true! Reminds me why I have a dog!

An interesting book, albeit a bit short. My 8 year old granddaughter loved it!

This was a fun little book and a great gift for the cat lovers in your life! They will love the "wisdom" of dealing with their favorite pet and get a great laugh at the stories of these playful kitties!

This was a very enjoyable and highly amusing book. Clearly the author has lived with cats as it was spot on in so many details. I'm going to look out for other books in the series and hope they are as good as this one.

What a delightful book! It was fun and easy to read. I really enjoyed it. Having 3 cats myself, I could easily identify with everything written! Great book!

I felt like this one could have been a lot better. I kind of skimmed it because it wasn’t my favorite.

I didn't realize what I was downloading was a complete send-up. That being said, I still enjoyed it, although I had hoped for some more insight to car.

Cats

Furry, cuddly, decorative ne'er do wells. They don't actually do anything. They are generally self centred and yet we love and adore them.

This adult guide focuses on cats and their owners, and basically shows how we are wound round their little paws and controlled by them.

Even a non-cat owner such as myself can be drawn into this silent adoration of the felines and spend hours watching them on Youtube.

We are all drawn to them and they basically rule things and we know this but ignore it.

Cats rule the world!

This guide ignores this no longer and explores the behaviours and expectations of cats, and with the help of illustrations from Ladybird books, shows how they get what they want from us every single time.

As with all the adult guide books this one is real fun and entertaining.


Copy provided by the publishers via Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

A fun little book but there's a few weird references to Pharaohs and Bach which are weird and aren't even funny....

The Cat - the "Epitome of Indifference"

If your going to write a parody book there's probably no subject that lends itself better to deadpan humor and the pithy double-edged throwaway line than cats. Here, the authors score frequently and well. Put this on the same shelf with "Angry Birds", and watch the fur fly.

The books in this series are published in the U.K. as "Ladybirds for Grown-Ups" and in the U.S. as "The Fireside Grown-Up Guides". Since 1914 the Ladybird books have been published for children. In 2015 Ladybird began to publish the "Ladybird Books for Grownups", which are parodies of their own children's books. They adopt the style, and repurpose the artwork and layout, of the children's books but address such topics as hangovers, dating, husbands, hipsters and the like. Adults in the U.K. who grew up with Ladybird books take particular delight in these parodies of such familiar books, but the "Fireside Grown-Up Guides" are now being published in the U.S. by Simon & Schuster, and are fairly faithful adaptations. Either way you can find them, as Ladybirds or as Fireside Grown-Up Guides, these books are a hoot.

So, a cheerful bit of parody fun and a nice find. (Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

Quite amusing. Well observed. A gentle satire. Makes you question why we love cats.

The Fireside Grown Up Guides are a fun series, taking vintage illustrations from children's books (in England they were called Ladybird books and were very much a part of my childhood) and combining them with 'modern' issues (hipsters and mindfulness, for example) and witty text.

This book covers slightly more traditional ground, the cat, but in a funny and charming way. Anyone who has owned a pet cat will immediately recognise something here, although the text obviously deals in stereotypes; here, cats are aloof, fickle and predatory. As a long-standing cat owner who has much affection for the creatures, I had to admit there was some truth in the stereotype at times and I really loved that these cold killing machines were given cutesy names by their devoted owners. In fact, the book is every bit as much a tongue-in-cheek view of cat owners as it is about the cats themselves.

A recommended read for anyone who has ever shared living space, willingly or not, with a feline companion.