Review of Attached, by Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Heller

Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Relationships, Starred Review 0

Attached.

The New Science of Adult Attachment
and How It Can Help You Find — And Keep — Love

by Amir Levine, M. D., and Rachel S. F. Heller, M. A.

Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2010. 294 pages.
Starred Review

Perhaps it’s silly for me, recently divorced, to read books on relationships. But I think it’s important to figure out what went wrong and how I could do better next time, if there is a next time. There’s much here that’s applicable to any relationship, not just a romantic one, and it also gives me insight into myself and what makes me anxious. What’s more, I would love to be more secure in relationships, and this book has much to teach me about that, too.

If I ever decide to seriously date again, I am definitely going to buy myself a copy of this book. I think this is one of the best guides I’ve ever read to choosing a partner with whom you can more easily build a harmonious relationship. By the same token, if my ex-husband were ever to want to reconcile, I’d buy myself a copy of this book, in order to avoid some of the mistakes of the past, which I can see clearly written here. Meanwhile, while neither of those conditions is true, I definitely have enjoyed reading the insights this book provides.

The first paragraph of the Author’s Note at the beginning sums up what the authors are doing here:

In this book we have distilled years of adult romantic attachment research into a practical guide for the reader who wishes to find a good relationship or improve his or her existing one. Attachment theory is a vast and complex field of research that pertains to child development and parenting as well as to romantic relationships. In this book we limit ourselves to romantic attachment and romantic relationships.

Some more background from the first chapter:

Adult attachment designates three main “attachment styles,” or manners in which people perceive and respond to intimacy in romantic relationships, which parallel those found in children: Secure, Anxious, and Avoidant. Basically, secure people feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving; anxious people crave intimacy, are often preoccupied with their relationships, and tend to worry about their partner’s ability to love them back; avoidant people equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness.

Armed with our new insights about the implications of attachment styles in everyday life, we started to perceive people’s actions very differently. Behaviors that we used to attribute to someone’s personality traits, or that we had previously labeled as exaggerated, could now be understood with clarity and precision through the lens of attachment. . . .

What we really liked about attachment theory was that it was formulated on the basis of the population at large. Unlike many other psychological frameworks that were created based on couples who come to therapy, this one drew its lessons from everyone — those who have happy relationships and those who don’t, those who never get treatment and those who actively seek it. It allowed us to learn not only what goes “wrong” in relationships but also what goes “right,” and it allowed us to find and highlight a whole group of people who are barely mentioned in most relationship books. What’s more, the theory does not label behaviors as healthy or unhealthy. None of the attachment styles is in itself seen as “pathological.” On the contrary, romantic behaviors that had previously been seen as odd or misguided now seemed understandable, predictable, even expected. You stay with someone although he’s not sure he loves you? Understandable. You say you want to leave and a few minutes later change your mind and decide that you desperately want to stay? Understandable too.

But are such behaviors effective or worthwhile? That’s a different story. People with a secure attachment style know how to communicate their own expectations and respond to their partner’s needs effectively without having to resort to protest behavior. For the rest of us, understanding is only the beginning.

They talk about their quest to translate attachment theory into a practical guide that can help people’s lives.

We discovered that unlike other relationship interventions that focus mostly either on singles or existing couples, adult attachment is an overarching theory of romantic affiliation that allows for the development of useful applications for people in all stages of their romantic life. There are specific applications for people who are dating, those in early stages of relationships, and those who are in long-term ones, for people going through a breakup or those who are grieving the loss of a loved one. The common thread is that adult attachment can be put to powerful use in all of these situations and can help guide people throughout their lives to better relationships. . . .

This book is the product of our translation of attachment research into action. We hope that you, like our many friends, colleagues, and patients, will use it to make better decisions in your personal life. In the following chapters, you’ll learn more about each of the three adult attachment styles and about the ways in which they determine your behavior and attitudes in romantic situations. Past failures will be seen in a new light, and your motives — as well as the motives of others — will become clearer. You’ll learn what your needs are and who you should be with in order to be happy in a relationship. If you are already in a relationship with a partner who has an attachment style that conflicts with your own, you’ll gain insight into why you both think and act as you do and learn strategies to improve your satisfaction level. In either case, you’ll start to experience change — change for the better, of course.

Highly recommended for anyone who is in a romantic relationship or wants to be in one.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Writing 0

The War of Art

Winning the Inner Creative Battle

by Steven Pressfield

Rugged Land, NY, 2002. 165 pages.

Well, I’m reviewing this book partly to figure out what I think about it. There’s a whole lot I agree with, and a whole lot I don’t agree with.

You’ll understand what he’s getting at right at the start of the book:

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

Have you ever brought home a treadmill and let it gather dust in the attic? Ever quit a diet, a course of yoga, a meditation practice? Have you ever bailed out on a call to embark upon a spiritual practice, dedicate yourself to a humanitarian calling, commit your life to the service of others? Have you ever wanted to be a mother, a doctor, an advocate for the weak and helpless; to run for office, crusade for the planet, campaign for world peace, or to preserve the environment? Late at night have you experienced a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be? Are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? Then you know what Resistance is.

Now I’ve got an automatic resistance to the whole idea that if you want to create something positive, You Will Face Resistance. I don’t like the whole mystique of the Suffering Artist or Tortured Writer. In fact, I loved Jane Yolen’s book on writing Take Joy! because it said what I believe — that if you don’t enjoy the process of writing, you probably shouldn’t do it.

But I can see that sometimes we don’t do the things we want to do if we think we should do them. Actually, I began reading a book that talked about tricking yourself around that tendency. It was called The Art of Procrastination, and I didn’t get around to reading it before it was due back at the library!

So I’m not sure if I want to see Resistance as this big bad force that you will inevitably encounter. But I have to admit that the book does have some excellent tips on getting around whatever Resistance you do encounter. So does that mean I admit I do encounter some?

And in a lot of ways, he’s saying the same thing as Jane Yolen does, just in a different way. Here’s a short chapter I just turned to:

RESISTANCE AND BEING A STAR

Grandiose fantasies are a symptom of Resistance. They’re the sign of an amateur. The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.

But later he says that signing up to be an artist is signing up to be miserable, because war is hell. I don’t think I agree with that!

The second section, though, is about habits of a professional as opposed to habits of an amateur. That whole section was excellent.

I liked the chapter about how we’re all Pros already in one area: Our jobs. In our jobs, we do all these things that define us as professionals:

1. We show up every day.
2. We show up no matter what.
3. We stay on the job all day.
4. We are committed over the long haul.
5. The stakes for us are high and real.
6. We accept remuneration for our labor.
7. We do not overidentify with our jobs.
8. We master the technique of our jobs.
9. We have a sense of humor about our jobs.
10. We receive praise or blame in the real world.

The third and final section gets into more mystical things and is a little less practical. But one excellent concept it contains is the idea of having a territorial orientation as opposed to a hierarchal orientation. You don’t have to be above others to be good at what you do. The value of art lies in its existence, not in where it falls in some ranking.

On the last page of the book, you’ll find these words:

Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action.

Do it or don’t do it. . . .

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.

Now, as I’m writing this review, I’m in the middle of reading a book called Too Good to Ignore which says the whole “Find your passion” teaching is dangerous. Reading it is making me look at The War of Art with different eyes.

But I don’t think Steven Pressfield is telling readers to find their passion and quit their jobs and go follow it. He’s talking to people who know they have creative pursuits inside them that aren’t getting out. He’s giving them tips to fool and get around their own Resistance or maybe fight it head on and win.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Feynman, by Jim Ottaviani

Biography, Children's Nonfiction Review, Graphic Memoir, Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Feynman

written by Jim Ottaviani
art by Leland Myrick
coloring by Hilary Sycamore

First Second, New York, 2011. 266 pages.
Starred Review

How to make the life and work of a brilliant, if quirky, physicist accessible to the general reader? Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick have done an amazing job by putting the biography in graphic novel form.

Not only do they present the scope of Richard Feynman’s accomplishments, including such a wide variety from work on the atomic bomb to work on the committee investigating the space shuttle’s explosion, they also present the basic idea of some of his pioneering concepts in physics. And they talk about his personal life, including his first wife who died not too long after their marriage, and his defense of a man who was running a strip club, and his decision to give up drinking.

The one thing I didn’t like? It was hard to tell apart all the physicists in their shirts and ties. I finally got to where I could spot Feynman by his crazy hair, but that was about as far as I got.

However, this book inspired me to want to read more about Feynman, and it was a fascinating and interesting story in its own right. It didn’t inspire me the way Feynman’s Rainbow did, but it was another side to a man who made a big difference on our planet.

This is Teen Nonfiction, and I decided to post it on the regular nonfiction page rather than the Children’s Nonfiction page, because even in the graphic memoir format, it’s going to go way over the heads of most children, but most adults won’t mind reading a comic book about a great scientist.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Shiny Objects, by James A. Roberts

Current Issues, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth 0

Shiny Objects

Why We Spend Money We Don’t Have in Search of Happiness We Can’t Buy

by James A. Roberts

HarperOne, 2011. 353 pages.

Here’s a timely look at materialism in America. The author says in his introduction:

We are a nation in love with shiny objects. Our homes, our cars, our offices, our purses, and that storage unit we hate to admit to are all overflowing with our precious belongings. Whether your personal weakness is shoes, cars, jewelry, cigars, or any other possession (vintage posters, books, and watches are my downfall), we Americans love our money.

When it comes to spending money, are you more of a tightwad or a spendthrift? . . . Given that we are a nation of consumers, you might be surprised to learn that the majority of Americans would be classified as tightwads. With a high percentage of people living from paycheck to paycheck, how can consumerism be so rampant? It all boils down to how we pay for our purchases and the “pain of paying” associated with each payment method — it’s not that tightwads don’t want to spend money, they just don’t want to feel like they’re spending money. We are a nation addicted to plastic. Using credit cards greatly reduces the pain associated with paying for our purchases — so much so, in fact, that credit cards have earned the nickname “spending facilitators” by those of us who do research in this area. When we use credit cards, we make quicker purchase decisions, are more likely to buy, and are willing to pay more. . . .

As a professor at Baylor University, I have spent over twenty years conducting research with thousands of consumers from all walks of life on the related areas of materialism, credit card use, and compulsive buying. Why, in a land of plenty, do Americans want more? And why is more never enough? Given that most Americans would readily admit that money and material possessions are not going to make us happy, why do we continue to act as if they will? This book is the culmination of my efforts and those of other researchers to answer such questions. And though consumers are inscrutable, we have begun to unlock some of the mysteries behind materialism and its impact on our lives.

That gives you the idea. This book looks at studies done on consumer behavior and attitudes toward money. And it also attempts to teach the reader and gives tips for getting your actual behavior more in line with the things that matter most to you — which usually, bottom line, is not money. This book is both interesting and helpful.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Some Assembly Required, by Anne Lamott, with Sam Lamott

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Parenting, Starred Review, True Stories 0

Some Assembly Required

A Journal of My Son’s First Son

by Anne Lamott
with Sam Lamott

Riverhead Books, New York, 2012. 272 pages.
Starred Review

I so love Anne Lamott’s writing! She is honest and writes with humor about the failings and foibles we all have. Along the way, a deep faith shines through and a desire to be compassionate to everyone — though she is not afraid to tell us where she is not compassionate at all.

In many ways, Anne Lamott paves the way for me. She’s a little older than me, and her first son was born a year after mine. However, she has become a grandmother before me. In this book, she looks at the beautiful experience of being a grandmother and all the difficulties of letting her son be a father without undue interference from her.

There are some beautiful passages about Jax, the miraculous and wonderful grandbaby:

After I was sure he was sleeping soundly, I touched the flush of his cheeks in that light brown skin and traced those bold eyebrows. Of course, like all babies, he wakes up with a startle, slightly groping and low-level graspy, but with no sense of a time bomb about to go off. The beauty of the curve of his head — how it rests in the crook of his elbow — almost makes me want to flog myself, out of a desperate, unbearable love. All grandparents I’ve mentioned this to have felt this. He’s a Fibonacci spiral, like a nautilus shell — one of those patterns in mathematical expression with a twisting eternal perfection.

Or when she tells Jax the Secret of Life:

Dear Jax: Yesterday was your first Thanksgiving, and it is time for me to impart to you the secret of life. You will go through your life thinking there was a day in second grade that you must have missed, when the grown-ups came in and explained everything important to the other kids. They said: “Look, you’re human, you’re going to feel isolated and afraid a lot of the time, and have bad self-esteem, and feel uniquely ruined, but here is the magic phrase that will take this feeling away. It will be like a feather that will lift you out of that fear and self-consciousness every single time, all through your life.” And then they told the children who were there that day the magic phrase that everyone else in the world knows about and uses when feeling blue, which only you don’t know, because you were home sick the day the grown-ups told the children the way the whole world works.

But there was not such a day in school. No one got the instructions. That is the secret of life. Everyone is flailing around, winging it most of the time, trying to find the way out, or through, or up, without a map. This lack of instruction manual is how most people develop compassion, and how they figure out to show up, care, help and serve, as the only way of filling up and being free. Otherwise, you grow up to be someone who needs to dominate and shame others, so no one will know that you weren’t there the day the instructions were passed out.

I know exactly one other thing that I hope will be useful: that when electrical things stop working properly, ninety percent of the time you can fix them by unplugging the cord for two or three minutes. I’m sure there is a useful metaphor here.

I love the way Sam talks about his son:

It used to be kind of an accident that he could get his feet to his mouth, but now it’s a tool in his movements. He grabs his feet to shift his weight forward, and to sit or roll. Now it’s a lever, to use. He’ll use his feet as a lever, as handles. He’s discovered, “Wow, they’re attached to me. They have weight to them.” It’s evolutionary, and it caught me by surprise because the foot phone seemed like a phase, but it was evolution — him starting the movement process, of rolling over, and rocking forward inch by inch, like someone with no arms. Now you can’t take your eyes off him for a second. He’ll go from being on his back to being on his stomach, with an arm trapped beneath him, and hurt himself. Now if you look away, he can get hurt.

But my favorite is where Anne Lamott reflects about Jesus:

I would say that my deepest spiritual understanding is that God also sees and forgives my smallest detail, even my flickery, prickly, damaged, jealous, vain self, and sees how I get self-righteous and feel either like trash, often, or superior, and like such a scaredy-cat, and God still understands exactly what that feels like. Because God had the experience of being people, through Jesus.

Jesus had his good days and bad days and stomach viruses. Not to mention that on top of it all, he had a mom who had bad days and good days of her own. She’s like me and Amy, like all of us; she would have been as hormonal, too. And she must have been jealous sometimes of the people Jesus chose to spend time with instead of her. Jealousy is such a toxic virus. “Who are these people? And what do they have that I don’t have?” It’s pretty easy to be deeply selfish when it comes to sharing your child. Even Mary must have been like: “Back off! He’s mine.“

Anne Lamott makes the particular experience of being a grandmother a universal experience that we can all share with her.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of The Dance, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Musings, Nonfiction Review 0

The Dance

Moving to the Rhythms of Your True Self

by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

HarperSanFrancisco, 2001. 184 pages.

This book is definitely on the New Agey side, but it does offer some wisdom and inspiration. I like thinking of life as a Dance, and that’s the image used throughout the book.

I think I’ll simply give you some examples of quotations from the book that touched me. If these sound uplifting to you, you’ll find more encouragement where these came from.

First, here’s a quotation that’s also on the cover:

The question is not why are we so infrequently the people we really want to be. The question is why do we so infrequently want to be the people we really are.

Some other quotations from different parts of the book:

Finding and voicing our soul’s longing is not enough. Our ability to live in a way that is consistent with our longing — our ability to dance — is dependent upon what we believe we must do. If our intention is to change who we essentially are, we will fail. If our intention is to become who we essentially are, we cannot help but live true to the deepest longings of our soul.

Despite the fact that endless trying isn’t working, it’s what I know. It’s hard to believe that I can be enough as I am. I want to be more — more compassionate, more present, more conscious and aware, more loved and loving, more intimate with myself and the world. I want to know how to be different — better — than I am. Even though I have failed to consistently live my deepest desires and am exhausted by the endless effort to become who I think I will have to be to live these desires, I resist letting go of the trying. I trust my ability to work hard. I have no experience with or faith in my ability to simply be.

As compassionate beings, we have the ability to hold all aspects of ourselves and the world in our hearts, including those aspects that are annoying, dangerous, malicious, and just downright unlikable. But we have to be willing to do the work of finding out how to do this, honestly observing our own internal and external actions and reactions and learning from each instance how to expand our ability to live the compassion we are.

Think of all the places where you separate yourself from others, distinguishing between “us” and “them.” The minute we do this we are building our sense of self, not on what we truly are, but on trying to feel better than others because we fear we are not enough. I watch myself do this all the time. And if I watch with honesty and compassion, I find a way to make being right an unnecessary prerequisite for being happy.

Lately, when I do my daily practice I find myself praying to live gracefully. I have a very particular feeling in my body when I remember or imagine a graceful day. It is a day without rush, a day where I am not suffering over things not being any differenct than they are, a day when I take a breath and accept those things I cannot change, like long lineups in the bank or traffic jams or the weather. It’s a day when I rest easy in a mysterious knowing that there is enough — enough time and money and energy and heart in the world and in my life, a day when I know that I am enough. It is a day when I am simply present with myself and all that is around me. It is a day of being truly happy, of feeling graceful — comfortable in my own skin and life. . . .

To dance, to move gracefully, to receive the grace-filled moments everyday, we have to know that we are worthy not because of our hard work or our suffering or our eagerness to be other than we are; we are worthy by our very nature — the same nature that creates and sustains all that is. When we know this we are able to answer the question “Are you willing to be happy?” with a quiet but confident, “Yes.”

A life where there is love is often messy. Life without love is neater, but neatness is really preferable only in bathrooms and written reports. Dancing alone is often easier and certainly less complicated than dancing with someone else, but there is nothing quite so satisfying as creating even one moment of real beauty moving gracefully with another. Perhaps to find this beauty more often, these moments of moving in exquisite alignment with each other and with the music that guides us, we need to let go of our ideas of what the dance should look like and let the messiness of love guide us.

It is life that teaches us about our incredible capacity to be compassionate, to be with what is, to love ourselves and each other and the world. And for most of us, most of the time it does not happen in the grand causes and revolutionary changes. It happens in the small things, in our human struggles in relationship. As we learn to trust our essentially compassionate nature and our capacity to love, we do not have to guard against this love; we know we can keep the boundaries that help us live side by side, and we know that we truly never stop loving, however silently, those we once loved out loud. And we are renewed by the wonder of how love carries us beyond where we thought we could go.

Sometimes I think there are only two instructions we need to follow to develop and deepen our spiritual life: slow down and let go.

Letting go necessitates being with the fear that comes when we become aware that all that we love in the world — our very life itself — is impermanent. It can bring tremendous relief and rest to let go where we are trying to hold on, trying to keep the same those things which by their very nature are constantly changing. This does not mean loving life and the world any less fiercely. Loving well and living fully are not the same as holding on.

And finally:

You cannot speed up your efforts to create a life that is slower paced any more than you can successfully fight for peace.

With a book like this, much depends on if you read it when you most need it. Reading it didn’t rock my world, but it did warmly bless my life.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on my personal copy of the book.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of The Girl’s Guide to Homelessness, by Brianna Karp

Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, True Stories 0

The Girl’s Guide to Homelessness

A Memoir

by Brianna Karp

Harlequin, 2011. 344 pages.
Starred Review

Wow. This book will grab you and keep you turning pages. And I hope it will adjust your opinion of homeless people.

If you’ve ever thought that the homeless are lazy or somehow deserve their fate, consider the words of Brianna Karp:

“I had never thought about how those homeless people ended up there. I had never once thought to ask, ‘Why would a lazy person choose that life?’ It seems like a really hard, scary, uncertain life. It seems like the last kind of life a lazy jackass would choose.”

This book tells how one person ended up there. Yes, she had a difficult upbringing. She did have a job, much of the time, and even a trailer to live in. But she definitely doesn’t fit the stereotypical picture of a homeless person. Reading her story definitely made me think.

I was hoping the book would end with Brianna happily married and living in a house, never to be homeless again. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t. But the story of her journey is compelling and moving. She knows how to tell her story so that you feel for her, but don’t pity her. She does show how to be homeless with dignity and self-respect. I truly hope that this book will have incredible sales. Did I mention the story is a page-turner?

As a public librarian, I deal with homeless people every day. I’m sure there are many I don’t know are homeless, but I know that the library is a great place for homeless people, since our services are open to all and everyone is equal there. This book increases my respect for them, and that’s a good thing. And did I mention it’s a great story?

Most of the book is Brianna’s story, but I like this section where she talks to the reader about attitudes toward homeless people:

“The most irritating thing, I found, is when people question ‘luxury’ items like phones, laptops or vehicles. ‘I just saw a homeless person with a cell phone! Guess he’s not really homeless.’ ‘Wait a second, how do you blog if you’re homeless?’ ‘Why don’t you sell your phone and laptop and car and buy food or rent an apartment?’. . .

“I can understand potentially taking issue with government money being misspent — if a homeless individual is receiving housing funds for a very specific, designated purpose from an assistance program, and spending them elsewhere. But personal income? It’s yours, you’ve earned it, and if you want to use it to buy a cell phone or a laptop or a book or a necklace or even a goddamn pack of cigarettes because you feel that any of the above will improve the quality of your life or just plain make you feel a little happier or more humanized for a short while, then good for you. I will never be the one to demand to know how much it cost you or look at you askance and mutter about how you wouldn’t be homeless if only you didn’t buy A, B or C. It’s basic respect, and I don’t think that basic respect and the right to privacy end when you lose your home. . . .

“Sustainability is the key to any lifestyle. Sure, I could sell my phone and my laptop for the price of a few hamburgers. But, then, the hamburgers would soon be gone, and so would my phone and laptop. I would have absolutely no phone, so an employer could contact me. And without a laptop, I would only be able to search and apply for work online during the hours that the public library was open.”

This book will entertain you, but it will also make you examine your own attitudes.

girlsguidetohomelessness.com
harlequin.com
@tGGtH

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Back to Life, by Alicia Salzer

Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Starred Review 0

Back to Life

Getting Past Your Past with Resilience, Strength, and Optimism

by Alicia Salzer, M.D.

William Morrow (HarperCollins), 2011. 278 pages.
Starred Review

Back to Life is a book about resilience, a book about thriving after trauma.

Here’s what Alicia Salzer says about trauma in her Introduction:

For the purposes of this book, a trauma is any event or situation that fundamentally shakes our understanding of the world and of our place in it.

Certainly this includes all the horrors that one typically thinks of when the word “trauma” is used. But in my opinion it also includes a host of other experiences that leave us reeling because the “rules” of life seem to have suddenly changed. In this view, a trauma might be a health issue, a betrayal, the loss of an apartment or job. When a life event robs you of your sense of well-being and self-esteem and leaves you feeling unsafe or out of control — that’s a trauma, too.

To be fair, I read this book after I’d already dealt with most of the trauma of my divorce. But in many ways, the book was good confirmation that I’m on the right track in healing. I definitely recognized her descriptions of being deep in the trauma, and I thoroughly relished her ideas for dealing with it even at this level.

For a very long time, I had lots of trouble with flashbacks — mostly replaying arguments and piecing together when my husband was lying and what I should have said had I known the truth. (Okay, I’ll stop. Just writing that sentence put me in danger of obsessing again!) It was actually a different book that said betrayal is trauma (NOT “Just Friends”) that helped me realize flashbacks are completely normal, and not to get mad at myself for having them, but just, when I notice, turn my mind a different way.

Alicia Salzer presents several strategies for coping with the coping mechanisms that crop up. One is to name the nasty inner voice:

We talked in a previous chapter about how symptoms like nightmares and flashbacks are misguided but well-intentioned stabs at self-protection. In the same way, much of what keeps us in permatrauma are ways of thinking and coping that were developed in a time of tremendous, overwhelming stress. We bring these coping strategies to our current lives in an attempt to safeguard ourselves from future harm. But the way you learned to cope on the worst day of your life is no way to live the rest of it.

I’ve named my nasty inner voice Moodith because it’s funny and dismissive and reminds me that she’s not a good advisor, but Hatelyn, Buzzkill, or Mr. Misery will work just as well. Feel free to come up with your own dismissive moniker.

You can see from this example that she approaches healing from trauma with humor and humility.

Now, I didn’t do too many of her actual exercises, but I was uplifted and encouraged by her ideas. I do think reading this book helped me stay on the right track. Some of the Resilience Skills she goes through are: Flexibility, Accountability, Self-Efficacy, External Efficacy, Rosewashing, and Community. These are all great skills to build.

I also adapted her strategy at the end for changing how you feel. I modified her version, but basically it involves using a physical prop, a stone, to remind you of a positive thing you need to do or think about.

I fondly hope I will never go through major trauma again, but I know that’s not too likely. If I find myself in the depths again, struggling with discouragement, or if I feel I just need a reminder of the vibrant life I’d like to be living, that would be a good time to reread this book.

harpercollins.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/back_to_life.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, by Jacqueline Kennedy

Audiobooks, History, Nonfiction Review 0

Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy

by Jacqueline Kennedy

Interviews with Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., 1964
Foreword by Caroline Kennedy
Introduction and Annotations by Michael Beschloss

Hyperion, New York, 2011. 368 pages, 8 compact discs.

This book plus CD set is a recording of seven conversations in 1964 between Jacqueline Kennedy and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., about her life with John Kennedy. The CDs hold the actual conversations, and the accompanying book has a transcript, with footnotes identifying people and events, and also many photographs from the times being referred to. I listened to the CDs in the car to and from work, and then read the footnotes for the section I’d heard.

Now I was born after John F. Kennedy’s presidency. In fact, the final conversation happened a couple weeks before I was born. So I don’t know a lot about that period of history, and certainly most of the names of the people in the Kennedys’ lives were unfamiliar to me.

But they were still fun to listen to. I’ve heard of the charm of Jacqueline Kennedy, and you could definitely hear that charm in her voice. Her attitudes about being a good wife definitely reflected the time period, but what an asset she must have been to him! She definitely thought the world of her husband, and this is an intriguing look about what it was like to live in the White House at that time.

So even though I didn’t really know what they were talking about, I read the footnotes later and still found myself fascinated by what I was hearing. Those who know more about the JFK presidency may find it much more interesting.

Fifty years from now, it may not be very meaningful to hear a recording of people speaking about our times. But I haven’t heard too many recordings from before I was born, and it felt historic and important to hear the voice of Jacqueline Kennedy herself.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/historic_conversations.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I write the posts for my website and blogs entirely on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Review of The Mind’s Eye, by Oliver Sacks

Audiobooks, Nonfiction Review, Science, Starred Review, True Stories 0

The Mind’s Eye

by Oliver Sacks
read by Oliver Sacks and Richard Davidson

Random House Audio, 2010. 8 hours, 30 minutes on 7 discs.
Starred Review

This was perhaps not the best thing to listen to after having had a stroke, since it told me things that could have happened to me and made me hyperaware of new symptoms. However, this book was completely fascinating, and I found myself talking about it to people the whole time I was listening to it.

Richard Davidson read most of the audiobook, but Oliver Sacks gave introductions to each chapter, and completely read the chapter about his own experience with vision problems and the tumor he had growing on one eye. Both narrators were excellent, though I was a little jarred when Oliver Sacks’ section ended. I would have preferred that to be the final section, though he did follow a logical progression from vision difficulties on to complete blindness.

The book talks about vision and the brain. He begins describing cases where people suddenly lost their ability to read, because of a brain injury. They can still recognize letters of the alphabet, but not put them together as words unless they spell them out or write them out. Many of these people can still write, but they cannot read. Oliver Sacks delves into several different cases and how the people found ways to cope.

He progresses to people with face blindness, who can’t recognize people or places. I was very surprised to learn that Oliver Sacks himself has a certain amount of face blindness. He has, on occasion, failed to recognize himself when passing a mirror. I thought it was even more striking that one time he looked through a window, saw a tall man with a beard, and started trying to groom his beard, thinking it was a mirror. He talked about people with much worse disability in this area, who had to figure out how to cope without being able to recognize commonplace objects by looking at them.

And there’s more. He talks about several different variations of problems in the visual cortex. When he had cancer and lost vision in one eye, he said it wasn’t just as if half his visual field were cut off; it was as if people who went into his large blindspot actually disappeared.

The final section on blindness was also fascinating. Some people get extra good at visualizing, including an engineer who could now visualize going inside an engine to repair it. Another person lost the ability to visualize at all, but gained an enhanced ability to sense things in other ways.

This entire book is fascinating. The mind is amazing, and we can learn much about how it works by seeing how people cope when a small part is damaged. This is a fascinating look at vision and perception and the way we relate to the world around us.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/minds_eye.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library audiobook from the Fairfax County Public Library.