At age 11, Jennette McCurdy creates a resume, with help from her mom. It lists her past performances and includes a Special Skills section. The most prized Special Skill for a child actor, according to McCurdy, is crying on cue. McCurdy learns this skill, as she describes in her memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died, with the help of her...
Shockingly, Jennette McCurdy’s mother teaches her an eating disorder when she is a child: anorexia. Later in her life, McCurdy goes through a time of binge eating. And later, a time of bulimia. Her memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died is a sad but courageously true account of these disorders from a first-person perspective. McCurdy writes about a meal she...
The Rockville chapter of Silent Book Club, which I organize and host, is featured in Bethesda Magazine! Check out page 36 of the September/October 2023 Digital Edition. I am featured in the article, along with one of the founders of Silent Book Club and some members of my local club. I’m proud to be part of this worldwide endeavor to...
Dear Blog Readers, Clearly, I’m on a nonfiction kick. Eight out of the last nine previewed books have been nonfictional (and most of these have been memoirs). My original concept for this blog was to keep it 50-50 fiction and nonfiction. But there are no rules here, folks. Or rather, there are no unbreakable rules. To any fiction lovers out...
And the winner of the most shocking book title of the decade goes to . . . I’m Glad My Mom Died, by Jennette McCurdy. McCurdy starred on Nickelodeon TV shows as a child. In her well-written and gut-wrenching memoir, she chronicles her unusual childhood. Her mother is a colorful character whose most cherished wish is not to die of...
“I rarely see people who are selfish and narcissistic in this program. Rather, it is the ‘good and kind’ people of the world who tend to suffer with Mind Body Syndrome.” —Howard Schubiner with Michael Betzold, Unlearn Your Pain, Fourth Edition Why, thank you for the compliment. I’m blushing. But what kind of perverse, reverse karma is this? I’m a...
“Almost any symptom can be caused by [mind body syndrome (MBS)], just as any symptom can be caused by a medical or structural problem. Over the years, I have seen people with a variety of unusual symptoms that are due to MBS, such as burning of the mouth, ears, hands, or feet, tingling or electric sensations of almost any body...
The second groundbreaking book I recently read on the topic of chronic pain is Unlearn Your Pain, Fourth Edition, by Howard Schubiner with Michael Betzold. In contrast to the slender, fun, anecdote-packed The Way Out (read my blog posts on this book here), Unlearn Your Pain is more of a textbook/workbook. While the book can be ponderous and repetitive, this...
The inquisitive one was running. Up ahead, moving in the same direction as the i.o., was a woman with a baby carriage and six dogs. The i.o. imagined the worst-case scenario, which was in fact quite likely: getting tangled up in all six of the leashes, flailing about and knocking the baby carriage over, and all the chaos which would...
My poetry collection, Two Novembers, is being published by Beltway Editions, coming out in 2024. Do you want a sneak peek at some of the poems in the collection? Here’s an opportunity! You can find six of my poems in the Autumn 2023 edition of Exacting Clam: Exacting Clam No. 10. If you’d like to own a physical copy of...
“. . . all pain feels like it’s coming from the body . . .” In their short and fascinating and incredibly well-written book The Way Out, Alan Gordon with Alon Ziv emphasize that, as far as how it is perceived, pain is pain is pain. It feels exactly the same, whether it has a physical cause or whether the...
Alan Gordon with Alon Ziv identify three types of fear that can cause a person to develop chronic pain, in their 2021 book The Way Out. Synonyms for fear include anxiety, stress, worry, and a state of high alert. All of these terms refer to the same situation in the brain: the situation of being in danger. I was shocked...
Two groundbreaking books have recently been published on the topic of chronic pain. I read both because I wanted to do a deeper dive into the origins and meaning of my 4-year battle with post-concussion syndrome. I read these books even though I was already cured of my headaches and dizziness through the Curable app. (I am not affiliated with...
Deinstitutionalization, according to Britannica, is the “movement that advocates the transfer of mentally disabled people from public or private institutions, such as psychiatric hospitals, back to their families or into community-based homes.” The movement started in the 1950s, when effective antipsychotic medications started to become available, and really took off in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, the percentage of people...
Michael Laudor is hospitalized when he is 24 years old, as explained in Jonathan Rosen’s recent memoir The Best Minds. Laudor had had a psychotic break. He is diagnosed with schizophrenia. But he is voluntarily hospitalized, which means that he can leave whenever he wants. Even if he is still experiencing psychosis. Even if his doctors have not yet found...
“Michael had carried a knife, and slept with a baseball bat, because he thought his parents had been replaced by surgically altered Nazis who had murdered them and wanted to kill him.” These words were written by Michael’s best friend from childhood, Jonathan Rosen. The remarkable 2023 book The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of...
Hello from Florida! I never thought I’d be able to travel in an airplane again, due to symptoms that I recently discovered were due to chronic pain. And yet here I am. In sunny and very hot and very humid Florida, visiting family. My first vacation in over four years. And I’m perfectly well. I used to have post-concussion syndrome,...
Claire Dederer points out an unavoidable artist’s problem in her book Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma. Talking about this is a bit controversial in today’s social climate, but bear with me. Here’s what she writes: “What the artist or writer or musician needs desperately is time. And what the family needs is time. This conflict is not necessarily solvable. . ....
Picasso and Hemingway. Two artists so famous and celebrated that I don’t need to write their first names. But, as Claire Dederer points out in her recent book Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, they were both hypermasculine . . . and cruel and abusive to women. Dederer has a theory on why this might have been the case: “If you are...
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, a recent nonfiction book by Claire Dederer, is a rumination on the problem of bad people making great art. But I should not write “bad people.” What I mean is “people who have done bad things.” Moreover, Dederer, throughout her book, expands this idea to “people who might or might not have done questionable things, depending...
I recently met a guy who disclosed to me that his personal motto is “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” Despite this expression having been popular for a number of years—it’s all over the Internet—I did not remember hearing it before. But I instantly took to it. What lovely imagery. And what lovely meaning: so metaphorical, yet so obvious. At...
I have read the masterpiece Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, twice in my life. The two experiences were quite different. This was in large part due to the fact that I read two very different translations of the book. Don Quixote Reading #1: Bargain-Bin Translation The first time, I was in my early 30s. I had picked up the...
Let’s take, as a sample, the first sentence of chapter IV of the first part of Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes. This great and classic novel was written and published in the early 1600s in Spanish. Part I was published first. Ten years later, part II was published. The two parts are now together known as Don Quixote and...
Mind the gap! This I will do. Yes, sir; yes, ma’am! It would be a shame to drop a personal item between the platform and the train—or, God forbid, a body part. I am finding that the gaps here in London are more irregular than in Washington, D.C., and truly do require some minding. Sometimes the train is flush with...
Everything in moderation, including moderation. Heard that before? Now you have, in any case. Feel free to attribute that quote to me. After all, I wrote it. (Look above, if you don’t believe me.) Take it and run with it, Internet! Origin of the Quote Oh, so you require more persuasion before quoting me on that? You wish to know...
Humor me for a moment, and mentally discard all those books that are, in your opinion, page-turners. Any reads that you find to be quick, easy, fun, fascinating, lovely, exciting, or otherwise engrossing are irrelevant to this discussion. Next, add to that discard pile all those books that lack redeeming qualities, as far as you can tell. You’ve read a...
Do you remember that card game called War? Was it only Gen X’ers like me who played this game as a kid? Do you older and younger folk also remember draggingly long afternoons when Mom was taking forever to start making dinner, and there was nothing on TV, and you had no one to play with except your staggeringly stupid...
The following is a true story about if vs whether grammar pitfalls that can happen in business communications. The First Email A few weeks ago, one of the leaders of the company I work for sent all employees an email announcing an upcoming company event and listing possible dates on which it might be held. The leader also wrote this:...
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Books previewed
I’m Glad My Mom Died Jennette McCurdy
Unlearn Your Pain Howard Schubiner with Michael Betzold
The Way Out Alan Gordon with Alon Ziv
The Best Minds Jonathan Rosen
Monsters Claire Dederer
Spare Prince Harry
As I Lay Dying William Faulkner
Rebuilt Michael Chorost
Losing Music John Cotter
Kokoro Natsume Sōseki
Party Going / Living / Loving Henry Green
Chatter Ethan Kross
Tender Is the Night F. Scott Fitzgerald
Stay True Hua Hsu
The Invisible Kingdom Meghan O’Rourke
How to Be Perfect Michael Schur
Orfeo Richard Powers
Unwinding Anxiety Judson Brewer
The Confidence Men Margalit Fox
Liberation Day George Saunders
Pandora’s Jar Natalie Haynes
Night of the Living Rez Morgan Talty
The Journalist and the Murderer Janet Malcolm
Mislaid Nell Zink
Exercised Daniel E. Lieberman
Lapvona Ottessa Moshfegh
Empire of Pain Patrick Radden Keefe
Furious Hours Casey Cep
First Person Singular Haruki Murakami
Klara and the Sun Kazuo Ishiguro
Dead Souls Sam Riviere
The Pale King David Foster Wallace
Lightning Flowers Katherine E. Standefer
Beautiful World, Where Are You / Normal People / Conversations With Friends Sally Rooney
Swan Dive Georgina Pazcoguin
A Passage North Anuk Arudpragasam
Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis
Projections Karl Deisseroth
The Indian Lawyer James Welch
Atomic Habits James Clear
The History of Philosophy A. C. Grayling
Dusk, Night, Dawn Anne Lamott
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick
Nothing to See Here Kevin Wilson
Change Damon Centola
Homeland Elegies Ayad Akhtar
Becoming Attached Robert Karen
Piranesi Susanna Clarke
Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes
Solitary Albert Woodfox
Girl, Woman, Other Bernardine Evaristo
Enlightenment by Trial and Error Jay Michaelson
Death in Her Hands Ottessa Moshfegh
The Cooking Gene Michael W. Twitty
The First Bad Man Miranda July
Upheaval Jared Diamond
A Journal of the Plague Year Daniel Defoe
Creatures Crissy Van Meter
Indelicacy Amina Cain
Say What You Mean Oren Jay Sofer
Habits of a Happy Brain Loretta Graziano Breuning
Bad Behavior, This Is Pleasure Mary Gaitskill
The Brother Gardeners Andrea Wulf
Severance Ling Ma
How to Be an Antiracist Ibram X. Kendi
The Museum of Modern Love Heather Rose
Why I Write George Orwell
The Woman Destroyed Simone de Beauvoir
Educated Tara Westover
The Gift Hafiz
The Collected Schizophrenias Esmé Weijun Wang
Your Duck Is My Duck Deborah Eisenberg
Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari
Milkman Anna Burns
Under the Banner of Heaven Jon Krakauer
Waiting for Bojangles Olivier Bourdeaut
A Mind Unraveled Kurt Eichenwald
Eugénie Grandet Honoré de Balzac
The Body Keeps the Score Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.
The Bookshop Penelope Fitzgerald
Digital Minimalism Cal Newport
The Sisters Brothers Patrick deWitt
Dare to Lead Brené Brown
My Year of Rest and Relaxation Ottessa Moshfegh
Almost Everything Anne Lamott
Born to Run Christopher McDougall, Bruce Springsteen
The Ladies’ Paradise Émile Zola
The World Beyond Your Head Matthew B. Crawford
All the Birds, Singing Evie Wyld
Barracoon Zora Neale Hurston
Dandelion Wine Ray Bradbury
JavaScript & jQuery Jon Duckett
Home Fire Kamila Shamsie
The Weather Detective Peter Wohlleben
Play It As It Lays Joan Didion
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Mark Manson
Convenience Store Woman Sayaka Murata
Perfect Me Heather Widdows
Sorry to Disrupt the Peace Patty Yumi Cottrell
Why Buddhism Is True Robert Wright
What Is Real? Adam Becker
Kudos Rachel Cusk
The Days of Abandonment Elena Ferrante
F*cked Corinne Fisher & Krystyna Hutchinson
Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine Alan Lightman
Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys
Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace
A Room of One’s Own Virginia Woolf
Unlearn Your Pain Howard Schubiner with Michael Betzold
The Way Out Alan Gordon with Alon Ziv
The Best Minds Jonathan Rosen
Monsters Claire Dederer
Spare Prince Harry
As I Lay Dying William Faulkner
Rebuilt Michael Chorost
Losing Music John Cotter
Kokoro Natsume Sōseki
Party Going / Living / Loving Henry Green
Chatter Ethan Kross
Tender Is the Night F. Scott Fitzgerald
Stay True Hua Hsu
The Invisible Kingdom Meghan O’Rourke
How to Be Perfect Michael Schur
Orfeo Richard Powers
Unwinding Anxiety Judson Brewer
The Confidence Men Margalit Fox
Liberation Day George Saunders
Pandora’s Jar Natalie Haynes
Night of the Living Rez Morgan Talty
The Journalist and the Murderer Janet Malcolm
Mislaid Nell Zink
Exercised Daniel E. Lieberman
Lapvona Ottessa Moshfegh
Empire of Pain Patrick Radden Keefe
Furious Hours Casey Cep
First Person Singular Haruki Murakami
Klara and the Sun Kazuo Ishiguro
Dead Souls Sam Riviere
The Pale King David Foster Wallace
Lightning Flowers Katherine E. Standefer
Beautiful World, Where Are You / Normal People / Conversations With Friends Sally Rooney
Swan Dive Georgina Pazcoguin
A Passage North Anuk Arudpragasam
Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis
Projections Karl Deisseroth
The Indian Lawyer James Welch
Atomic Habits James Clear
The History of Philosophy A. C. Grayling
Dusk, Night, Dawn Anne Lamott
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick
Nothing to See Here Kevin Wilson
Change Damon Centola
Homeland Elegies Ayad Akhtar
Becoming Attached Robert Karen
Piranesi Susanna Clarke
Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes
Solitary Albert Woodfox
Girl, Woman, Other Bernardine Evaristo
Enlightenment by Trial and Error Jay Michaelson
Death in Her Hands Ottessa Moshfegh
The Cooking Gene Michael W. Twitty
The First Bad Man Miranda July
Upheaval Jared Diamond
A Journal of the Plague Year Daniel Defoe
Creatures Crissy Van Meter
Indelicacy Amina Cain
Say What You Mean Oren Jay Sofer
Habits of a Happy Brain Loretta Graziano Breuning
Bad Behavior, This Is Pleasure Mary Gaitskill
The Brother Gardeners Andrea Wulf
Severance Ling Ma
How to Be an Antiracist Ibram X. Kendi
The Museum of Modern Love Heather Rose
Why I Write George Orwell
The Woman Destroyed Simone de Beauvoir
Educated Tara Westover
The Gift Hafiz
The Collected Schizophrenias Esmé Weijun Wang
Your Duck Is My Duck Deborah Eisenberg
Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari
Milkman Anna Burns
Under the Banner of Heaven Jon Krakauer
Waiting for Bojangles Olivier Bourdeaut
A Mind Unraveled Kurt Eichenwald
Eugénie Grandet Honoré de Balzac
The Body Keeps the Score Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.
The Bookshop Penelope Fitzgerald
Digital Minimalism Cal Newport
The Sisters Brothers Patrick deWitt
Dare to Lead Brené Brown
My Year of Rest and Relaxation Ottessa Moshfegh
Almost Everything Anne Lamott
Born to Run Christopher McDougall, Bruce Springsteen
The Ladies’ Paradise Émile Zola
The World Beyond Your Head Matthew B. Crawford
All the Birds, Singing Evie Wyld
Barracoon Zora Neale Hurston
Dandelion Wine Ray Bradbury
JavaScript & jQuery Jon Duckett
Home Fire Kamila Shamsie
The Weather Detective Peter Wohlleben
Play It As It Lays Joan Didion
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Mark Manson
Convenience Store Woman Sayaka Murata
Perfect Me Heather Widdows
Sorry to Disrupt the Peace Patty Yumi Cottrell
Why Buddhism Is True Robert Wright
What Is Real? Adam Becker
Kudos Rachel Cusk
The Days of Abandonment Elena Ferrante
F*cked Corinne Fisher & Krystyna Hutchinson
Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine Alan Lightman
Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys
Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace
A Room of One’s Own Virginia Woolf
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