“Shock, fury and horror have been washing over the country in the day since the president incited a mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol.” This is how the New York Times summarized the mood yesterday. And it was shocking. It was shocking to go into my hair appointment thinking about Georgia’s election results, and come out of my hair appointment...
A week or two ago, a friend of mine shared with me that they stopped taking their antidepressant. They had been experiencing a bunch of weird side effects—many of which I had never heard of before—and it sounded awful. When I was on antidepressants, I also experienced numerous frustrating side effects. (I’m on a different class of meds now, complete...
Oh boy, oh boy, get yourself ready. It’s that time of year, folks. Christmas lights hanging like icicles! Children making snowgentlemen and snowladies! And the shimmering, frosty release of the bitter, angry, pissy, woebegotten, godforsaken annual Christmas rant!!!! I bet you didn’t even know there was ANY such THING as an annual Christmas rant. Well, that’s because I just now...
A little secret: I haven’t listened to all of the podcasts ever made. But in the spirit of year’s end ranking lists, here are the best podcasts of all time, according to the extremely limited knowledge, and fully admitted bias, of your host, Liza Achilles. But first, a Q&A (literally just a single one) for any old-schoolers and holdouts out...
“You have to engineer a village for yourself, because it won’t happen otherwise.” —Dr. Kirk Honda on his podcast Psychology in Seattle It’s the village, people. It seems that the folks behind the song “Y.M.C.A.,” Hillary Rodham Clinton, and all of the people who passed along the traditional African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” were on...
Words. Insubstantial Words Words seem solid and weighty. In reality, words are neither static nor stable. Not only can they change over time, but they can have wildly different meanings and connotations, to different people, at the same time. This can have big implications, as was driven home to me recently. I have encountered, in the last couple weeks, two...
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...
The Rejection Dear Liza, Thank you for sending us “TWO NOVEMBERS: A Memoir of Love ’n’ Sex in Sonnets.” We enjoyed reading your manuscript, but it did not quite make it to the finalist round . . . The Hurt I receive emails like this on a regular basis. It’s part of being a writer. Yeah, it hurts. But it’s...
This is a blog post. A blog post is extant in cyberspace. The title of said blog post in cyberspace is This Is a Blog Post. This blog post is digitally located on a web server, somewhere on planet Earth. This blog post may have made its way into your email inbox, through means that are quite cryptic to me,...
Have you ever wondered what whales eat? What’s in those big-ass bellies? Big fish? Little fish? Lobster with butter? Shrimp cocktail with lemon slices? Lots of men named Jonah? A report from this week’s New Yorker answers this pressing—I use this word completely unironically—question for us: “In 2017, a beaked whale washed up onshore near Bergen, Norway. In its stomach...
. . . ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever...
On Monday, June 1, 2020, I was not physically present for what the Washington Post called “48 surreal, violent, biblical minutes in Washington.” I was otherwise engaged on Monday, June 1, 2020. However, in light of the darkness of the times, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on what Ibram X. Kendi has to say about demonstrations and...
Happy Memorial Day! Hope you are having a wonderful day, despite the challenges of gathering together with other people during this time. Hope you are making it work somehow, celebrating somehow, honoring our military and our country, somehow. If you live in the U.S., that is. I had planned to share with you my big and exciting news today, but...
Big things are happening over here! Concussion or no concussion! Mental health struggles or no mental health struggles! Arm issues or no arm issues! Don’t care—I’m making it happen. Look at your favorite timepiece, of ancient or modern technological style. Mine says it’s Wednesday, May 20, 2020, around 8ish a.m., Eastern Time, in the Common Era. And then wait around,...
I can’t catch a break. What is going on? Every few days or so, I get myself tangled up in another incident. I used to think one of my brothers was accident prone. Now I know: I must’ve inherited the same family trait. Two days ago, I was trimming bushes in my yard. I was being VERY careful as regards...
A friend of mine requested a blog post about hope. Yes, let’s have hope. Let’s have a fight song. Or actually, let’s have a love and peace song. Let’s watch and listen to and remember this: We Shall Overcome. Will you sing along with me?
The granny square afghan has holes in it. The yarn does not cover every space. There are gaps in the pattern. Perhaps the granny square afghan was crocheted by a girl in middle school, cerca 1990. Thirty-some years ago. Perhaps this was the first crochet project she ever completed. Perhaps she was a total amateur at crochet. Perhaps, as a...
If you’re a book lover like me, you’re probably constantly on the hunt for new books to read. But you don’t want to read just any book. You’re wondering which books out there—and there are a lot of them to choose from!—are getting a lot of buzz, or are highly acclaimed, or are pertinent to your interests. You may also...
I’ve been doing a serious investigation, during the past week, into this important question: Why the heck can’t I drive? Before my concussion setback, which was more than 2.5 months ago, I was able to drive to the drugstore and back. But after months of trying to get that back, I’m only able to drive down the nearby cul-de-sac and...
Hi, friends. How are you holding up? Someone dear to me sent me the following image and gave me permission to share it. (I’d love to give attribution if I could learn where it originated. So if you created this, send me a message, and I’ll give proper attribution.) So here are some great daily quarantine questions for all of...
What works in healing anxiety? Mine and others’? This is the topic I promised to write about in my recent blog post Managing My Anxiety During a Time of Mass Anxiety. What Cures Anxiety for Me Is Generating the Feeling That Someone Cares About Me Feeling that someone gives a shit about me is really important to my health and...
I’ve been battling my old anxiety demons continuously since my concussion setback. That was seven weeks ago. The concussion symptoms themselves were sorta kinda back to okay within two weeks, though some of the symptoms persisted a few weeks longer. But the anxiety and panic ballooned and ballooned until they once again started afflicting me with physical symptoms that prevented...
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...
Folks. We need to talk about the coronavirus pandemic. And we need to talk now. (But . . . let’s talk through the Internet or phone—not in person!) There’s a lot of information out there about the coronavirus. Unfortunately, much of it is confusing, contradictory, and/or out of date before it was even published. So today I’d like to highlight...
The consensus seems to be that practical applications of quantum physics work, . . . but no one knows why or how. One up-and-coming practical application is quantum encryption. That’s being touted as a supremely secure way of protecting data. But one person is healthfully skeptical: Tom Simonite, a writer for Wired magazine. He wrote a short piece about this...
The most recent issue of Washingtonian magazine includes an article called “The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness,” by Sarah Ramey. The article is an excerpt from her memoir (which will be released next month, and has the same title) about her persistent, unexplained health troubles. In the article, Ramey explains that she used to feel that she was the...
Remember: no matter how bad things seem, they can always be worse. Did you catch Stephen King’s short story in the most recent issue of Harper’s magazine? It’s ridiculous fun. And true to form. Read it here.
Yesterday I tried acupuncture for the first time. This morning I feel more relaxed than I have all week. Thanks to J.D.M. for repeatedly recommending the acupuncturist to me, and thanks to D.H. for being absolutely relentless in expounding on the virtues of acupuncture and other aspects of Eastern medicine. My health is still at a low point, but for...
Yesterday evening, I was sitting in a restaurant with some friends. The tables were set closely together; it was one of those venues characterized as “cozy.” And it was cozy, but the decor was lovely, and the food was amazing. Coziness is usually fine. A-OK. No prob. Last night, however, the woman sitting next to me was complaining, very loudly,...
Oh heyyyyy, it’s that little rodent, tunneling into your inbox, throwing earthy tidbits all over the place and scurrying over your personal correspondence, munching on your spam, and getting into ridiculous amounts of intellectual trouble. . . . Liza Achilles here, still suffering from my concussion setback, but recovering rapidly. I haven’t been able to do much reading or computer...
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Books previewed
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
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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