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...
When I share with people that I am recovering from a concussion, the first thing they generally do is offer condolences. The second thing they do is express curiosity. How did I get it?! (Here’s how, if you are feeling a sudden bout of curiosity.) The third thing they do is tell me a story about how they, or someone...
Schizophrenia runs in my family. To learn more about this mental illness is, for me, a way of trying to understand a piece of my family history. So when I saw a book called The Collected Schizophrenias featured at my local indie bookstore, cute cover and all, I had to buy and devour it. The Collected Schizophrenias is a collection...
One thing Anna Burns, author of the prizewinning 2018 novel Milkman, does astonishingly well in the book is to portray the scary, unsettling realities of being young. So many novels glamorize youth. One can find so many confident youngsters in books. They know how to make tough decisions, they know how to make and keep friends, and they know how...
Did you, by chance, have an unconventional childhood? I suppose we all did, in one way or another, to a greater or lesser extent. I’d like to tell you about an international bestseller, now available in English, about a boy who’s having an adorably wacky childhood, due to his adorably wacky parents. Here’s a passage from the book describing one...
The inquisitive one was having a busy day! Before work, the inquisitive one went on a run. (The inquisitive one did a speed workout.) At lunchtime, the inquisitive one took a friend’s dog for a walk. (The friend was out of town and had recruited several people to help care for the dog.) After work, the inquisitive one took the...
Today I’d like to share with you an example of the importance of getting the words right. The language we use is immensely consequential in not just how we think about real-world issues, but also how we handle those issues as a society: how much money is allocated, what kind of care people receive, and other important effects. Bessel van...
Sleep. That place to which we all disappear for hours at a time. Drifting off. The mysterious and intangible loss of consciousness. The strangeness of dreams. Waking refreshed . . . or not so much. As a kid, I was scared of the loss of consciousness that is implicit and inevitable in falling sleep. As an adult, I have, at...
If you are a writer, you are probably familiar with Anne Lamott, as she is a hero among writers. If you are not familiar with Anne Lamott, let me introduce her to you. She has a gift for homing in on the nuances of spirituality, anxiety, love, and other topics of great pertinence to our interior selves. Among writers, she...
Around noon on Tuesday, having nothing better to do, the inquisitive one drove to the little skating rink in the town square and parked in the garage. After gathering up the hockey skates in the back seat, the inquisitive one walked to the rink. But the skating rink, the inquisitive one saw, was packed with people! Some were racing one...
Do you remember having had, as a child, sudden realizations about who you were and what life was about? I do. I have many childhood memories: of picking strawberries, catching grasshoppers and roly-polies, making mud pies . . . and having kid epiphanies. Kid epiphanies can be empowering, frightening, or merely evocative of curiosity . . . but they are...
Here is a strange and, when you think about it, disturbing fact about our culture: Girls are more often, and more openly, encouraged to do “boy things” than boys are to do “girl things.” Can it be a good thing—for our personal relationships and for society—for females to grow up with an awareness of and appreciation for males, without the...
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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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