Liza Achilles - Seeking wisdom through books and elsewhere.
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Bio
Publications
Events
The I.O.
Contact
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Liza Achilles - Seeking wisdom through books and elsewhere.

Seeking wisdom through books and elsewhere.

  • Home
  • Bio
  • Publications
  • Events
  • The I.O.
  • Contact
  • Subscribe
hearts - Valentines
Incidental Musings

Remember: Resist

February 13, 2023 by Liza Achilles 2 Comments
At this time of year, I like to remind myself that our society tends to throw around all sorts of messages about a certain holiday coming up (tomorrow) that may or may not be helpful or wholesome for the psyche. Someone on a podcast I was listening to pointed out that there are two Valentine’s Days that run simultaneously: There’s...
harvest at sunset
Book Previews

Bipolar

October 18, 2021 by Liza Achilles No Comments
Sometimes the ability to stay up for multiple days and nights in a row, joyfully performing a highly specific and demanding task, is beneficial. One chapter of the book Projections, by Karl Deisseroth, focuses on bipolar. As usual, Deisseroth tells the story of one patient who suffers from the disorder, alongside his own story as a psychologist, as well as...
basketball going through net
Book Previews

A Lifelong Predicament

October 6, 2021 by Liza Achilles No Comments
But the heart of the novel The Indian Lawyer, by James Welch, is not the prisoner Jack Harwood. It is, of course, the Indian lawyer, Sylvester Yellow Calf. Reading about his life is powerfully interesting and thrilling and sad, a human drama you won’t want to miss. The predicament Yellow Calf faces is strongly existent, long before Harwood steps into...
police car
Incidental Musings

Mixed Feelings

July 19, 2021 by Liza Achilles No Comments
Every once in a while, The New Yorker publishes a series of little vignettes, often by famous authors. Each vignette tells a story about the writer’s life. These are true stories on a theme, . . . and these little pieces often pack a large punch. My favorite vignette from a recent issue is called Lone Star, by David Wright...
dunking basketball backwards in a gym
Book Previews

I Was So Angry I Was a Girl

June 30, 2021 by Liza Achilles 2 Comments
Here’s a line from the fabulous novel Nothing to See Here, by Kevin Wilson, that I could relate to on a deep level: “When I was a kid, I’d been so angry that I was a girl and couldn’t dunk, . . .” The protagonist loves basketball. Basketball hoops are set at certain heights. As a girl of a certain...
castle in Spain
Book Previews

What’s the Wisdom of Don Quixote?

February 17, 2021 by Liza Achilles No Comments
Don Quixote is one of the greatest masterpieces of Western literature. But what does that mean, exactly? What’s great about this book? What wisdom does it have to offer? That’s what I’d like to briefly answer in this blog post. For a fuller answer?—you’ll have to read the book yourself. Don Quixote satirizes melodramatic books (and people who take such...
chocolate red roses hearts
Incidental Musings

Thoughts on Valentine’s Day

February 15, 2021 by Liza Achilles 4 Comments
I have concerns about the holiday known as Valentine’s Day. Dedicating an annual day to the idea of love is not a bad thing. But Valentine’s Day, as it is practiced in our culture, is not equivalent to celebrating love. Love comes in many forms. We can love family, friends, animals, and the whole world. But Valentine’s Day skews toward...
people in silhouette raising hands at dusk
Incidental Musings

It’s the Village, People

December 16, 2020 by Liza Achilles No Comments
“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...
mops on red wall
Book Previews

Angry, Angry, Angry!

August 21, 2020 by Liza Achilles 10 Comments
WOW, there’s a lot of anger out there. And in here. And everywhere. It’s nearly impossible to go on the Internet, join a Zoom call, or chat with a friend without someone—maybe even you or me!—bursting out in a diatribe of some sort. Yep, we’re all angry, . . . but what is the root cause of this anger? And...
deck of cards thrown randomly down
Incidental Musings

You Play Stupid Games, You Win Stupid Prizes

March 16, 2020 by Liza Achilles 8 Comments
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...
woman crouching against bed in pain or agony
Incidental Musings

Let’s Talk About Fear and Mysterious Illnesses

February 28, 2020 by Liza Achilles 8 Comments
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...
sad woman holding a diary and pen
Book Previews

A Woman With a Diary

December 23, 2019 by Liza Achilles 2 Comments
The short story “The Woman Destroyed” has quite the breathtaking title, don’t you think? I mean, destroyed is a hardcore word. This is not, apparently, a story about a woman annoyed, a woman thwarted, a woman in a bit of pain, or a woman having a bad day. This is about a woman destroyed. The most relevant synonyms for destroyed...
woman wearing cute outfit and bending over laughing
Book Previews

It’s Hard to Wear Clothes as a Woman

August 28, 2019 by Liza Achilles 5 Comments
It really is hard to wear clothes as a woman. If you wear anything cuter than a giant paper sack, you risk being judged for revealing too much. But if you go for the giant paper sack, you risk being judged for being too dowdy. As a result, many of us opt to wear cute clothes, but then restrict our...
Table set with breakfast of fruit, tea, and cakes
Incidental Musings

Moments of Wit and Jocularity With Oscar Wilde

July 19, 2019 by Liza Achilles 2 Comments
Unlike most people I know, I’m not a fan of quotable quotes. More than one sentence is usually needed to fully express an idea. Plus, quotable quotes are often taken out of context and assumed to have a meaning that was never originally intended. And then there is the rampant problem of the misattribution of quotes on the Internet. However,...
city with skyscrapers, river, and sun
Book Previews

The Only Glue That Holds Strangers Together

July 10, 2019 by Liza Achilles 6 Comments
A relative of mine recently emailed me and other relatives to ask a philosophical question: Does it matter whether people actually believe the tenets of their religious faith? I wrote back with a response, which went something like this: Our beliefs and the stories we tell are extremely important. These cannot be discounted as superfluous aspects of a religion. They...
French fashion of the late 1800s, vintage costume, hats, Parisian women, France in the Victorian Age
Book Previews

Womankind From All Angles

January 4, 2019 by Liza Achilles 2 Comments
Just as the illustrator of these Parisian women of the late 1800s wearing fashionable hats did a brilliant job of capturing the nuanced variety of the attire, Émile Zola did a brilliant job of capturing nuances of the nineteenth-century female experience in his novel The Ladies’ Paradise. Moreover, as in his descriptions of large versus small businesses, the themes he...
silhouette of boy reading a book outside
Incidental Musings

But Is It for Boys?

November 12, 2018 by Liza Achilles 9 Comments
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...
stone statue in Japan
Book Previews

Since the Stone Age

September 17, 2018 by Liza Achilles 4 Comments
In what ways has society changed since the Stone Age, and in what ways is it exactly the same? The protagonist of the novel Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata confronts this question upon meeting a dissatisfied young man. The young man believes that society is—and always has been—deeply flawed: “Nothing’s changed since the Stone Age. It’s just that nobody...
dancer bending backwards
Book Previews

Bending Backwards for Beauty

September 10, 2018 by Liza Achilles 8 Comments
Hair styling. Nail painting. Clothes and accessories shopping. Laser treatments. Balancing on heels. Cosmetic surgery. Shaving. Tanning. Dermal fillers. Walking up stairs in a long skirt without tripping. Dieting. Make-up application. Botox. Walking down stairs in a short skirt without flashing anyone. The list of things people do for beauty goes on and on. In the book Perfect Me, Heather...
face paint on an upside-down face
Book Previews

Covering, Coloring

September 5, 2018 by Liza Achilles 2 Comments
So I did it—just couldn’t help it!—I judged a book by its cover and title and nothing else. An ad in a magazine caught my eye. The cover was a bold splash of color, which on closer inspection turned out to be face paint on a face. The title was Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal. I was intrigued....
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  • Book Previews (288)
  • Guest Posts (3)
  • Incidental Musings (141)
  • News & Events (55)
  • Tales (72)

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

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