Category: Read This Book

Lori Gottlieb is a writer and also a therapist. This book looks at therapy from a bunch of different angles. Interwoven are stories about her work with her clients and how she came to be a therapist. Another main thread is about her finding a therapist for herself to work through what started as a huge breakup but also some much deeper stuff too. Finally, there are also bits about what therapists in general do, what therapy is about, and how therapy can help people.

One of the patients the author talks about, Julie, has terminal cancer. Julie is seeing Lori (our author) to help her prepare for her own death. If talking a lot about death and cancer are triggers for you, then you may not want to read this book. Other difficult things discussed with patients in this book are child abuse, alcoholism, and the death of a child. That being said, there is a good balance between the dark and the light in this book. At the end of the day, therapy is about doing the work and healing in what ways we can. It’s about being heard by an impartial party. It’s about getting unstuck when we’re stuck. It’s about allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, even with ourselves.

I sincerely appreciate Lori Gottlieb’s willingness to be vulnerable with readers about her own process, the process of becoming a single mother by choice, her adventures with unknown illness, and her experiences as a therapist in therapy. There are so many gems in this book and I think it’s not only an entertaining read but an important read.

Del likes Kiera—a lot. But she’s been dating someone else for most of high school, so he’s never had a shot with her…until now. She’s just broken up with her boyfriend, and Del has an in: She goes to the same church he and his mom have recently started attending. But when Del stands up for what he thinks is a youth volunteer opportunity to get closer to her, he’s horrified to realize that what he’s actually signed up for is a Purity Pledge. Unwilling to miss his chance with Kiera, he decides to go through with it in the hopes of winning her over, with some help from his new friend Jameer. But Jameer’s help comes at a price: He wants Del to find answers about sex from their school’s healthy living classes, which none of the Purity Pledgers are allowed to take. And when the church’s pastor catches wind of Del’s enrollment in that class, Del finds that navigating romance and sexuality isn’t so pure or simple.

This is a hilarious book with so many wonderful characters and fully developed friend groups. I felt like every character was a teen that I could have worked with or actually met, and I thought that Giles did such a great job showing the many facets of teen life: school, family, friendships, romantic relationships, work life, and church life. Del isn’t exactly joining the Purity Pledge on very noble grounds, and readers can anticipate that his plan isn’t going to work out the way he hopes, but his journey is a really compelling one as Del evolves from a person who pursues his own interests to opening his eyes to the way the world unfairly treats women, and how toxic purity culture can be when it prohibits access to information about sexual health and contraceptives.

I also thought that Giles did an amazing job at writing a character who deeply frustrated me (because Del doesn’t initially realize how entitled and wrong he is in trying to get in with Kiera, and many of his actions are the result of toxic masculinity in society) but at the same time, I wanted to keep reading. I wanted to know what Del would do next, and I wanted to see him grow and really think about his world and his actions. And that character growth was really gratifying. This is a messy novel, and you won’t really find any perfect solutions, but it’s a very real, heartfelt, and hilarious story with top-notch writing.

Bonus: The audiobook narrated by Korey Jackson was great!

If you are expecting a book about how to delete your Facebook account and throw your cell phone into the ocean, this is not it. The author talks about how, actually, just divesting from social media isn’t the answer to resisting the attention economy.

The nothing that the author talks about in the title is, as she puts it, “only nothing from the point of view of capitalist productivity.” The ‘doing nothing’ is how to do things that aren’t seen as “productive” and sometimes even just do things for the sake of doing things or more importantly, doing things with a purpose that is not capitalism. After all, life is just a series of us doing things.

The author supports a shift from the “doing for capitalism” to more of a “doing for the environment.” She introduced me to the idea of bioregionalism but even more specifically, being fully present where we are and noticing the spaces we inhabit and the people and other forms of life we share this space with. One section of the book that I found super fascinating is about how certain pieces of artwork can shape the way we see other art and even the world around us. Similarly, with bird watching. Once you start bird watching, and naming the species of birds, you see birds in a different way than before you started doing that.

This book gave me so much to think about, especially as I am on a mission to be on my cell phone less. If I’m on my phone less, then it stands to reason that I would be doing more of something else. And maybe it’s not about the time I spend on my phone, but the intentionality of being on my phone. Maybe what I really want is to be on my phone more mindfully.

Ann Patchett is a literary writer who has made her career in writing novels, memoir, and essays for various outlets. While most readers know her as a novelist who wrote Bel Canto and The Dutch House, she has also spent most of her career writing nonfiction on a wide range of subjects, and this book collects some of her best essays from the last eight or so years (catch This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage for earlier essays, which I also highly recommend). In this book, she talks about everything from the influence her three fathers had on her, how knitting saved her life, her husband’s adventures in aviation, the evolution of her book covers, reading Kate DiCamillo, how she met Tom Hanks, and how her blurbing Tom Hanks’ book led to a deep friendship with his assistant, artist Sooki Raphael.

I loved existing between the pages of these essays because Ann Patchett strikes me as a very insightful writer and human, and she’s also lived a very interesting life full of lots of interesting friendships and experiences. She’s warm-hearted, generous, sometimes self-deprecating, often humorous, and she knows how to cut to the heart of matters. While her previous essay collection was a fascinating journey through the early years of her career, this collection of essays is preoccupied with aging and reflection, and there’s a lot of room for that considering that a nice chunk of these essays were written during the pandemic. The title essay, “These Precious Days,” is an achingly beautiful account of her early days of the pandemic and her friendship with artist Sooki Raphael, who was fighting cancer and living with Ann at the time. It’s a story I won’t soon forget, and brought me to tears. Reading this book makes me feel as if I’ve met and chatted with Ann, and that she is someone I’d be happy to know. I think it’s rare that we get such a candid glimpse into the life of a successful working writer, and we’re all lucky to be able to read this book and feel connected to her and her work in this way.

This book begins by detailing the importance of not focusing on goals, but instead focusing on systems and habits. There are many sports analogies in this book and the author points out that winners and losers have the same goal: to win. Having the goal of winning isn’t what leads to success; instead, it’s having a system in place where you make continuous small improvements to achieve the desired outcome. Also, having a goal makes there be an end point or as Clear puts it, a momentary change. So you reach the goal then what?

Clear proposes a system of atomic habits: small, consistent improvements that can build on each other to fuel bigger wins, bigger successes, etc. He talks about habits not only being “a thing you do” but how habits foster changes in your identity. It’s the difference between learning an instrument and becoming a musician or between reading a book and being a reader.

After making a very compelling argument for why habits, the book goes on to give a roadmap for how to successfully build habits. Not only how to successfully build good habits, but also how to break bad habits. He starts with introducing the “habit loop,” a cycle of four things: Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward. That is, make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying. He also inverts it for us so that we have a roadmap for how to break a bad habit.

The bulk of the book is then breaking down these four elements and how to implement them in a way that works. After that, there are some advanced tactics for going from good to great. I think one of the most important parts of this book is when he talks about how to continue cultivating a habit when it gets derailed.

Heads up that this book is very heavy on examples focusing on exercise, weight loss, and a couple things here and there that have the pallor of diet culture.

If you have set any goal or intentions or resolutions for this year, this book can be extremely helpful.

Set in a Western-inspired fantasy world, this book follows Violet, Aster, Tansy, Mallow, and Clementine, five young women who were sold to a Welcome House to be Good Luck Girls when they were just children. Aster has already been working a year when her younger sister Clementine has her first night on the job…and she inadvertently kills the man who bought her for the evening. Knowing that Clementine could hang for this, Aster is determined to break free and save her. But Violet, Tansy, and Mallow end up coming with, and now the five have to learn how to trust one another and use all of their skills in order to escape to freedom.

The world building, as I hinted above, is really excellent in this book. Davis portrays not a watered-down fantasy version of a western, but the harsh realities and injustices told from the perspective of five girls who have the least amount of power in this world. Aside from rough desert terrain, lawmen, and bandits, the girls must also contend with the spirits of the dead that roam the land and can kill them if they’re not careful, with the added complication of being marked by “favors”—magical tattoos that brand them as Good Luck Girls, and burn when covered. It’s enough to make most girls want to quit, but even when the odds are stacked against them, these five keep going. The book is action-packed and full of twists and turns as all five struggle to figure out how they’re going to get out of the Scab, aka the desert they call home, and keep away from the lawmen who are hot on their tails. Davis does an excellent job at coming up with high stakes situations and then upping the tension even more, leading to a nail-biting ending that, while complete for the moment, will have you clamoring for book two.

I also liked that this book is very diverse when it comes to race, sexuality, and class, and Davis does a great job of drawing out these nuances without making the book feel too heavy-handed or overtly an “issue” book. There is no sex or sexual assault on the page, but Aster in particular is dealing with the emotional fallout of having escaped forced sex work and while she doesn’t dwell on details, it can be difficult for her to process her emotions, which feels very realistic to her experiences. Davis is sensitive to all of this, and manages to balance these bigger emotional moments with enough fantasy adventure tropes so that the book doesn’t feel too heavy, but still genuine. I’d definitely recommend it to older teens and adults alike!

The premise of this book is that we need boredom in order to foster creativity while at the same time, boredom is increasingly hard to come by, especially with our current level of access to technology. I want to make it very clear that Bored & Brilliant is not anti-technology. I love technology! You’re reading this right now using technology. Some of my reading is done with the help of technology. The author is also a fan and user of technology, but wants readers to be engaged with technology in a more deliberate way rather than the mindless filling in the silences or gaps in stimulation that happen in elevators, on transit, and so forth.

Zomorodi created the Bored & Brilliant project in 2015 to try to find out, “If we changed our relationship to our gadgets, could we generate bigger and better ideas? Would there be a ripple effect of changes to the way we work, the way we parent, the way we relate to one another? Could this change the way we see the world?” It is a seven-step project that this book goes through, along with research about boredom and how technology affects our brains. The project is presented in a way that allows for readers to do it on our own.

One of the sections that really stuck with me was when the author begins discussing how technology has affected people’s ability to do deep reading. The internet has changed how we read, not only via language but scrolling and hyperlinks. It’s no longer the linear activity it often was. Zomorodi learns that people are losing the ability to “deep read,” that is, to sit with a book or novel that is involved and to focus and retain the information. As a reader, a writer, a librarian, a book enthusiast and professional, this is terrifying to me.

Another section that really stuck with me is about how tech professionals and visionaries, like Steve Jobs, limited or denied their own children access to tech. This alone is so telling and chilling to say the least.

Each time I read this book, it resets my relationship to my mobile phone and I’m grateful for it.

Rachel DeLoache Williams first met Anna Sorokin, who was going by Anna Delvey, in New York City. They traveled in the same social groups and eventually found their paths crossing and a friendship sprang up between them. Williams details how she and Anna became close: Going out to eat together, working out together, enjoying spa treatments…all of which Anna almost always footed the bill for. Rachel was impressed by Anna and her ambitions to open up an arts center, and was dazzled by her wealth. She was a junior employee at Vanity Fair, so while she had a nice job and was in proximity to wealth and fame, she didn’t have the kind of money that Anna threw around, and she enjoyed her friend’s generosity. She would occasionally get drawn into Anna’s personal drama, but that was nothing compared to what would eventually be the demise of their friendship: Anna invited her to a luxurious resort in Morocco, then left her footing the $60,000 credit card bill. When Anna ghosted Rachel without repaying her, Rachel went to the New York State Attorney’s office.

This is a fascinating memoir that definitely reads like fiction, so it’s no surprise to me that Netflix has a miniseries in the works (produced by Shonda Rimes, no less!). My big takeaway from this book is that you can know the major highlights of this story and think, “How can anyone be so gullible as to put tens of thousands of dollars on their own credit card for a friend who was clearly so sketchy?” But Rachel walks you through her story, and her friendship, and she doesn’t ask you to feel sorry for her, but she does want to show how easy it is to trust a friend, and how easy it is to want to help out that friend in a pinch. Not all of us would make the same choices that Rachel did, but I couldn’t help but feel compassion for the extremely awkward position she was put in, and the way that Anna so deftly manipulated the people around her to get what she wanted. As far as con artists go, Anna is certainly an interesting one, and I felt like this story just showed how much benefit of the doubt is given to wealthy people, or people presumed wealthy, which allows them to get away with so much. This is a good book if you want a stranger-than-fiction tale, and it dives into the messy landscape of friendship and betrayal.

Full-disclosure: I am not a yoga practitioner. Historically, I am very yoga-averse. Specifically I have a strong aversion to American yoga from the cultural appropriation to the connection to the wellness industry. It’s been really hard to imagine a place for someone like me in a yoga practice; however, after reading this book, which was both an informative and cathartic experience, I was inspired to give yoga another try. That is how remarkable this book is.

According to Stanley, Yoga means “to yoke,” as in to join together. Lightness and darkness, good and bad. She says, “to yoke is to marry breath, though, and movement, to connect the body, mind, and spirit.” It’s about balance. She makes this connection in writing about her imposter syndrome and the necessity of embracing those fears. As is often said, you can’t have lightness without darkness. She talks about giving herself permission to take up space and giving herself permission to not know everything.

The way Jessamyn Stanley writes about poses and breathwork really connected with me in a way it hasn’t in the past. She talks about the yoga of everyday life. Yoga as a thing that you don’t only do in a studio or on a mat. Yoga as the daily project of living. The author’s teachings in this book are connected to stories of her own learning. It is both educational and memoir. I want to mention that she talks about fasting so if that is a trigger for you, know that it is discussed in this book.

My favorite parts of this book are her examinations of the American yoga industrial complex, the whiteness of American yoga, and the cultural appropriation which is so prevalent in American yoga. She gets very real about her own participation in capitalism and cultural appropriation and I think that’s finally what convinced me to take down some of my walls I had up that were keeping yoga at bay.

I enjoyed this book way more than I expected and as I mentioned, it has compelled me to integrate yoga into my own life.

I have been a fan of the UFYH site for years, before it was even a site and was a Tumblr. It is not about minimalism. It is not about keeping a perfectly clean home. It’s about doing what you can with what you have and not only what you have physically at your disposal, but with what sort of physical and emotional bandwidth you have. This book is about each and every one of us deserving to live in a space that we are glad to be in or at least, doesn’t stress us the hell out because of cleanliness.

My habitat, like that of many others, takes a nosedive when my mental health isn’t its best. Some people have never learned basic housekeeping activities. Some people have disabilities that limit the amount they can clean. Some people live in small spaces or share a space with others or have children or dependents to clean after on top of cleaning up after themselves. UFYH is about doing something, anything, instead of nothing. No matter how small, regardless of your gender (no gender roles here, folks).

Just starting the sometimes massive undertaking of cleaning can be enough to turn anyone off from doing it at all. The author has tips on where to start and is a big fan of what she calls 20/10s, that is, cleaning for 20 minutes then having a rest for 10 minutes. Repeat that as much as needed. It helps mitigate the cleaning burnout that can happen from marathon cleaning, that is, cleaning for multiple hours at a time without breaks. Sure, you can get it done that way but then you’re also burned out on cleaning so you avoid it for the next three months and you’re back to square one.

There are many cleaning basics because not everyone knows how to clean, like an outline of how to clean a bathroom. There are also some excellent checklists, like things to do in the evening to make the next morning go more smoothly. There are also some really valuable talking points for talking to a person you share a space with, how to ask for help, and questions to ask if you’re helping someone else clean their space.

Most importantly, the tone is full of kindness and empathy. It’s been such a valuable resource.