Recent Updates
Mery X'mas!
I wrote this piece years ago, when Donald Westlake was my favorite author. (Today, he is one of my favorites.) I admit that reposting it now carries a whiff of nostalgia—COVID has changed my shopping habits. I shop less, and go during off hours so as to spend the least time with the most social distance. That protects my health, of course. But it sacrifices the fun of eavesdropping. I miss that.
Enjoy this brief hop back to a COVID-free holiday season, and the excerpt from one of Westlake’s best, Bad News, featuring Dortmunder, and the regulars at the OJ.
Book Review: Born To Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, by Christopher McDougall
Intriguing title! I thought. What does the back cover say? My reader taste buds tingling, I plucked the book off the shelf of the wall book display. (Is there anything better than browsing a curated indie bookstore?) I flipped it over.
“ A tale so mind-blowing as to be the stuff of legend.” –The Denver Post
Isolated by Mexico’s deadly Copper Canyons, the blissful Tarahumara Indians have honed the ability to run hundreds of miles without rest or injury.
What?! As a physician and failed jogger (all pain, no gain), these words stopped me short. Deadly? Blissful? Ability to run hundreds of miles? Without rest or injury?
In a riveting narrative, award-winning journalist and often-injured runner Christopher McDougall sets out to discover their secrets.
I bought the book.
Book Review: 7 ½ Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett
The opening “Half Lesson” is titled: Your Brain Is Not for Thinking. It’s not? No. Your brain’s most important job is predicting your body’s energy needs before they arise so you can efficiently make worthwhile movements and survive to pass your genes to the next generation.
This short, accessible, frequently amusing and deeply subversive book exploded pretty much everything I’ve understood about the brain and how it works. That’s quite a statement given I’m a psychiatrist—my medical specialty is the brain.
For example, memories are not filed like paperwork—that’s a metaphor. They are actually recreated on demand. What! Yes.
The Spring Book Cull Comes To An End
Finished! What a slog. 42 boxes! At about 45 books a box that’s a staggering 1,890 books liberated from my library’s bookshelves. As I filled box after box with increasing weariness, what kept me going
My Favorite Therapy Magazine Has Excerpted Practice, Practice, Practice: This Psychiatrist's Life!
The Psychotherapy Networker is read by therapists all around the world. Oh my!
Draft. Revise and Revise and Revise. Publish.
A box packed with copies of an author’s newly published book should be called a…
Ode to Reading And Six Book Reviews
So many books, so little time. Frank Zappa
Summer, fall, winter, spring, the season makes no difference: I read daily year round. If anything, more in the winter, when short days, long nights and weather help push back the world’s demands.
When asked why he kept his home stocked floor to ceiling with cases of liquor, W.C. Fields said, “Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.” Substitute books for booze, and you’ve got me.
But I have it better than Fields. Because a drink— no matter how good— is used up once drunk.
While a book, if it’s great, just begins to dish up its treats on first read. Alas, great books are rare; that’s why they’re great. I hoard those, not to collect, but to re-read, again and again and again.
Which do I love more, the first read, or a re-read? Are they comparable? Does it even matter? There’s so much to love about reading.