Julia

The trilogy as a whole is a crystal-clear five stars from me. The finale gets 4 stars because it is so poignant to love a story so much that reading the whole last book is suffused with the resignation that the story is going to come to an end! I think the penultimate chapter is a squee bit rushed in terms of pacing, but the final chapter makes up for it. I'm sure I'm going to read the series again, and probably not even all that long from now!

I found this book in a donut shop in Arlington, VA, where I spent most of early 2020 before my dad died in March. It caught my eye in their lending library because Jamie has won a John Burroughs Medal, and I was partway through “The Song of Trees,” for which Haskell won a JB Medal, as well, and I've really been enjoying environmental non-fiction. My star rating doesn't totally reflect my emotional experience with this book: there was something oddly soothing reading a poet's prose about Neolithic ruins while bearing witness to someone's death, and this book was one I could come back to throughout this year without losing the connection to the story despite significant lapses in time. There are times that I think Jamie came close to exoticizing her subjects (the book includes passages about Alaska, a Tibetan town in China, and Scotland), but I think she recognized and addressed that tendency relatively successfully by the book's end, and she has a great deal of compassion for the world, both human and everything else.

I cannot recall encountering another book that used more words I didn't know. There are times that Haskell can be a teensy bit pedantic, but often, he plucked words out of obscurity that fit his usage well, and the book generally thrums with his keen intellect. I'm married to an arborist, so was predisposed to love this book, but it really is fantastic. Chapters include in-depth explorations from a ceibo tree in the Amazon to a Callery pear in New York City, and Haskell's eye for detail makes learning a great deal while reading enjoyable. Here's one of my favorite passages:

“Muir said that he walked ‘with nature,' a companion. Many contemporary environmental groups use language that echoes Muir, placing nature outside us. ‘What's the return on nature?' asks the Nature Conservancy. ‘Just like any good investment, nature yields dividends.' The masthead for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Europe's largest environmental group, promises that the organization is ‘giving nature a home.' Educators warn that if we spend too long on the wrong side of the divide, we'll develop a pathology, the disorder of nature deficit. In the post-Darwin world of networked kinship, though, we can extend Muir's thought and understand that we walk within. Nature yields no dividends; it contains the entire economy of every species. Nature needs no home; it is home. We can have no deficit of nature; we are nature, even when we are unaware of this nature. With the understanding that humans belong in this world, discernment of the beautiful and the good can emerge from human minds networked within the community of life, not human minds peering in from outside.”

The blurb on the cover of this book, from Elizabeth Gilbert, says, “A hymn of love to the world.” Yes, yes, YES. I had first heard Wall Kimmerer talk about her perspective during an On Being podcast, and this book was just a treasure from start to finish. She has so much scientific and indigenous wisdom to share, and an exquisite way of blending the two. If I could make everyone I know read this book, I would. I tend to feel environmental despair (when I'm not actually out digging around in my garden), and this was the antidote, call to arms (or rather peace), and way forward.

Reading N. K. Jemisin's profile in The New Yorker this January (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/27/nk-jemisins-dream-worlds) put The Broken Earth trilogy on my hazy “to read” list, but then the rest of 2020 happened. I'm slowing clawing my way back to book-reading, however, and this seemed like a great place to start. The thing I'm most dazzled by is Jemisin's world-making. She has many other tremendous skills as a writer, including deft and novel descriptions, great control over pacing that sometimes grinds to a halt when cataclysmic events in her world unfold and other times drives forward relentlessly, crackling dialogue, etc. All that effort receded into the background as I felt compelled to know more about the Stillness and its ugly history and what was going to happen to the characters. I stayed up too late reading, but is it “too late” if you don't regret it? I guess some people might argue that 2020 isn't the time for apocalyptic fiction, but I think it's probably exactly the right time. Her science fiction lens had me wrestling with the realities of power, subjugation, and freedom in ways different from the daily grind of the news, and I'm grateful for it. Ordered the next two, and can't wait for The Obelisk Gate to arrive, because this one ends with quite a cliffhanger!

This is one of those books for which assigning a star rating confounds me. Two stars doesn't adequately capture that I tore through it, but does reflect that there were times that I just really disliked the narrator, based on the author's grandmother. My cousin's wife gave it to me, and thought I would enjoy the themes related to women's agency in an unencouraging world. She was right, and I think the unlikeable narrator is perversely part of what I liked - we're still talking about women and likeability in 2019 (especially, unfortunately, as it relates to electability), so bless Forsythe Hailey for fictionalizing her grandmother in a complicated, sometimes confounding, manner. Overall, I found it oddly compelling.

I read this with two colleagues in a consultation group we have for serving our transgender and gender fluid patients, and we all have an interest in and varying levels of experience with psychoanalytic theory. I wish I had liked this better, and surely part of that relates to the fact that I'm more psychodynamically/attachment-oriented than psychoanalytically inclined (my idiosyncratic definition of that is I typically get more out of Winnicott than Lacan, for example). Sometimes Gherovici's writing seemed intentionally obtuse, but not in a fun, Judith Butler-esque way, and I really wish she had linked her theorizing more explicitly with her clinical work throughout. She has a great write-up of a fascinating course of psychoanalysis at the end, but for me, it came too little, too late.

I think my rating for this book will go up over time. It's a really great, comprehensive resource. One of my favorite parts is how, in the “year at a glance” reviews of how to plan, prepare, and implement, the authors always encourage you to grab a warm cup of coffee before sitting down to daydream about spring in the middle of a northwest winter. I wish they were a little more focused on native plants, but I'm not super doctrinaire about that in my own garden, so who am I to talk?

This is a professional read. I'm 4/5ths of the way through the VA training in providing CBCT-PTSD (followed by 6 months of supervision & consultation calls to make sure I'm delivering it adherently), and I have to say, I'm really impressed. This therapy is designed for close dyads - could be romantic partners, but also family members or even close friends - in which one partner has PTSD, and the model is really parsimonious with a good theoretical background. It has a greater emphasis on cognitive flexibility versus cognitive restructuring than some trauma-focused therapy (i.e., it has clear roots in but also evolution beyond Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD, which I really appreciate as an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy practitioner), and as the subtitle suggests, does a great job harnessing the power of interpersonal interactions to boost treatment efficacy. Only giving 4 out of 5 stars because I've yet to do this therapy, but I'm excited to start.

I always feel particularly silly writing reviews for books that win awards like, ya know, the Pulitzer. Let's just say I agree with the selection committee's wisdom. Really moving historical fiction that feels painfully salient in today's political climate (even more so than when it was published in 2014), and I especially enjoyed its unusual combination of poignancy and urgency. A very quick read I didn't want to have end.

Did you know that during the last ice age, a glacial lake in Montana drained in a series of cataclysmic floods that unleashed a torrent of water (the largest had 13 times the flow of the Amazon) all the way to the Pacific? True story. I'm not sure how interesting this book would be if you haven't seen the wild, wild landscape of central Washington (look at the Google images for “dry falls washington” to get an idea of the scarred landscape the floods left behind), but if you have, it's a nice meld of geology, biography, and a bit of scientific history. Bretz was the geologist who traversed much of this landscape on foot, and was rewarded for his hard work, careful observations, and good hypothesizing with criticism and contempt from his peers. The personal narrative drags a bit at times (I'll be honest - I was reading this for the flood details, which I found astounding), but Soennichsen has a friendly, conversational tone, and I'm glad he shed light on how this particular bit of our geological history was discovered.

I think that Dr. Judith Herman's quote on the front of the book is an excellent summary, and she's a giant in the field of trauma as well: “A masterpiece that combines the boundless curiosity of the scientist, the erudition of the scholar, and the passion of the truth teller.” Van Der Kolk has many strengths as a clinician and writer, including humility, a willingness to look for and test alternative hypotheses, and a refusal to put any tribal allegiance to a particular treatment above “do what works for the patient.” This book would be interesting for the non-clinician, I think, but is a must-read for any clinician who does work with trauma. For people who are far enough in their trauma recoveries to tolerate reading about those of others, this book can also be healing for them (I have several patients who have found it very helpful). The bad news is that many people are traumatized. The good news is that there is an increasingly integrative body of knowledge on how to holistically treat them.

I'm not sure my memory is accurate, but I recall loving “The God of Small Things” more. Still, plenty here to savor and reflect on in this pleasurable novel. It's a truly a sweeping story in terms of scope, traversing much of India both historically and geographically. Roy is very skilled at integrating political realities into this work in ways that don't feel pedantic; I realized quickly that I was going to need to learn a lot more about the history of Kashmir to really appreciate some elements of the story, and I'm glad to have done so. There are so many main characters that I sometimes felt I didn't care enough about each of them as I might have if there were fewer, and a few of them were interesting but lacking in interiority. Overall, a good read well-suited for traveling.

I heard Kristen Neff give a keynote at a conference in 2016, and have been a fan since then (her website, https://self-compassion.org, is a great resource if you want to explore the concept of self-compassion before purchasing), dabbling in incorporating self-compassion with my other clinical work. It's a pretty seamless blend with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, mindfulness, and interpersonal approaches I often use with patients. This book is a really excellent combination of psychoeducation and practice. It's accessible enough that some people could use this without the aid of a therapist, and it's challenging enough (in a good way!) to deepen therapy work that is already creating positive change. Neff & Germer explain things kindly without being patronizing, and are encouraging without being saccharine. The self-reflection exercises are thoughtful, and the mindfulness exercises are introduced in a nicely sequential manner. I've been using it pretty much constantly since buying it, and would recommend it widely.

I found this extremely compelling. Like, it jumped ahead of two already-started books on my list and I stayed up too late to finish it compelling. Westover gives a harrowing account of her childhood, capturing the survivalist mentality still prevalent in parts of the inland northwest and how that intersects with Mormonism, but viewed through the painfully complex lens of the emotional ties that bind us to our families. She has a remarkable degree of empathy for all the people who shaped her in childhood, and deftly resists moralizing and an overly optimistic ending. Based on this, I would read anything she ever cares to write.

I'm waffling between 3 and 4 stars on this dense little book. I've used pieces of it with patients for a long time, but only recently finished the whole thing with a patient. I think the needle the authors deftly thread is not shying away from the mindfulness-based and emotion-oriented aspects of ACT that angry people can easily dismiss as “touchy-feely,” while also presenting that material in a simple, matter-of-fact way. They assume without being judgmental that the person reading the book is doing so because their anger is no longer “working” for them. Perhaps I wish aspects of committed, values-based action was added earlier? In summary: not a game-changer, but a solid addition to any ACT practitioner's library.

This book is so flipping charming! It is suffused throughout with the obvious admiration and affection Wohlleben feels for the trees (and all other living creatures) in the German woodland he manages. My husband is an arborist, and I still learned a great deal from the book, from what we don't know (e.g., we don't actually have any idea how large trees manage to move the huge quantities of water they do every day) to the remarkable stuff we do (e.g., trees can communicate to each other via scent). Wohlleben's “agenda” is clear, but it's such a good one that it's hard to fault him for it: he thinks we should all be more in awe of trees than we are, and more willing to find ways to serve trees and the ecosystems they create, versus expecting them to serve us. My one complaint is translation-related; it felt a little uneven. At times, passages were beautifully and fluidly written; at others, word choices distracted me from the content. A small quibble.

I stole this book from my mother, who is also very partial to it. I find it a little too oriented to East Coast gardening, which is also arguably fair, given Druse's location, but it does limit its applicability to me to some degree. On the other hand, he's very knowledgeable about North American native plants generally, and the specific details on plants is quite good. The book also gives fairly good detail on what's in the gorgeous photos, but there are one or two gardens photographed here without as much description in their details as I would like. So...very beautiful, definitely glad to have read it, but depending on your practical needs, not a 5-star experience for everyone.

I adore this book. Anyone who has ever talked to me in person about gardening can tell you how much I abhor America's slavish devotion to grass, so this book is just a feast for my eyes and soul. Hadden does a great job of finding very diverse examples of no-mow yards, both in terms of geography and appearance, and really mixes good practical advice in with the inspiration. I still have way more grass than I'd like, but have been using this as a reference book to get the yard headed in the right direction.

I was feeling really badly about how little I've been reading lately, until I remembered that gardening books totally count, too :) This book is garden porn, for sure. It emphasized the people side of landscaping (e.g., patios) a bit more than the garden side of it (e.g., actual plant placement), which is not quite my cup of tea, but it was still great visual inspiration. It was a nice mix of very aspirational stuff (unfortunately, I'm unlikely to have an outdoor kitchen anytime soon) and do-able projects (e.g,. different visual effects using planters).

I read this New Yorker profile on St. Aubyn (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/02/inheritance) a few years ago, and then recalled it when I stumbled across a used and very cheap version of this compilation at Powell's last year. I'm tagging this as memoir as well as novels because the interview, as well as other things St. Aubyn has said, make clear how closely aspects of the novels hewed to his own life. I really enjoyed these for two reasons. First, St. Aubyn's prose is phenomenal. Second, he created art out of significant childhood trauma in a very psychologically savvy way. “Never Mind” and “Mother's Milk” are easily my favorite of the four, because one of St. Aubyn's unusual gifts is narrating children's interior lives in an evocative way that is both developmentally astute and respectful of their intelligence. A few quotes about developing language in “Mother's Milk” particularly bowled me over, I think because St. Aubyn shines the most when narrating a child's character not based on his own experience:

“Something had started to happen as he became dominated by talk. His early memories were breaking off, like slabs from those orange cliffs behind him, and crashing into an all-consuming sea which only glared back at him when he tried to look into it. His infancy was being obliterated by his childhood. He wanted it back, otherwise Thomas would have the whole thing.” (p. 449)

“Once you locked into language, all you could do was shuffle the greasy pack of a few thousand words that millions of people had used before. There might be little moments of freshness, not because the life of the world has been successfully translated but because a new life has been made out of this thought stuff. But before the thoughts got mixed up with words, it wasn't as if the dazzle of the world hadn't been exploding in the sky of his attention.” (p. 461)

It'll be interesting to read “At Last” to finish off the Patrick Melrose cycle.

I can't remember when I read this...sometime last year, I think. This book hasn't altered my clinical work dramatically, I would say, since the connections between ACT and trauma in my mind were already pretty clear, but it's a nice workbook for patients and I do use it regularly. I wish there was a little more data on ACT for trauma, but I think it'll trickle in over time. The main thing I wish the author attended to with a bit more care is how to do mindfulness-based work with people who really struggle with hyperarousal and/or dissociation.

This book is a really wonderful synthesis of broad-but-accurate strokes of neuroscience and the humanistic aspects of mindfulness. For me, the tripping point was that even though Siegel has a sense of humor about his acronyms, there were still too many for them to be useful for me, and I often found the graphics often forgettably simple for complex ideas where more detailed graphics (especially neuroanatomical ones) might have actually helped. I'll have to read more Siegel, as I gather some of his books more directly discuss therapeutic technique. Overall, I'm glad I read it, I'm sure I'll return to it, but it was one of those books you can tell was written by a brilliant person whose brilliance didn't always translate successfully onto the page in this particular endeavor.

Ugh. I picked this up from a Little Free Library in my neighborhood during a time when I needed a quick distraction. This was my first Danielle Steel novel, and it was distractingly bad, so mission accomplished, I guess. I'm not just being snarky about bestselling authors; if this novel is representative of Steel's work, several dozen of them are worth one by Mary Higgins Clark, which used to be some of my favorite beach reads. The plot was a foregone conclusion, and the characters were one-note and boring. In fairness to Steel, however, this is a particularly difficult climate in which to attempt to swallow her approach to gender (e.g., “She looked up at him again and for a mad moment she wanted to fold herself into his arms, to feel the safety she had once felt, protected by a man.”), so that's a big part of what I found so noxious. Lesson learned!

Three stars doesn't totally capture this for me: I loved the subject matter, and the narrative arc Greenblatt traced through thousands of years of history. I discovered that I'm an Epicurean, pretty much, and it's astonishing how successfully the Catholic Church manipulated the connotations of that philosophy. So overall, it's great, but I found myself wishing that Greenblatt had spent a little less time on Poggio Bracciolini specifically, and more on the general sociocultural millieu. And it won a Pulitzer, so what the hell do I know.