Hey! Listen up. Let me tell you something. A man ain’t a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can’t chop down because they’re inside. ––Toni Morrison This passage from Beloved sums up the central message of Terrence Real’s I Don’t Want to Talk About It with uncanny […]
When Ezra Klein says something like, “this is the most important book I read this year,” there’s little question as to what I’ll do next. That’s how Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future made its way into my life, and boy am I glad it did! This remarkable, brilliant, and wildly useful book is one […]
I’ve had Marshall B. Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication recommended to me more than a few times, both by friends and strangers on the Internet. It never really appealed to me, but now that I’m gearing up to enter a caring profession I decided to give it a whirl. My experience was a mixed bag; some of Rosenberg’s ideas […]
I had a wonderful time losing myself in the pages of Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife. This clever and enthralling story swept me away in exactly the fashion one hopes a good romance will do. Niffenegger’s bonafide page-turner contains many excellent qualities: an elegant and well-executed conceit, deft characterization, and captivating writing. When it comes […]
Several friends recommended William R. Miller and Stephen Rollnick’s Motivational Interviewing as a reliable and longstanding practice that would be useful for an aspiring counselor to explore. The book is a terrific resource for professionals and laypeople interested in the language of change and dynamics of personal development. Miller and Rollnick originally invented motivational interviewing (MI) in […]
My Year of Bookish Wisdom 2020: Superlatives on Strike! You heard it here first: I am predicting that, in 2021, superlatives in every language around the world will join together in a globe-spanning strike. 2020 was just too much––they can’t take it anymore. “Worst” just collapsed from exhaustion and has been confined to quarters, “hardest” […]
Lily Brooks-Dalton’s Good Morning, Midnight was the perfect book to wrap up a tough and tumultuous year. This short, dazzling novel is a mournful but energetic meditation on humanity’s struggle to find meaning and connection in a vast and threat-strewn universe. Brooks-Dalton’s narrative toggles back and forth between two plot threads, both set against the ominous backdrop […]
When I decided to pursue a career in counseling, a mentor recommended Carl Rogers as one of the key historical figures in the development of modern psychotherapy. On Becoming a Person is a collection of essays originally published between 1951 and 1961, each presenting a portion of Rogers’s insights from over thirty years of counseling and psychological […]
It feels odd to call Tom Sweterlitsch’s The Gone World a “fun” read, but fun is a whole lot of what I had while reading it. In this riveting and extremely grim science fiction thriller, the classic detective novel gets a time travel twist. Sweterlitsch’s imagination demonstrates impressive nuance and scope, and his prose slices the mind like […]
I first read Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov about a decade ago, and shortly thereafter forgot almost everything about it. Upon revisiting this long and strange book, the reasons I found it so forgettable are more obvious, as are the fine qualities that make it an indisputable classic. This story of three brothers––of their flaws, torments, and moments […]