Reading List by Jayne
Here’s a quick recap of some of my recent reads and ones I’m slowly working on.
The Heart – Maylis de Kerangal (translation by Sam Taylor)
Just before dawn on a Sunday morning, three teenage boys go surfing. Returning home, exhausted, the driver lets the car drift off the road into a tree. Two of the boys are wearing seat belts; one is sent through the windshield. He is declared brain-dead shortly after arriving at the hospital. His heart is still beating.
The Heart takes place over the twenty-four hours surrounding a fatal accident and a resulting heart transplant as life is taken from a young man and given to a woman close to death. In gorgeous, ruminative prose it examines the deepest feelings of everyone involved–grieving parents, hardworking doctors and nurses–as they navigate decisions of life and death. As stylistically audacious as it is emotionally explosive, Maylis de Kerangal’s The Heart has mesmerized readers in France, where it has been hailed as the breakthrough work of a new literary star.
REVIEW:
Robin mentioned this book in one of her Daily News posts but what drew me to read this was the mention, in the blurb, about organ donation. I’ve never been involved with making this decision and was curious as to how it would be handled. How does one go about asking the grieving for such a (momentous, horrific, selfless, amazing – pick your adjective) thing? How does the whole process, the realization of what is being asked affect them? Because this book is not about the dead, it’s about the living. It’s about thinking of death, of the fears and taboos that go along with it. Confronting our fears, facing our own mortality, family emotion in the face of clinical medicine. It’s also about life. Who gets these organs? Who gets to move out from under a sentence of waiting and then on with their lives?
Who is the narrator? Most is told in third person present tense. But there is a bit, one line, that sounds like the narrator finally interjecting him/herself into the telling – questioning what the parents are thinking in that lull before making their decision.
The writing is lyrical but also clinical and, in a way, detached. Like a doctor would deliver bad news, which in this book is exactly what happens. The description of the atmosphere and events at the hospital are nailed from wandering the labyrinthine halls to find where you’re going to the beeps and alarms of the machines to the rumpled scrubs worn by exhausted doctors and nurses. I find the medical stuff fascinating (I used to be a Discovery Channel “Trauma: Life in the ER” fanatic) as well as how the medical team and family react to the events. Their stream-of-consciousness musings or excessive background information inserted where there’s no point to it are more annoying to me than anything else.
The story is compelling and once I got going with it – well, aside from the random musings that would slip down a side road for 1-3 pages before joining back to the main road of the narrative – I didn’t want to put it down, especially as the surgeries began. And once it swung into the homestretch with the heart being transplanted, I was almost holding my breath in a race to the finish. If you have an interest in medicine or in questions about mortality, life, grief and wonder, then I would recommend it. But beware of the occasional Proustian sidesteps along the way. B
Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things – Randy Frost and Gail Steketee
What possesses someone to save every scrap of paper that’s ever come into his home? What compulsions drive a person to sacrifice her marriage or career for an accumulation of seemingly useless things? Randy Frost and Gail Steketee were the first to study hoarding when they began their work a decade ago. They didn’t expect that they would end up treating hundreds of patients and fielding thousands of calls from the families of hoarders. Their vivid case studies (reminiscent of Oliver Sacks) in Stuff show how you can identify a hoarder—piles on sofas and beds that make the furniture useless, houses that can be navigated only by following small paths called goat trails, vast piles of paper that the hoarders “churn” but never discard, even collections of animals and garbage—and illuminate the pull that possessions exert over all of us. Whether we’re savers, collectors, or compulsive cleaners, very few of us are in fact free of the impulses that drive hoarders to extremes.
REVIEW:
This is an interesting look at the psychology behind various hoarding personalities. Each chapter features a new type of hoarding rational with a main and some secondary examples. Homes and apartments are described as well as the people who live in them. I think the authors are very careful to separate the person from the disorder and treat both with dignity. With some cases, they and their colleagues are able to help the hoarder begin to understand what is behind the behavior and begin to let go of it and the hoarded material. In other cases, the people aren’t ready yet or interested in beginning treatment. There is a degree of repetition in that the condition of habitats are detailed but though the end result is often the same – hoards of items and an impinged lifestyle/relationships – the reasons behind why people begin and continue to hoard are many and varied. There are even chapters on how this behavior affects children of hoarders and about children who are hoarders themselves. Some hoarders even hoard emails and have computers “stuffed” with files. They outline the reasons why forced clean ups are rarely of long term benefit and how extended an amount of time (in many cases, years) it generally takes to begin to try to control this compulsion and also mentions that many hoarders seem to view the world differently – more creatively and productively. But still, when stuff begins to take over a life and leads to intense distress, it’s no longer a sign of something positive but rather something pathological.
We might own our possessions, but our possessions are beginning to own us. B
The Gladiator’s Mistress – Jennifer Bokal
Phaedra, a dutiful daughter of Rome’s most influential senator, has no choice but to marry a man chosen by her father. But a chance encounter with handsome gladiator Valens Secundus sends her pulse racing—and, for the first time, makes her wish she could choose her own fate. They make each other a promise: she’ll insist on having the right to select her next husband, and he’ll do everything within his power to win his freedom.
A gladiatorial champion, Valens has fought his way up from poverty to become a star in the arena. The only two things he craves are his freedom and the luscious Phaedra, both seemingly far out of reach. But four years after their fateful meeting, Phaedra returns to Rome and soon becomes a widow, and Valens answers to no one but himself. They’re finally free to explore their fiery passion—while evading a powerful and wealthy new suitor of Phaedra’s—until Valens must return to the arena one last time. And in order for Phaedra to control her own destiny and claim her love, Valens will need to survive the battle of his life.
REVIEW:
This is another selection I discovered from our Daily Deals. I checked out the sample and was psyched by what I read. The characters seemed interesting, the situation realistic and I clicked the buy button feeling I was good to go. Well, the first fourth of the book was okay, though with a few historical detail niggles I found questionable. Still these were not bad enough to stop me continuing reading.
There seemed to be a connection between our hero and heroine even though he was a gladiator slave and she a patrician wife. Valens thinks in terms of a trained fighter and Phaedra as a sheltered upper class women. There is a potential villain who actually doesn’t seem too bad and Phaedra’s husband seems like an okay guy. All righty.
Then comes the four year separation. Lots of other important things have happened to Valens and Phaedra, none of which we get to see. Though not much time passes in this section, it seems endless. Our hero and heroine meet in the market and are excruciatingly, almost boringly, correct. Fine, that does make sense as they are of different classes and haven’t seen each other in ages. Then Valens and Phaedra fall into bed that very night after they meet after that long apart and it’s insta-sexy times. Hmmm.
At this point the villain reveals his true weaselly colors and begins to pour his evil over everyone. I also realize I’m still bored. Life and death via a subplot with Valens’s sister is on the line here and I could care less. I flipped forward to the end and realized I still had over half the book of nothing but this stuff which was already boring me which is when I tossed in the towel. This is a disappointing DNF.
Dearie – Bob Spitz
It’s rare for someone to emerge in America who can change our attitudes, our beliefs, and our very culture. It’s even rarer when that someone is a middle-aged, six-foot three-inch woman whose first exposure to an unsuspecting public is cooking an omelet on a hot plate on a local TV station. And yet, that’s exactly what Julia Child did. The warble-voiced doyenne of television cookery became an iconic cult figure and joyous rule-breaker as she touched off the food revolution that has gripped America for more than fifty years.
REVIEW:
I’m taking this one in 100 page chunks as it formats to over 700 pages on my ereader. It’s a fascinating biography of Julia Child. The opening is hilarious and depicts her TV debut on a WGBH PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) show that interviewed authors on which she cooked an omelet and charmed everyone on set and in the audience. I’m halfway through right now and enchanted with her. Reading this has actually got me pondering buying her groundbreaking books and trying my hand at French cooking.
Quiet – Susan Cain
At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts–Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak–that we owe many of the great contributions to society.
In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts–from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves.
REVIEW:
This is another book I’m reading a bit at a time. Oh, I wish this had been published for me to read when I was in grade school. Or even read to me when I was in elementary school and my teachers kept telling/asking my parents – “why won’t she speak up?” “I can’t get her to say anything in class.” “She needs to contribute more to discussions.” “She’s so quiet.” Well, yes. I’m an introvert. The good news for parents of kids like me is that apparently Cain has adapted this book for young readers and its due out this summer (“Quiet Power” from Penguin Young Readers).
The opening chapters here are focused a lot on how businesses – especially in the US – seem to worship on the altar of extroverts yet how often it’s introverts working alone who have come up with the goods for them. Open office space and constant brainstorming – bah, phooey! Tell me I have to “role play” and watch me wither in dismay. Cain’s story about attending a Tony Robbins’ seminar is both hilarious and horrifying. I’m just getting to the section on nature or nurture or both and how bosses are clueing in to the fact that forcing groupthink might stifle the very creativity they’re trying to encourage. Meanwhile if more introverts had been working at the big Wall Street financial institutes, perhaps the 2008 meltdown might not have been quite as bad. And who knew there are shy fruit flies?
I already have two of these books in my digital stash (Stuff and Quiet), but I may need to add Dearie at some point. I don’t cook much these days, but growing up I learned to cook partly from my mother’s old Julia Child cookbooks (along with her Betty Crocker, The Joy of Cooking, Peg Bracken, and Vincent Price–yes, that Vincent Price–cookbooks). And my after school TV viewing was a mix of roller derby, Star Trek reruns, Dark Shadows, and Julia Child cooking shows. It seems as if Child was an unobtrusive, yet pervasive, part of much of my life.
Quiet sounds terrific, and may be something I should gift to a shy family member. I think she would really enjoy reading something like that.
I have Quiet on my TBR pile because I am definitely an introvert, married to an introvert, and mother to one. None of us are shy per se, but definitely need much more alone time than most.
You’ve sold me on The Heart, not because I am unfamiliar with the organ donation question, but rather because I am. I’m a neurologist, and anywhere I’ve worked, it’s up to a neurologist to declare brain death. We were often called upon to explain to grieving family members why their loved one’s heart was still beating but they were actually dead. I never made the first foray into the organ donation question but I’ve been there. It is really really hard for the clinicians — to tell family that their loved one is dying or brain dead and then bring up the organ donation question without sounding (and sometimes feeling) like a vulture.
@Susan: I have that Vincent Price cookbook too! Paid a pretty penny for it on ebay after listing to a friend rave about it for years and rhapsodize about some of the recipes. She says hers has that “dried splatters on the pages” look that tells you a cookbook is well loved.
@Janine: I’m really enjoying it and head back to it and “Dearie” when I need to “clear my palate” so to speak before starting another romance book. Like I said, I wish I’d read it years ago.
@neurondoc: The way you describe your participation in these events is exactly how it happens in the book (which is fiction, if I didn’t make that clear). The neurologist is the one to break the news to the parents and bring up the subject of donation. A nurse organ donation specialist takes over from there. Is that how it’s done in the US?
I will be honest and admit that I got a friend of mine to try the book and the navel gazing detours were too much for her to make it past 2-3 chapters as the medical stuff didn’t interest her enough to keep going.
@neurondoc:
Those must be such tough parts of the job. My hat is off to you and your co-workers.
@Jayne: Thanks! It sounds like it’s definitely worth looking into further.
@Jayne — it differs depending on the hospital. Some hospitals have dedicated transplant teams which include people who receive extra training in how to approach families in these situations. Some (many?) hospitals do not. Because the large majority of these patients are brain dead or have severe neurological damage, neurologists are usually involved to varying degrees. The worst are the kids. When I was a 1st year neuro resident, I did the preliminary brain death protocol on 4 little kids in 3 weeks. At that hospital, a child neurologist had to make the formal brain death declaration in kids under 17, but the resident on that rotation always did the initial eval. I cried after each of them (though I managed to hold off until I was out of the room and down the hall). That was a shitty month.
@neurondoc: I can’t even imagine … As Janine said, my hat is off to you.
Thanks for the kind words. I’m no longer in clinical practice, primarily because of emotional burnout. Some docs can handle that better than others. I wasn’t one of them, so I left for a non-clinical (regulatory) position a few years ago. I read scientific and medical text all day long.
Romance and SFF are my happy brain candy. I’m a long time lurker and love this site.
I listened to Quiet on audio. I tend to lean to that format for non fiction when I can. I seem to absorb it better.
@Jayne – I like Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home as a starting point. Great photo illustrations of their hands doing the cooking, and they have different techniques and show/discuss both. They have a bit of rivalry in the pages, ie, “Julia’s Quick Gravlax” and “Jacques’s Instant Gravlax” … or their pages of artichokes, wow. Pages.
It’s chatty, but not gossipy, as when Julia writes: “or maybe you can cajole your fish man — the way I do — into slicing the salmon for you.” Just casual reading, but with very clear recipes. And I think they try very hard to impart that for them cooking is a feeling your way forward rather than strict adherence type of activity.
The Heart sounds like a good book for non-medics to read if they are interested in the subject. As a physician who has dealt with transplant donors’ relatives and transplant recipients, I have found that organ donation can be a positive thing to the grieving donor family. Their loved one has died, and yet they live on, and can save several other people’s lives. Organ donations of heart, lung, liver and lungs are life-saving. The saddest news I had to give was to a young leukaemia patient of mine who was dying of leukaemia and wanted to donate her organs. I had to tell her she could not be an organ donor after she died as she had leukaemia.
Thanks for the rec on Quiet, will need to check it out.
I’m an introvert, as is my husband and my best friend. When I read Quiet, I was working in one of those dreaded “open floor plan” environments at a tech company so the book really spoke to me. (Thankfully, I am no longer at that job!). I think the real reason open workspaces got popular was that it’s a lot cheaper to install them and you can cram more people into a smaller space. The higher ups in these companies don’t want to admit that’s the reason they are doing it, so they’ve come up with this elaborate justification that it fosters creativity and collaboration LOL. Most of the people who work in them abhor them.
After reading it, I decided to pick Quiet as my book club selection. My book club is composed of a group of long-time friends of mine, of whom I would judge only 1 to be a fellow introvert. Years ago, when 5 of us did the Meyers-Briggs test together at work, they all tested “E” while I tested “I”. After we read the book and were discussing it, the funniest thing was that every one of them (included all who had tested as extroverts on the Meyers-Briggs) insisted they were introverts. My experience with extroverts has always been that they just don’t “get” introversion. They’ll always say, “Well, why don’t you just go and TALK to that person”, not understanding just how hard I have to push myself in order to interact with others.
Anothet thanks for “Quiet” Jayne :).
The thing that made all the lightbulbs inside me light up when I read Quiet was Cain’s explanation of how introverts re-charge vs. how extroverts re-charge. Her book made it easier for me to let both myself and the extrovert-y folks I knew, off the hook.
I’m so glad that there’s a young readers version of it coming out as well!
I read Stuff quite a while ago and it was really good. It helped me to understand my mother-in-law and sister-in-law who live together and are serious hoarders (as bad as you see on the reality shows). It gave me a lot more compassion and understanding for their situation. I wish I could get my husband to read it because while he loves his mother and sister, he gets so angry at them. This book showed me that hoarding is a genuine mental illness and those two ladies can’t help themselves. The thing I remember most clearly from the book is that almost all the hoarders who get cleaned up go right back to hoarding in their newly cleared space. It was pretty depressing.
I seem to be in the minority, but I didn’t care that much for Quiet – I started it as a commuting read but finally dnf’d it.
I am an introvert and while I enjoyed some of the research she discussed, I had trouble relating to her version of life as an introvert – I just don’t have as much introvert related damage. And a lot of it wasn’t a big revelation to me because I’d heard it before. I also got annoyed because I felt she counted some things as introversion that I didnt agree with (I don’t remember specifics now, of course).
I may be rare – my therapist once commented that she was surprised by how accepting I am of my introversion (she has a lot of introverted clients with extroverted mothers who struggle with it). But both of my parents are introverts and they never pushed me to not be introverted, I took the Meyers Briggs test when I was 16 so I understood why I didn’t fit in with American culture relatively early, and I don’t know, Quiet wasn’t much of a revelation to me.
I’ve found Quiet to be a good book to give to other people, heh. I’m a social introvert — I love being around people, talking to strangers, have no problems approaching people… but it’s EXHAUSTING. I get home, am done, and don’t want to say a word for the next 8 hours.
I read it a couple of years ago and it did help me weed out some not-very-helpful thought patterns/tendencies I had, like to beat myself up for not going out on a friday night or not wanting to stay for more than an hour at a party or such. I wound up making a list of things I felt I was SUPPOSED to find fun and relaxing, and a list of things I ACTUALLY DID, and they were not the same list at all (shocking no one but me, I think).
My therapist says “supposed to” and “should” are more damaging than most people realize. So it has been helpful to me in articulating to myself and especially to others why, just because I am super happy to be collaborative at work or chatty during planned social events, dropping by my place unannounced will throw me into a tailspin of anxiety and I need 3-4 days after a major convention or work conference of total solitude to recover.
This was a popular book in my family (we trade books around a lot) as we have a lot of introverts or people with some social anxiety, so having a designated “quiet room” where people can just read or sit quietly or play on their phones when we have big family gatherings crammed full of noise and people has been a really great addition, as well as people being a lot more accepting and instead of guilt-tripping people who need to nope out for an hour, a lot more encouragement for people to monitor and take care of themselves. Everyone has a better time!
@cleo: I was lucky to avoid “introvert related damage” (love that term) as well. My beloved mother is a chatty Kathy who can happily talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere but she never pushed me to be like her. Instead, she had the insight to see who and what I am and just let me be. Thanks Mom!
Stuff and Quiet look really interesting. I’m off to check them out on Amazon.