Food Science Minis: Anxiety Around Eating and Fasting as Medicine

Last year, I read nephrologist Dr. Jason Fung's The Obesity Code, which was eye-opening for me. It made me realize that something I sometimes did naturally or inadvertently -- skipping meals or snacks -- was actually a benefiting weight loss. It clicked for me, because in the periods I'd inadvertently fasted -- either from being... Continue Reading →

Susan Cain On the Benefits of Bittersweet

We're living, famously, through a time in which we have trouble connecting with others, especially outside our "tribes." And Keltner's work shows us that sadness--Sadness, of all things!--has the power to create the "union between souls" that we so desperately lack. Susan Cain is the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World... Continue Reading →

Three Memoirs About Moms

Mother-daughter stories aren't always my thing, but I somehow ended up reading three (!) recent memoirs (momoirs?) about just that. One of them you've certainly already heard of: It seems like every year there's one memoir that blows up and is absolutely everywhere (think Educated) and last year it was Michelle Zauner's Crying in H... Continue Reading →

17 Favorites from the Backlist

It's the most wonderful time of the year: Christmas stresses are over and it's time for year-end favorites lists! I love dividing up my year's favorite books by new releases and backlist selections because it means I can include more books. Also, since my blogging has deteriorated into a truly awful state, I realized that... Continue Reading →

A Housewife’s Haunting

The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story, by Kate Summerscale Some events are so dark that to find them is an act of imagination as much as memory. In 1938, as a storm gathered on the continent and Europe braced for something coming, yet unknown but surely terrible, in England a 34-year-old housewife... Continue Reading →

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