#29 The 20 books I read this summer, reviewed

This summer I read a lot of books, mostly because that’s what I like to do and because it’s part of my work, and as per usual, I make the disclaimer that if my glutenous reading habits make you feel like you aren’t doing enough, please consider I am a childless, single, bookish lady who at least half of the time prefers the company of herself, who chooses books over nearly every other hobby that could potentially be chosen. See this footnote¹ for throat-clearing, disclaimers, and category definitions.

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If You Read One Book

My favorite book was I’m Glad My Mom Died (public library) (review below). Sometimes the books match the hype. This one did. I got it on a Tuesday at 4 p.m., I started reading, went to bed at 9 p.m., woke up at 5:00 a.m. and finished it by 8 a.m. Then I followed her on Instagram and watched her Red Table talk lol.

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Addiction/Recovery/Drugs

Facing Love Addiction (public library) | year. 1992 | pages. 252 | author. Pia Mellody

I’m not sure if I’m going to ever write about this directly and at length (though I have for years written about it indirectly), but I absolutely identify as someone who is love addicted (a Love Addict, if I identified as an addict of any sort.) I’ve done work on this for years, with various therapists, coaches, blah blah blah all the stuff we do; the pattern emerged (exploded?) fully after I stopped drinking, doing drugs, and binging and purging. I’ve heard about Pia Mellody’s work from multiple sources but never engaged. I listened to the audio book on my drive from New York to California. I wasn’t ready for it until then, and listening to it was a decoding of some of my most insane-making behavior—this was a normalizing book for me. It’s also important to note that because I’ve been in recovery for almost a decade, some of the extreme behaviors described were things I’d already filed away at; I was careful to not fully pathologize myself and my behaviors and take the helpful bits of this text to heart. To say it changed my life is an understatement.

I’m Glad My Mom Died (public library) | year. 2022 | pages. 304 | author. Jennette McCurdy

This is the story of Jennette McCurdy’s (a child actor who is very famous and I whom I had never heard of before her book broke the internet) life from age six to her late twenties. It captures her mother’s extreme abuse, her entry into anorexia and then graduation into bulimia, descent into alcohol addiction, and eventual recovery. I loved it because it was, literary-wise, well crafted; she was able to speak in the present tense of each age in a way that fully captured that version of herself; she pulls no punches and somehow also blames no one or performs any kind of take down. It’s a pure and honest account of her own contained experience written so well you can’t actually put it down. I loved it because it’s simply a great victory of healing. I loved it because the eating disorder parts felt so familiar. I started taking diet pills when I was eleven, I didn’t want boobs or curves, I was very good at anorexia and then very bad at it, bulimia felt like a humiliating consolation prize for failed anorexics. I don’t think I’ve seen that story told before anywhere, or at least the way she told it, and I needed it.

Push Off From Here: Nine Essential Truths to Get You Through Sobriety (and everything else) | year. 2023 | pages. 215 | author. Laura McKowen

This book won’t be released until Spring 2023 (but you can pre-order nowww), and I’ll write more on it closer to pub date. This is Laura McKowen’s sophomore release, and it’s something I found to be Extremely Helpful even ten years into my own recovery. My blurb for it is: “Push off from here is a masterpiece, and everyone attempting any kind of change absolutely needs it. What’s the saying? The truth will set you free but first it will piss you off? That’s this book.” But never mind me: Anne Lamott read it and said “I wish I had this book when I first got sober, but I’m glad I have it now.”

Addiction/Recovery/Drugs Adjacent

Bittersweet (public library) | year. 2022 | pages. 352 | author. Susan Cain

I listened to this driving across the United States. As a person who listened to Adagio for Strings, Op. 11 on repeat while the rest of my friends listened to Blink 182 or other truly terrible music, or who finds some depth of release in the saddest movies they make, who could be accused of loving the dark a bit too much…this book helped me make sense of myself. My crude interpretation: people who are more melancholic are also somehow happier, not less. Our appreciation of the dark gives us a greater capacity to fully feel the wonderful things and to appreciate them more fully. (The official summary is a bit more accurate than my interpretation: [A] mix of research, storytelling, and memoir to explore why we experience sorrow and longing, and the surprising lessons these states of mind teach us about creativity, compassion, leadership, spirituality, mortality and love.)

What is Zen? Plain Talk for a Beginner’s Mind (public library) | year. 2016 | pages. 208 | author. Norman Fischer, Susan Moon

I read a lot of texts on various religions and wisdom traditions as well as new age lit, and I do this as a practice (usually a few pages a day but sometimes, chapters or whole books in a day) to remind myself of what matters. I thought this book, written in a question and answer format between a Zen priest and a Zen lay priest, was phenomenal. It is an extremely practical, humble, direct and honest account of what Zen is; think of it as a kind of Zen 101 but at the same time the principles could be applied across disciplines, religions, traditions. I’m adding this to my rotation and I’m sure I’ll go back to read it a few times. “If you really see your life as it is, you’ll see it’s nothing but connection, compassion, and love.” I mean, what else do we even need?

The Hidden Messages in Water (public library) | year. 2017 | pages. 200 | author. Masaru Emoto

So many people have told me about this book. I finally read it after working with a new therapist who for an obscene amount of money told me that instead of doing even more deeper work and spelunking into my already plundered depths, all I needed to do was say nicer things to myself and my whole life would change. Lol². I’m not saying that how we talk to ourselves and each other will solve every single issue on the planet, but also I’m not not saying that?

Trump in a Post-Truth World (public library) | year. 2017 | pages. 160 | author. Ken Wilber

A weird one to put into the addiction adjacent category, but unlike the title suggests, this is actually a book about spiral dynamics, which is a type of unified developmental framework that helps to not only understand individual development, but cultural development. In my favorite Ken Wilber book that exists, A Brief History of Everything, toward the end he posits that the future of our planet depends mostly upon whether we mature fast enough individually and culturally in order to work across our differences to ward off climate disaster, that it’s personal growth vs. global warming in a sense, which has always made me think of the Seven Kingdoms coming together to fight against the White Walkers. In any event, I’m not sure this is the best starting point for understanding spiral dynamics (here might be), but this was nonetheless an important book I read over the summer. I also must be clear, Ken Wilber is one of those thinkers I read who is not entirely unproblematic.

Fun!

As someone who isn’t super into fiction, I read a lot of fiction this summer. My most favorite was The Copenhagen Trilogy, which is actually non-fiction and centers on her addiction so it should be in the top category but it was still what I consider fun reading because it was so well written. There are no descriptions or reviews provided for any. I loved them all equally and for different reasons.

Olga Dies Dreaming (public library) | year. 2022 | pages. 324 | author. Xochitl Gonzalez

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (public library) | year. 2022 | pages. 416 | author. Gabrielle Zevin

Dept. of Speculation (public library) | year. 2014 | pages. 192 | author. Jenny Offill

The Copenhagen Trilogy (public library) | year. 1967-71 | pages. 384 | author. Tove Ditlevsen

Parable of the Sower (public library) | year. 1993 | pages. 368 | author. Octavia Butler

Parable of the Talents (public library) | year. 1998 | pages. 448 | author. Octavia Butler

Matrix (public library) | year. 2021 | pages. 272 | author. Lauren Groff

The Book of Longings (public library) | year. 2020 | pages. 429 | author. Sue Monk Kidd

Great Circle (public library) | year. 2022 | pages. 672 | author. Maggie Shipstead

On Rotation

These are books that are like my security blankets (where I turn when I need something to remind me of what I always forget), but they’re also books that no matter how many times I read I find something new that hits or sticks in a different way it couldn’t have before. You’ll find much Pema.

Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better (public library) | year. 2015 | 1 hour 46 minutes | author. Pema Chödrön | I recommend the audio version over the book; a 30 minute commencement speech given by Pema, followed by a Q&A. It’s one of my favorite talks of all time.

Zen Mind, Beginners Mind (public library) | year. 2020 | 176 pages | author. Shunryu Suzuki | The first time through was done out of my more competitive reading energy (read all the books I’m supposed to) but now it sits in my eternal wisdom pile. It’s great taken one bite at a time.

The Wisdom of No Escape (public library) | year. 2018 | 128 pages | author. Pema Chödrön | I stand by my previous statement in some previous newsletter that this is the best Pema Chödrön book that exists.

Practicing Peace in Times of War (public library) | year. 2014 | 112 pages | author. Pema Chödrön | This is a quick read (Pema again) about choosing peace instead of war in our everyday lives.

Did Not Finish

Mother Hunger, Kelly McDaniel. I actively disliked this book. Many people love it.

Being Mortal, Atul Gawande. I worked in health care when this came out and I’ve been hearing about Being Mortal for almost fifteen years and I tried. I really, really did. I have picked up the written form three times. This time I did audio and I made it 1/3 way through. I do love his Checklist Manifesto, though. I want to say “I’ll circle back to it at some point!” but also giving up after 1.5 decades feels truly great.

Still the Mind, Alan Watts. I love Alan Watts and I love reading about meditation and for some reason this book felt very heavy and unreadable. I won’t go back to it.

Red Pill, Hari Kunzru. I gave up 100 pages in and then I physically threw it across the room.

Finally, have you read any of these? What was the best book or books you read this summer? How do you deal with giving up on books you don’t like? What’s your favorite color?

Ten Things Right Now

Gabor Mate writes his opus, a plea to stop reading books you don’t like, an example set by a billionaire, alcohol makes women sluts and men more respectable or something, Soberversaries is breaking news, moms are micro-dosing, is sugar addiction a real addiction shrug emoji.

1. My Axios alert was about Soberversaries. Lol.

2. “Earth is now our only shareholder.” I gave an interview this week about addiction and sobriety to Dame magazine and was asked what I thought was happening right now—were people drinking more or less?!—and I said both. There’s a lot more addiction, but there’s also a lot more sobriety. I think the same thing applies to the climate. Things are getting worse. And things are also getting truly heroic.

3. Gabor Mate’s new book The Myth of Normal came out last week. The first hundred pages were great; the second hundred were a bit of a miss for me, the third 100 pages are where it gets back to getting to the point that our culture is toxic and that’s where I’m at in it so far, page 220. It’s dense, it’s an exciting thesis, I’m going to hate parts of it because it’s broad, I’m sure when I’m done I’m going to add it to my list of must reads.

4. “Just holding a beer bottle increased perceptions of intoxication and sexual availability for women.” A reminder that the image of women drinking makes people think she’s a slutty slut who is not to be trusted and probably deserved it or actually wanted it, and makes men appear more respectable, fun, relatable, and cool. We saw this play out in real time when a female PM from Finland was captured clubbing and had to take a drug test amid calls to step down, and a male PM from Australia was cheered by an entire stadium for chugging a beer.

5. My friend Allison makes this facial oil and it’s all I’ve used for the past few years for moisturizer and it’s a dream and I’m absolutely not getting money for sharing this and the best part is it’s hand made by an actual angel.

6. A case for quitting books you don’t want to read

7. Moms who micro-dose together. “We've moved past, I think, wanting to guzzle five bottles of wine. We're craving something deeper, and we're definitely craving community.”

8. Is it time to treat alcohol like tobacco? Well, yeah.

9. I love reading and talking about sugar addiction because it’s so controversial! Here’s a podcast from Burnt Toast, Is Sugar Really Addictive? Psychology Today also tried to answer the question in an article of the same title. Anti-diet activist (and former diet book author) Diane Sanfillipo (a gem) and I got into a whole thing about it on this Quitted podcast, and I pulled an old post on sugar and alcohol from the Hip Sobriety blog into the archives here that I would never write today but also needed years ago. Finally, Mary Vance wrote a piece for the now defunct website The Temper about it called Is it okay to replace sugar with alcohol in sobriety? After years of people being really upset about whether or not it’s an actual addiction (and me being one of them!) I lean mostly toward: do whatever the fuck it is that helps you, call it whatever the fuck it is that helps you.

10. “We all laugh at our strange darkness.” AJ just nails it.

    

    @mischmaccShe’s a super freak for sure. #superfreak #ChewTheVibes #freestyle #dating

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1. Following a previous format, I am splitting books up as follows:

• If you read one thing My top monthly book recommendation; not the “best book” but the one I feel changed me or enthralled me.

• Addiction/Recovery/Drugs A book directly dealing with addiction, recovery, pharmacology, or the war on drugs, be it non-fiction, creative non-fiction/memoir, or fiction.

• Addiction/Recovery/Drugs Adjacent A book that even if it had nothing to do with addiction, recovery, pharmacology, or the war on drugs, I still tied it back to that baseline (for instance, a book on meditation, or a book on community or anthropology).

• Fun A book I read for fun that has absolutely nothing to do with addiction or recovery. (Rare? Becoming less rare?)

• On rotation A book I keep in my “always reading pile” (ones I reference or read multiple times, regularly)

• Books I Started and Didn’t Finish Self-explanatory.

Last time I used a rating system, and this time I’m skipping that. You can assume if I finished it I recommend it since I don’t force myself to finish books I don’t feel.

Lastly, no book is perfect. Since publishing my book I’ve gotten the occasional, “if you were to take this part out I’d recommend it to my clients,” stuff like that. That presumes that information needs to be perfect, or in 100% alignment with your world beliefs, or that people can’t think for themselves. I have never read a book I 100% agree with (including my own, three years later). I trust that you’ll be able to parse out what you do and don’t like from these recommendations and make up your own mind, and that you don’t need to be protected from potentially conflicting information. If I am recommending someone like Thomas Szasz, assume I knew he was extremely problematic but still provided value in his writings and that what I recommend isn’t taken as gospel or to mean I support something fully without discrimination.

2. I am, I have, it did