Nonfiction (general) Archives

The Man Who Couldn’t Stop

OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought

by David Adam

A blend of personal account, medical history and looking into how the brain is wired. What OCD feels like to the person afflicted by it. Why treatments in the past didn’t work (some sound quite horrific) and what new ones are far more promising. Have to remember that the things doctors tried that sound awful now, were groundbreaking for their time and turned into something others could build on later, to figure out what actually was effective. Doesn’t make it sound much better though. They just didn’t have enough understanding back then. The book is personal and clinical by turns, covering some of the wide variety of expression this disorder takes on. Making some things far more clear to me (it’s not the compulsions that are the issue) and others I still don’t really understand. It’s a book that merits a re-read in more familiar format, especially because now I’m struggling to recall enough to say something coherent here. I do note: it explained pretty adeptly how unwanted, random, odd and often downright offensive or frightening thoughts pop into everybody‘s head- it’s just that most people immediately forget or dismiss them. The person with OCD dwells on them, and the more they dwell on a particular thought, the more it gets repeated in a feedback loop that’s extremely difficult to escape. That’s the point at which compulsive behaviors come in, as an attempt to drive the thought away. Missing a lot here- the notes I took down after I finished this audiobook weeks ago, while puzzling soon after my injury, are rather scanty. I was very intrigued and did listen closely the whole time I assure you, even though it was quite lengthy compared to some of the other audiobooks I’ve done.

There was one section that talked in depth about two brothers who lived alone in a house full of stuff they hoarded- which I’d also read about in this other book. I immediately recognized them from some of the details, and it was pretty interesting to hear about their predicament from another viewpoint.

Borrowed from the public library. Audiobook, narrated by Daniel Philpott, 7 hours 53 min listening time. Completed on 1/11/24

Rating: 4/5

336 pages, 2016

More opinions:
Book’d Out
Don’t Stigmatize Me
Of Faith and Great Anxiety

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Current Reads, Medical/Health, Nonfiction (general)

Creating Candles

by Luisa Sacchi

This book has a ton of very clever and crafty ideas about making candles with all sorts of embellishments and decorations. From cute things to please kids- small animal figures, molded star shapes, bright stacks of color, things on holiday themes, etc.- to very elegant and pretty candles decorated with leaves, lace, fake or real flowers, glass beads, you name it. Nicely paired with ideas for wrapping as gifts to match a theme, pairing scents with color or intent and style, and so on. There’s quite a few I’m interested in trying to make myself. But once again I felt a tad dubious about the safety of many ideas presented in this book. The gel candles (I didn’t know they exist!) look very cool, but personally I don’t think I would want to burn something that has flower petals or toy animal figurines or beaded jewelry suspended in the wax. Adhering paper, fabric and dried plant parts on the outside of candles also makes me uneasy (I’m quite risk averse). But I do like many of the ideas that feature cut-out wax shapes pressed to the outside or inset into molded candles (I also didn’t know before that colored and patterned wax sheets are a thing!) and I’m game to try some blending experiments. There’s also ideas that use paint, or raffia or glass tile bits, and so on. Also many more creative ideas about what you can pour wax into to make a candle- from cookie cutters and empty drink cartons to hollowed out eggshells, orange skins and coconut shells. I don’t think I would make a candle in a soup can (complete with label a la Andy Warhol) or wine glass (seems to thin and prone to breaking from the heat) or a cleaned-out bell pepper (that’s probably going to rot fast, ugh) but a lot of the projects are very inventive, making me look around to see what else I could use. A thick container lid as a mold for simple tea lights, for example. There’s also more than one hint on how to get a finished candle out of a mold, or clean remnants out of a prior-used candle jar, and for different ways to affix the wick, and other useful tips. Those are scattered through the book on the individual project pages, though. So while I didn’t read completely through every instruction page, I did skim the whole thing and read all the “helpful hint” boxes to gather that info for myself.

I don’t dare put this book in my daughter’s hands right now- she’s bound to want to try making most of the things in here, half of which I think are maybe unsafe. And I need a bit more experience myself, first! There’s candles that look like flowers or candy (with caution that if you gift them, should tell the recipient they’re not edible!) and one that even looks convincingly like a molded jello dessert or pudding. From silly and cute to striking and beautiful, there’s so many ideas in different styles in here, it’s quite inspiring!

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 3/5

224 pages, 2001

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Nonfiction (general)

Out in the Midday Sun

by Elspeth Huxley

This book is the third in the author’s memoirs, following The Flame Trees of Thika and The Mottled Lizard. I am sorry to report that I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much, it didn’t quite feel like a memoir to me and lacked the personal touch. It’s set between WWI and WWII, when the author returned to Kenya yet again, now as an adult. She went back in order to do research, to write about the country’s growth, the lives of ex-pats and pioneers that led rugged lives trying to make a living on wild land, and the upheavals and conflicts that occurred as colonialism neared its end. Most of the book feels like a history, with small anecdotal stories and glimpses into the personalities of some notable people in the community, and ranchers near where she had lived. Some of this was very interesting, other parts that got more into politics or how government mismanaged things, not so much (for me). In the first part of the book I was skimming a lot and wondering if I’d finish it. Later it held my interest more, even though some parts felt repetitive from the previous two books- here again is the story of the bank built around a safe that couldn’t be moved, of her first actual hunting safari, of the affair between her neighbors. It was intriguing to read her account of several other people I’ve encountered in books- she writes about Beryl Markham and Karen Blixen (aka Isak Denisen), but in the latter case, either it’s been so long since I read Out of Africa, or this account was from such an entirely different perspective, I didn’t recognize anything about it at all. Some parts I particularly liked: reading about how the native Dorobo people tended wild honeybee hives. The few parts where she actually describes her travels to different parts of the country to visit those she hoped would share their stories, journals, letters and records, or just sit for an interview. Brief accounts of incidents among nature, including some hunts (when she was still avid about that). Some bits of tribal stories and legends. It did spark my interest to read a few more of her books, that she mentioned in here. I am not sure yet if I will enjoy reading this one again, I have a feeling it’s one of those that will be better a second time around, when I’m in a different mindset. So it’s staying on my shelf for now.

One thing I found odd, and failed to mention about the previous two books although it was a constant feature there. She refers to her parents and her husband by their first names, and never once introduces who they are. The first time they’re mentioned on the page, it’s just something like Gervas met me at the station but the reader is never told what their relationship is. This really threw me off in the first book, written from her childhood perspective and constantly calling her mother Nellie, it took me along while to realize this was her parent! Here the same, she leaps right into telling what’s happening sometimes without alerting the reader to who all the people are, or framing the incident or place in any way, so I was left mentally floundering a few times. Perhaps I just wasn’t paying enough attention? but I don’t think so. One of those writers who just seems to assume you know all the broader details around their circumstances already. I don’t need all the things spelled out for me, but this seemed a bit lacking in that regard.

Rating: 2/5

262 pages, 1985

Tags: Current Reads, Nonfiction (general)

Unnatural Selection

How We Are Changing Life, Gene by Gene

by Emily Monosson

This book was unsatisfying. Just too short for what it tackled. It is very clear and concise, and I feel like I have a better understanding of the issues addressed. But it seemed incomplete, didn’t really offer any conclusion or solution to the problems. Discusses how human impacts via chemical and toxic pollution, use of pesticides and herbicides, genetic manipulation of plants and war waged on germs via vaccinations and drugs, is pushing evolution in all kinds of species. Including those targeted (bedbugs, weeds, cancer, mosquitoes, etc) and those that are just bystanders- frogs, salamanders and fish that live in water collecting runoff and chemical waste, for example. Also how humans are perhaps evolving, changing in response to environmental stressors and pollutants, though this part didn’t talk about quite what I expected, and didn’t answer my questions either. There’s explanations in here about genetics, inheritance of traits, how mutations arise that may or may not benefit organisms, and why they are prevalent enough to influence a population’s evolution or not. Which happens way faster that Darwin ever surmised. It felt odd to be reading a book old enough that it didn’t deal with the biggest things seen in my lifetime. In the chapters about vaccinations and disease, it raises alarms about flu strains and MRSA. Now you’d expect of course, such a book to be talking about Covid 19. The introduction, mentioning how changing traits in stressed populations are seen far quicker in rapidly-reproducing species like houseflies and gnats, says “We won’t see the evolution of tusk-free African elephants in heavily hunted populations . . . in “contemporary” time, but we are certain to encounter plenty of chemically resistant pests and pathogens.” Wrong. This is happening right now, tuskless elephants are becoming more prevalent in the population. I remember I felt shocked when I first read about it in National Geographic several years ago- but then after a moment’s thought I wasn’t too surprised. So this book goes into details about how unsustainable our battle against insects, disease and competitive plants in our crops (weeds) can be- because they will always evolve quick enough to one-up our defenses, putting us in a worse situation, and now we are starting to suffer fallout of our own creation. (I thought for a moment the text was going to be supporting antivaxxers but it didn’t quite go that far). On the other hand, it didn’t offer any answers as to what we should do, either. That’s the part that frustrated me. Raising alarms and pointing out problems, but no suggested way forward.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 2/5

187 pages, 2015

Tags: 2/5- Just Okay, Current Reads, Nature, Nonfiction (general)

Nothing Daunted

the Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West

by Dorothy Wickenden

This book looked like an interesting one to read following Letters of a Woman Homesteader. It’s set a generation later, about two young women from East Coast high society who attended Smith College and then found themselves uninterested in any suitors after returning from their ‘grand tour’ of Europe. They heard of a remote settlement in the mountains of Colorado that was looking for schoolteachers, and decided to go. It was a sparsely populated area of homesteading families that lived off the land in relative poverty. Apparently the local cowboys suffered from a lack of female attention, so they decided to build a school and advertise for teachers, hoping that every few years a new young teacher would arrive and eventually become someone’s bride! Well, I didn’t read long enough to see if either of these two women in the book married a cowboy. The story is very well-researched (written by a descendent of one of the teachers) and based on numerous letters to and from family members, but it was just- too much information in a way. There was a lot about the history of the area, how the railroad was built, how the school building was planned, all about the family connections the schoolteachers had, and their own early education, and their Grand Tour and so on. What I really wanted to read about was their experience going from formal dinners in expensive dining rooms to bare planked drafty houses that had hung blankets for room dividers. I read the first three chapters with diminishing interest, then skipped ahead to dip into some about the teachers’ actual time in the classroom with their students. It seemed no better. I couldn’t keep my eyes on the page. Something about the style, or the abundance of extraneous detail. This one just wasn’t for me.

Funny enough, I noticed that in one of the chapters about their youth, one of the teachers had read every book written by James Fenimore Cooper- she was a big fan. And both these women had read Letters of a Woman Homesteader, admired and hoped to emulate Elinor Stewart. In fact there was a hefty chunk of quoted passages from the other book in here. Sadly this one just wasn’t as engaging and personable.

Rating: Abandoned

302 pages, 2011

Tags: 0/5- Abandoned, Nonfiction (general)

The Year of Less

by Cait Flanders

Found browsing. I liked this one, even though I notice quite a few other reviews complain about the personal stories and repetitive, scattered storytelling. I didn’t mind that too much. The subtitle in full: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store. It’s based on her blog (which I never read) and tells all the personal stories behind things, that she had not shared with her followers earlier. She started the blog to make herself accountable for following a year-long shopping ban: outlining rules for herself, keeping track of progress, sharing the struggles and so on. Her main goal was to only buy essentials, so she could save money to do more worthwhile things she really wanted to (travel with friends family). The book relates how she decluttered her apartment, outlined what she decided could do without, and learned to fix or make some things (with some failed attempts). But really it’s an introspective look at all the things she struggled with that also affected her finances: alcoholism (in the past), buying too many things because they were convenient or on sale, overeating to deal with emotional stress. Breakups, moves for a new job, finding out her parents were getting divorced (and how deeply that affected her even as an adult), and then testing the waters for ditching the job and working for herself. I noticed the repetitiveness but let it slide, I didn’t mind the meandering style, and I tried to let the lessons she learned from this experience sink into me. Some parts I could relate to, others not at all. Note that she didn’t consider herself a shopaholic, always had a rationale for what she bought, but the amount of items that weren’t really useful or necessary just kind of crept up on her. She aimed to be far more thoughtful about her consumerism, and I think the book reflects that really well. I did wish for more stories about the payoff- how she enjoyed the travel, the hikes, the family moments- rather than just notes about what percentage of her belongings she gave away in a month, or numbers on money saved. It seems to be more focused on the overcoming and changing habit parts. That’s okay. Still inspirational.

Borrowed from the public library as an audiobook, 5 and a half hours listening time, read aloud by the author.

Rating: 3/5

216 pages, 2018

More opinions:
Indextrious Reader
Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Bios / Memoirs, Current Reads, Nonfiction (general), Self Help

The End of Illness

by David B.Agus, MD

I picked up this one on a whim when browsing audiobooks at the library- it was right next to What to Eat When. Found this a much better read (or listen, ha) even though, like usual, I am not quite sure how to judge the veracity of all that’s said here. Certainly a lot to think about. I admit he lost me a few times with the details, and one section where he promotes his own company I really zoned out on. But I feel it was worth my time getting to the end.

It’s about improving your health individually, and starts by explaining how very complicated the human body is, how anything that affects something, will have an influence on something else. This is down to the cellular level, protein interactions, etc. Then it goes into genetics, but it gets into a lot of future projections, what medicine might be able to do in the future. There’s also plenty of very familiar advice: get better sleep, eat real food, exercise regularly – but some of the particulars were a bit different than I’ve heard before. Another main point was to eat the freshest food possible (frozen sometimes being a better choice than what’s in the produce section!) and that juicing produce to make drinks might not give your body the best nutrition. I’m not into juicing things, but wonder about that idea- that juicing oxidizes things quickly, and apparently that degrades the food quality. I was surprised that this doctor says daily multivitamins are worthless and possibly even harmful, but claims everyone over forty should be on baby aspirin and statin drugs. Hm. Not sure what to think about that. There’s a lot more in here, and most of it about cancer (even though he says near the beginning this isn’t a book about cancer, it really feels like it is) but the main takeaway is: take care of yourself, prevention is better than a cure. Which most of us probably already agree with. In the end he goes into a lot about how medical knowledge and patient info should be more freely shared, and laments the lack of young people going into research, which is stalling progress in the field. It was kind of an odd note to leave the book on.

Borrowed from the public library in audiobook format, 10.7 listening hours. Voice by Holter Graham (intro and conclusion read by the author).

Rating: 3/5

384 pages, 2012

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Medical/Health, Nonfiction (general)

Hallucinations

by Oliver Sacks

Fascinating and strange, what the mind can create seemingly right in front of your eyes. This book is all about different types of hallucinations that people experience- from many different causes. Oliver Sacks, neurologist, describes case studies of patients, as well as his own visual distubrances caused by migranes and intentional drug use (back in the 60’s and 70’s). Each chapter has a focus on the type of hallucination- some caused by illness, others by brain damage, sensory deprivation or chemical influences. I was surprised at how specific the different types of hallucinations are. For example, before the onset of a migrane many people smell certain things very distinctly. Other people see geometric patterns behind their eyes or superimposed on everything they look at. Still others see flashes of light. I can’t remember the cause of these (the book was so long and detailed) but some hallucinations make people see objects or figures either huge in size, or diminutive – little people marching around or going up and down stairs. This sounded so curious, I’d never heard of it. Sacks relates how the brain often imagines things just on the verge of sleep- and for some people this is heightened, so they are convinced they see figures standing in the room, or have strange sensations of shrinking or expansion (it’s very common but most people don’t remember it). Odd distortions of perception are also explored in the chapter about phantom limbs, and another about out-of-body experiences- both of which have biological explanations, what is going on in the brain that cases these perceptions. Including explanations of hallucinations of figures coinciding with an overwhelming sense of benevolence or euphoria, that many could interpret as a religious experience. I think what fascinates me most, is how hard the brain works to make sense out of things when there is no sensory input for it to use- so that people in solitary confinement for example, or deprived of their sight, will start seeing faces or brilliant colors. There’s also details in here that make me marvel, at how complex the mechanism of vision is, and how delicately the brain interprets it for us- and so easily it can go awry, making us see things that aren’t there (likewise smell or hear, he deals briefly with olfactory and auditory hallucinations too).

So much in this book I can’t even touch on or explain, as admittedly I struggled to understand some of it myself. Not that the author makes it hard to comprehend, but sometimes it goes so quickly through the material that I feel I missed some parts and had to backtrack. I listened to this one as an audiobook (read aloud by Dan Woren, ten hours) and certainly want to have it in hand someday on paper, to experience more thoroughly.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 4/5

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Medical/Health, Nonfiction (general)

Gulp

Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

by Mary Roach

I finally made it through a Mary Roach book! Yes, it was easier read on pages, than listened to via audiobook. For some reason this way my brain was able to skip over all the tedious humor. It did get a bit tiresome still, whether from the gross factor or the writing style I’m not sure- but I took breaks and read three other books in the middle of this one. This author has an odd slant on things. Definitely seems to just be satisfying her curiosity, and thus by extension the readers’, though I’m sure most others, like me, never realized they had any interest in the things Mary Roach delves into. She’ll be talking along almost normally about the pressure of your jaws in chewing and how delicate and instantaneous the subconscious control of that is- and then suddenly dive into another subject entirely, on a weird tangent, it’s like constantly tripping out of the converstion and falling down a series of rabbit holes you never knew existed. With plenty of strange and obscure details.

The focus here is on how we eat- what attracts us to food, cultural norms and taboos, how the senses dictate what we like, why crunchy foods are satisfying, how food scientists decide what pet food will taste like, how strong are the stomach’s digestive juices, can parasites chew their way out of a stomach, people who put objects up their nether regions (for smuggling or pleasure), reasons people were given nutrients that way, an absurd amount of text spent on flatulence, why many animals digest things twice (especially rodents who eat their own droppings) and SO MUCH MORE. More than you ever wanted to know. Not sure what was more stomach-turning, reading about awful experiments done on animals and patients alike in times not-so-distant past, or reading about some unpleasant ailments of the digestive system. I was a bit miffed at how flippantly dismissive the author was about gluten intolerance, and I suspect people who suffer from other maladies will feel the same about her attitude towards other things in this book that are too close to home for them. It’s all very flippant, snarky, gleeful in the details (often when you didn’t want that) and yes, very satisfying if you were dying of curiosity to know some things.

Honestly I think the best part of the book is two pages where she discusses the apparent source for myths about fire-breathing dragons. That was fantastic. But I need a good long break before I read another book by this author, ha.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 3/5

348 pages, 2013

More opinions:
Ardent Reader
Dear Author
anyone else?

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Medical/Health, Nonfiction (general)

Grunt

The Curious Science of Humans at War

by Mary Roach

I made it through three out of the seven discs, and then started to wonder why I was spending my time on this. I did want to give Mary Roach another try- the minutiae of the obscure facts do interest me, but the delivery is so very off-putting. For a while I could stomach this better as it was about people, not animals– but finally I got to a nope point. The book is about all the ingenious ways scientists have devised to keep soldiers alive in spite of environmental extremes, deprivation, injury, shock, you name it. And how that research sometimes ties into the ordinary. But it is a headache to listen to. Not only the voice of this audiobook version I had- which imbues the snarky asides and humorous remarks (which usually rubbed me the wrong way) with an odd tone of smugness. And the facts are all crammed in there so tight it bounces you from one idea to the next without much pause or chance to settle what you’re thinking about. I just couldn’t do it. I might make one more attempt- but with a real paper version this time, my own voice inside my own head- and if that’s also a nope for this reader, I’m just going to cross all the Mary Roach books off my TBR. Surely the facts she digs up are available to readers in other places, if I really want to take them in.

I do realize this was probably a poor choice for my second attempt. I ought to have gone with a subject matter a bit closer to home, perhaps- but found this one browsing the shelves, so I picked it up since it was immediately available.

Borrowed from the library as an audiobook- 8 hours of listening time read aloud by Abby Elvidge.

Rating: Abandoned

288 pages, 2016

Tags: 0/5- Abandoned, Nonfiction (general)

Tag: Nonfiction (general)

OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought

How We Are Changing Life, Gene by Gene

the Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West

Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

The Curious Science of Humans at War

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