Stir

Fechtor, Jessica. Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home. New York: Avery. 2015. Print.

First Sentences:

They say that trauma functions like a merciful eraser, wiping away into dust what the body most needs to forget.

That's not how it worked for me. I remember all of it: the shifting hum of the treadmill as I cranked up the speed; feeling strong and fast until, in an instant, I wasn't. 

Description:

Hard to imagine that a lover of thrillers and sports writing like me would be at all interested in Jessica Fechtor's memoir of recipes, love, and medical trauma. But what first-time author Fector offers in Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home are my personal big three of worthwhile books: great plot, interesting characters, and quality writing. With that trio, I will read and love anything. And Stir definitely proved well worth it for me to move outside my usual box of acceptable topics to pursue.

Fechtor offers a memoir that contains three intertwined plots: her medical trauma and recovery; her love story with friend/fiance/husband Eli; and her discovery of the healing power of food and its preparation. Can these disparate themes co-exist? Oh, yes, if in the able hands of Jessica Fechtor.

When I tell people that I am writing the story of a bloodied and broken brain -- and, oh, by the way, there will be recipes, too -- I get some strange looks.

A healthy twenty-something, athletic, married Harvard grad student, Fechtor suffered a brain aneurysm one morning while running on a treadmill. The incident nearly killed her. During her long months of recovery, she dreamed of returning to her "everyday" life of the kitchen and cooking.

Food has powers. It picks us up from our lonely corners and sits us back down, together. It pulls us out of ourselves, to the kitchen, to the table, to the diner down the block. At the same time, it draws us inward. Food is the keeper of our memories, connecting us with our pasts and with our people....Food -- like art, like music -- brings people together, it's true.

Fechtor transports readers into her world of illness and recovery with MRI's, angiograms, ultrasounds, medicines, doctors, and tests. The feelings she records are so honest and heartfelt that they brought back memories of my own illness and hospitals. For those wondering what it is like to anticipate dire consequences based on the results of the latest medical test, but then also to feel the warmth of friends and family as they stand by you unflinchingly and completely every day, then Stir is the book for you.

But this is also a love story. Eli, her husband, is the man any woman would want beside her in joy and in crises. From courtship to marriage to fatherhood, he is always at Fechtor's side, providing words of encouragement, dealing with doctors and families with firmness and sensitivity alike, and providing Fechtor a worthy partner in the healthy life they create. In stories of helping Fechtor learn to ride a bike to designing their engagement ring, Eli is the perfect companion in all conditions (unless he has poured milk onto his cereal and cannot be disturbed for anything). It is always a pleasure to read a great love story between two smart, interesting, caring people.

Then, there are the recipes and cooking memories so vital to Fechtor's recovery and relationships. Four months after the aneurysm, Fechtor starts a food blog (Sweet Amandine). In the blog, she shares favorite dishes along with photos she takes of the dishes,all delivered with her splendid writing. Fechtor shares past memories of the kitchen and the influential people who guided her interest in food and cooking, from her mother and step-mother, to friends, fellow chefs, and other family members. Her blog followers grew and grew, in numbers as well as probably in girth with all the lusciously photographed and described recipes presented.

To expand the blog into a book, Fechtor expanded the focus to more of her personal journey in her relationship with Eli and how these helped her deal with the aneurysm. A small incident remembered from her hospital bed triggers a warm description of the preparation of a particularly delicious item. The recipes for these special dishes are included, but I cannot comment on their complexity or deliciousness as I am not a foodie. But I trust Fechtor to provide food-loving readers with accurate road maps to creating the same goodies that so influenced her life and recovery. It is enough for me, an indifferent eater, to read Fechtor's descriptions of ingredients and the adventure of combining them to convince me about the power of food. 

You bake to share....Baking is an act of generosity, and thereby an act of freedom,since to be generous is to be free from the smallness of thinking only of yourself. Illness had made me dwell unnaturally on my own body and mind.I wanted to be generous again.

Who cannot enjoy a book with such a high level of self-awareness and exquisite writing? Whether you read to understand a medical survivor's tale, a wonderful love story, or possibly just for the recipes, Stir will satisfy your mental, emotional, and literary appetite.

Thinking about food means thinking about everything that goes on around it. The dash from the breakfast table out the door, the conversations that shape us, the places and faces that make us who we are. What besides food could I think of that would encompass my life so roundly? 

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Gaffigan, Jim. Food: A Love Story

A hilarious (and I don't ever use that word, but in this case it is accurate) portrayal of author Gaffigan's relationship with every aspect of food as an all-consuming "Eatie," rather than a more selective "Foodie." He explores food across the United States, his personal favorite restaurants, and best food (bacon, "the candy of meat"), delivering all observations and comments with laugh-out-loud humor. (previously reviewed here)

The Year of the Dunk

Price, Asher. The Year of the Dunk: A Modest Defiance of Gravity. New York: Crown. 2015. Print.

First Sentences:

On a late winter afternoon in New York at some basketball courts by the Great Lawn in Central Park, my hands jammed into my hoodie pockets, I waited for my pal Nathaniel.

It was crisp, still cold enough to see the breath puff in front of your face, especially if you were winded. An old Spalding street ball, circa 1988, dug out from my childhood closet, sat on the ground between my feet. 

Description:

It's a dream probably most men have: to be able to dunk a basketball into a 10' (regulation- height) hoop. Oh, sure, we can slam it into our kid's plastic mini-hoops, toss Nerf balls into office back-of-the-door rings, or even occasionally stuff a tennis ball over the rim. But putting a real basketball into a real hoop is always the holy grail. Even Barack Obama has this dream:

In 2008, candidate Barack Obama was asked whether he'd rather be the president of Julius Erving, the great dunker of the 1970s and early 1980s, in his prime. "The Doctor," he said like a shot. "I think any kid growing up, if you got a chance to throw down the ball from the free-throw line, that's better than just about anything." [Obama first dunked when he was 16]

Asher Price, author of The Year of the Dunk: A Modest Defiance of Gravity, does more than just think about dunking. He pledges to pursue every means possible to get his 33-year-old, 6' 2", 21% body fat body up high enough to actually stuff the basketball on a regulation goal. He gives himself one year to train using any means possible except using "medical-grade material to make myself jump higher."

The book follows his months of preparation, from being measured and evaluated by the Performance Lab of the Hospital for Special Surgery to identify "capabilities" and "deficiencies," to formulating diet and exercise plans to lose 25 pounds, to lowering his body fat to 10%, and finally adding five inches to his vertical jump.

And he is dogged in his commitment to do this. Page after page describe his pursuit of this goal in a variety of ways, including interviews with experts in physical and dietary fields, working out with former athletes, and generally turning over every stone to improve his body. He writes of the exploits of noted jumpers like Dick Fosbury (high jumping Olympic gold medalist), Spud Webb (5"8" NBA dunk champion), Michael Jordan (NBA all-time great dunker), and Brittney Griner (6'8" WNBA player, the first woman to dunk in a college game). 

Along the way, he makes several discoveries about himself, training, and the dunk itself. He describes the history of the dunked basketball, the silly NCAA rule banning the dunk from the college game for 10 years, and the creativity and power behind the dunks perfected by Black players. He tries shoes which are banned by the NBA for giving a jumping advantage to their wearers (they didn't work for the author). He eliminated carbs, alcohol, and sweets from his diet, and made his drink of choice "Hell's water" (non-fat milk). 

Price is a personable, everyman sort of writer who draws you into his quest with his skilled writing and complete honesty in sharing both his hopes and frustrations. He paints a clear picture of each new endeavor, each new technique that might bring him closer to his goal, and of course each frustration with his own age, body, and gravity. 

Mentally Price has no doubts he will succeed, although the improvements are slow in coming. But they do come. But will they be enough to finally, after 365 days of work, to slam dunk a basketball? You'll have to wait until the final pages to read the results of his dunk test - I won't tell).

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Jacobs, A.J. Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Quest for Bodily Perfection

Very serious, very humorous account of the author's attempt to pursue all fitness trends and find out what diets, mental training, and exercise actually make him healthy and fit, and which ones don't. (previously reviewed here)

The World's Strongest Librarian

Hanagarne, Josh. The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family. Gotham Books: New York. 2013. Print

First Sentences:

I don't like to see children cry, but I couldn't feel much sympathy for the little guy.

I told his mom there was no need to apologize as he sniffled and wept and wiped his nose on his Pokemon T-shirt. The problem? Our library system's Expanded Card let a patron borrow a hundred items. But this boy's mother was playing the Evil Queen and would only let him take fifty.

Description:

Librarians come in all shapes, sizes, and intelligence. Their stories are as fascinating as the information resources they oversee. Witness the life of Josh Hanagarne, the 6'7" librarian at the Salt Lake City Public Library and his daily struggles with library users as well as his own Tourette's Syndrome as recounted in his wry, open, and humorous autobiography, The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family.

Hanagarne is an immediately likable person. Each chapter opens with him dealing with some situation or another in his real life library setting. From a transgender patron arguing to be addressed as a female, to overly amorous couples in the book stacks, to rambunctious children and uninvited dogs at story time, to the user who argued that "Religion" books should not be on the "Nonfiction" shelves, to city council meetings with members who have never visited the library, Josh sees them all and deals with them quietly and thoughtfully.

For me as a former librarian, these funny, sad, and exasperating looks into the world of libraries and their users already satisfy my criteria for a quality read.

But Hanagarne has other stories to tell, particularly dealing with his own early life and the diagnosis of his Tourette's Syndrome. Previously, he is regarded as an ordinary child with a few admitted quirks in his behavior. Even after the diagnosis, his family continues to give him abounding love and strive to help him deal with his tics while they all try to understand this syndrome.  

Hanagarne recalls his school days in a small town of Elko, Nevada, his Mormon background, and subsequent "grand search for a partner" starting at age sixteen when he was first allowed to date (an activity he enters into with gusto). He provides an insider view of his training at the Missionary Training Center in preparation for his two-year Mormon mission, the details of which are fascinating, weird, and revealing about the young candidates and the Mormon religion. His Mormon mission experience proves challenging as he tries to preach in a foreign language while struggling with his vocal and physical tics. When he returns from his mission, he lives at home with his parents, enters college, and resumes looking for a partner and his life calling.

All his experiences are made more difficult if not impossible by his increasing Tourette's symptoms. Like a growing sneeze, he can feel the tics building and struggles to suppress them, but they usually overpower his efforts and return again and again. His efforts exhaust his body and mind, hamper his attendance at jobs and school, and discourage romances.

He tries many, many pathways to control these tics, including biting on a small rubber hose, chiropractic adjustments, vitamins, and even botulism toxin injections into his vocal cords to take away his voice for a few weeks so he can sit more quietly in his classrooms.

What eventually gives him peace is weightlifting. During workout periods, he is tic-free and happy. An eccentric, ex-military mentor helps Hanagarne focus himself in the discipline of extreme lifting, and his battle with Tourette's is seemingly conquered...or at least temporarily controlled.

Throughout it all, Hanagarne is a reader, a lover of books who devours everything, including Stephen King and other titles frowned on by his mother and the Mormon faithful. Books provide an escape, an education, and a world he often cannot realize in his actual life. And books eventually lead him to a volunteer and later a paid job in the local library where he also finds peace.  

The World's Strongest Librarian is the story of an admirable man's struggle, embarrassment, pain, religion, and unrequited love. But it is also a tale of curiosity, questioning, perseverance, humor, and eventually love. He is an unusual hero in a world of ordinary people, facing and dealing with life as it comes to him, albeit with the wild card of Tourette's  affecting everything he does. 

Josh Hanagarne is a great storyteller, someone willing to reveal insider secrets to his readers about Mormonism, teen lust, self-discipline, illness, training, and family strength. One cannot help but feel his frustrations, yet constantly laugh at his anecdotes and root for his small and large efforts to triumph and achieve his goals.

A strong book, filled with humor, insight, and real life. Very highly recommended.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Grandin, Temple. Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism

Recollections and insight into Temple Grandin about what exactly it feels like to have autism, what fears it brings, and techniques she used to deal with it to become an internationally respected animal scientist.

Lethem, Jonathan. Motherless Brooklyn

Unusual, sometimes bizarre twist on the classic detective novel as the main character who tries to solve a murder case is an outcast with Tourette's Syndrome.

Mindless Eating

Wansink, Brian. Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. New York: Bantam, 2006. Print    

First Sentences:

Everyone -- every single one of us -- eats how much we eat largely because of what's around us.

We overeat not because of hunger but because of family and friends, packages and plates, names and numbers, labels and lights, colors and candles, shapes and smells, distractions and distances, cupboards and containers. This list is almost as endless as it's invisible. Most of us are blissfully unaware of what influences how much we eat.

Description:

Books about health, diet, exercise, and routes toward an improved lifestyle always fascinate me. So of course, Brian Wansink's  Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think called out to me. As I get older, the food that attracts me changes, often not for the better. Reading that outside factors unconsciously pull me to eat certain foods and that I might counteract these factors to lose weight certainly had my interest from the first sentences.

Mindless Eating presents Wansink's fascinating experiments which reveal overwhelming evidence to destroy our cherished myth that what we eat is determined by our hunger, by the food we like, and by the mood we are in. The book instead focuses on the psychological forces at play which lure us to overeat, even by only a few calories a day. 

Wansink's dietary premise is simple. Let's say your daily nutritional requirement is 2,000 calories per day. If you try a run-of-the-mill deprivation diet and take in only 1,000 calories a day, you will definitely feel a difference: loss of energy; maybe a slowing down physically and mentally; cravings for more food. On the other hand, if you were to intake 3,000 calories on a day like Thanksgiving, you again would feel the effects of overeating: sluggishness, sleepiness, etc. Your body always knows and reacts when it is over or under fed.

But for smaller increases or decreases, the body can be completely fooled and unaware. In Mindless Eating, Wansink points out that rather than stuffing ourselves at meals, our more typical eating behavior is to add small amounts of calories, say 100 - 200, over the daily nutritional requirement of 2,000, so small an amount that we don't even realize we are taking it in. 

At the end of the year, one might think "How did I gain those 5-10 pounds? I didn't change my diet at all." Those 100 - 200 daily caloric increases add up. Wansink reasons that if a person could decrease his/her calories taken in "mindlessly," those same 10 pounds would be lost each year rather than gained. No special diets, no deprivation, simple to understand. Sounds easy, huh?

Wansink, who is Chair of Marketing and of Applied Economics at Cornell University, runs the Cornell Food and Brand Lab. This facility features a restaurant where he can try real-life eating variables (dish size, waitstaff attitude, table shape, lighting, etc.) in a controlled environment to observe what factors affect the way people eat. 

In one of his non-lab studies, he gave people at a real movie theater a soda and medium or large size  bucket of popcorn. Unknown to them, this was very stale 5-day-old popcorn. After the show, all popcorn bags were weighed to see how much people ate. Despite the negative taste, people with the larger bags ate 173 more calories ("21 more dips into the bucket") than those with smaller portions. 

Exit surveys showed these people admitted they had eaten too much popcorn, even when one movie-goer said it tasted like "styrofoam packing peanuts." Repeated tests of this experiment confirmed that the results were unchanged by the movie shown, the city, and the hunger level of the audience: the bigger bucket people always ate significantly more inedible popcorn.

In another study, Wansink had waiters at his Cornell test restaurant give a complimentary glass of very cheap wine to diners sitting in one half of the room. This wine was introduced by the waiters and labeled as a product of a new "California" winery. Diners on the other half of the restaurant received the very same cheap wine, which was now labeled and introduced as coming from a "North Dakota" winery. 

The meal, atmosphere, waitstaff, etc. were all the same. At the end of the meal, those with the "California" wine ate 11% more food and stayed in the restaurant an additional 10 minutes compared to the North Dakota wine drinkers. 

Wansink presents human eating behavior depicted from many other experiments he designed to test factors such as size of plates, packaging, location of food (on desk vs. in drawer vs. six feet away), eating in complete darkness, renaming food, mood of the consumers, etc. Each chapter summarizes the conclusions of the studies, then proposes specific "Reengineering Strategies" to help us be aware of these nefarious influences on our eating and then offer strategies to avoid those additional mindless calories.

The writing style is simple, easy to understand, and clear in its implications. The studies are cleverly constructed and I found the test subjects actions to be remarkably similar to my own eating habits. It is fascinating to understand the subtle factors in play that encourage us to consume food, and through this awareness how we might change the way we eat.

One interesting side note. When Wansink revealed the purpose of each study to his subjects, they overwhelmingly said that, while others might have had their eating influenced by the size of the package, the name on the wine label, the plating, the menu description, etc., those factors did not come into play for them. And, of course, they had eaten exactly according to the pattern, just as did everyone else who fell prey to the psychological factors around the food. Hmmmm ...

Happy reading (and eating!).

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Taubes, Gary. Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It   

Taubes' extensive research from a huge number of studies reaches the controversial conclusion that the "eat less, exercise more" theory of weight loss does not hold true. It is what you eat, according to this controversial and compelling summary of a huge number of available data on eating, food, lifestyle, and weight.

Because Cowards Get Cancer, Too

Diamond, John.  Because Cowards Get Cancer Too: A Hypochondriac Confronts His Nemesis. New York: Times Books. 1998. Print

 

 First Sentences: 

In the fact of such overwhelming statistical possibilities, hypochondria has always seemed to me to be the only rational position to take on life. 

Consider, by the time you hit forty, your tattered heart has already thumped out a billion and a half beats: what can the chances be of any organ doing anything a billion and a half times and never making a mistake? Your 30 trillion or so cells have each replicated themselves a few thousand times: how could it possibly not be that a few of these cells would band together in that state of cytological anarchy that leads to cancer and death?

Consider anything the body does over and over, asleep and awake, consider the peril it invites every time it gets into a car, breathes a lungful -- 150 million times a year, not counting the hours of panicky hyperventilation--of sour and sickly city air, eats something too fatty or not fatty enough, and you are considering impending death.

Description:

Cancer permeates our lives today. We all know someone who currently has/had some form of cancer. Or maybe we are a "survivor" ourselves. Personally, I am in my fourth year of remission from Stage 4 large B-cell Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.   

We know this to be a uniquely disquieting disease. It is at different times terrifying, painful, and overwhelming to experience personally or through a loved one. From my experience, cancer also is tiring, humiliating, nauseating, and alienating. 

The unrelenting effect cancer has on the health and lives often bring on a feeling of powerlessness and depression to those lacking information about its mysteries. Cancer saps all combatants and permeates every aspect of life, including those awkward personal encounters experienced between people who are well and those who are sick.

Here is where the brilliant new book, Because Cowards Get Cancer Too comes in. John Diamond, a writer for the Times of London, was diagnosed in 1997 with a "small local [throat] cancer ... that could be scared off by a little radiation" according to his doctors. He was given a 92% chance of a complete cure. Over the next two years, however, things changed drastically as the cancer continued to grow. 

Diamond opts to inform his reading public of his diagnosis and his journey with cancer via his usually "jaunty" weekend Times column. These columns covering two years along with some supplemental writing are gathered into Because Cowards Get Cancer, Too, offering an up-close-and-personal look into the world of cancer from a hypochondriac's perspective. 

He knows nothing about cancer at first, so shares his quest for knowledge about the disease and treatment, his preconceived notions and fears, and his everyday progress and setbacks. Privy to his innermost thoughts, readers quickly are absorbed into his world, learning and experiencing right along with him as he faces as each new revelation or challenge. 

His first visits to the radiation lab for treatment show him to be confident, joking with the staff, and sailing home if not refreshed, at least bolstered by confidence that he is one step closer to a cure. The odds are in his favor for a full recovery.

Eventually these trips take on a more subdued air. Soon, as his progress slackens, fellow radiation patients, medical staff, and Diamond barely exchange glances or words while waiting or undergoing treatment, each lost in the private feelings while battling the disease.

But Diamond is undaunted. Throughout the book, he maintains his sense of the absurd and clarity of vision. He describes awkward dialogs with reassuring well-wishers ("It will be fine, I know it will...You won't let it defeat you"), the British medial system, treatments he must perform for the rest of his life, losing weight ("Cancer. It's a great diet"), and his heaviest load: the loss of his sense of taste.

It is wryly written, clear, clever, and honest. While often very humorous, it is not a comic look at cancer. He does not mince descriptions of any aspect of his life, although realizes that readers do not need to examine all the gory details. He is telling his story in an unabashedly open manner: funny when he sees the humor, and fearful when he is afraid. 

Diamond writes no truer lines than these below which I can identify with as someone who has experienced cancer:

Once you've had that diagnosis it stays with you for good. Like a lapsed religion, it may not be at the front of your mind all the time, but it is yawning away there at the back, just waiting for those moments when it needs to come forward and remind you that you are part of that community that touched death and touches it still, the community that has seen a doctor look at his boots and say, "I'm sorry, but . . . ''

Because Cowards Get Cancer, Too is a real look into an unknown world for many people. For those who have experienced cancer, they will nod their heads with recognition of shared experiences. And for those who are well, they will get a deeply personal look into the abyss of cancer, including elements of irony, humor, and wit.


Happy reading. 

Fred
www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

Comments 

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out: 

Hitchens, Christopher. Mortality  

Journalist documents his experiences and insights, both seriously and humorously, after he contracts cancer.

Mukherjee, Siddhartha. Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer  

Extremely fascinating and detailed history of disease, from the earliest discovery and treatments to the current progress and drugs used in today's hospitals.

Schwalbe, Will. The End of Your Life Book Club  

Mother and son bond while waiting for her cancer treatments, discussing books they have read and uncovering details about their lives. (previously reviewed)

Halpern, Susan. The Etiquette of Illness: What to Say When You Can't Find the Words.

Excellent suggestions and practical applications for talking (or not talking) to people with illness: how to say what you want without causing offense or embarrassment, what they want you to say, when to just remain silent. Very valuable examples and advice for well-intentioned friends and family of patients of all ages and illnesses. 

Drop Dead Healthy

Jacobs, A.J. Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012. Print

First Sentences:

For the last few months, I’ve been assembling a list of things I need to do to improve my health. It’s an intimidatingly long list. Fifty-three pages. Here’s a sample:

•   Eat leafy green vegetables
•   Do forty minutes of aerobic exercise a day
•   Meditate several times a week
•   Watch baseball (lowers blood pressure, according to one study)
•   Nap (good for the brain and heart)
•   Hum (prevents sinus infections)
•   Win an Academy Award (a bit of a long shot, I know. But studies show Oscar winners live three years longer than non-Oscar winners.)

Description:

Don't we all want to be just a bit more fit, lose a couple of pounds, be smarter, see better, hurt less? Well, so does A.J. Jacobs, author of Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection, only he wants it all.

After compiling his 53-page list of improvements he wants to make in himself, he methodically organizes his areas for change by body part or function. Stomach, heart, immune system, brain, teeth, back, and eyes all need work. He also intends to improve his lower intestine, hands, bladder, butt, and even the inside of this eyelids ("for a perfect night's sleep").  

Drop Dead Healthy documents his full-out assault to become the best in every area. He (and his ever-patient wife and family) allow two years to complete this complete make-over.

Each chapter details his efforts on a specific body over one month. Self-improvement techniques come from his consultations with professionals, personal research, and his own common sense. 

And what does he try? He walks on a treadmill while typing this book (and reaches over 1,000 miles before it is completed); dons a bike helmet when walking to safeguard against accidents; wears 3-D glasses to do "weight training for the eyes;" takes a juice cure; joins a laughter club to relieve stress; and explores how much sex is needed to optimize his aerobic capabilities. 

Progress is monitored each month for basic changes to weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, pulse, miles walked, etc.  But Jacobs also includes off-beat highlights such as, "Cans of steel-cut oatmeal consumed this year;" "Times unsuccessfully attempted to switch to green tea;" "Number of yoga instructors who have been surprisingly rude to me;" "Minutes singing per day;" "Frog calls memorized to keep my brain sharp;" ... well, you get the idea.

It's a wonderful mash-up of the scientific and the ridiculous, as he researches and then willingly incorporates into his life any strategies that might improve his health. "The trick," he says, "is to avoid quackery at the same time  as maintaining childlike enthusiasm for innovation."  

Serious? Definitely in his purpose, plan, and willingness to try anything and everything. Comedic? Of course, and delightfully so as we follow him from body part to body function, expert to quack, with varying degrees of success.  

Best of all, he writes in an engagingly dead-pan style that simplifies complex issues about our bodies into terms he (and we) can grasp.  I love his intensity, his curiosity, his commitment to improvement, as well as his candor in sharing every thought, every detail of this quest.

And I did learn a lot about the body and what I actually can do to make improvements myself. 

Happy reading.


Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

 

Jacobs, A.J. Mr. Know-It-All   

The same author attempts to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from Volume A to Volume Z, carrying readers along with him, letter by letter, in his quest for knowledge and trivia. Fantastic!

The End of Your Life Book Club

Schwalbe, Will.The End of Your Life Book Club. New York: Knopf. 2012. Print

First Sentences:

We were nuts about the mocha in the waiting room at Memorial Sloan-Kettering's outpatient care center.

The coffee isn't so good, and the hot chocolate is worse. But if, as Mom and I discovered, you push the "mocha" button, you see how two not-very-good things can come together to make something quite delicious. The graham crackers aren't bad either.

Description:

Cancer-related books deeply affect me as someone who is three and a half years in remission from Stage 4 Large B-Cell Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Been there and done that. 

During that experience and currently, I read a lot of books about cancer and treatment as well as memoirs with personal stories written by fellow "combatants," (my term for any patient, doctor, family member or friend who has had to deal this disease first hand and continues to struggle against its possible return). 

Such writers detail, with humor and intelligence, their efforts to live life as a patient or care-giver without succumbing to the overwhelming sadness and helplessness brought on by this disease.

While these memoirs are fascinating to me as a cancer patient, I think they also are helpful to those living in "Wellville" (as Christopher Hitchens labels the non-afflicted populace in his brilliant cancer memoir, Mortality). These books gently and sometimes not so gently reveal to healthy people what we cancer patients experience, what we are thinking, and how we interact with friends and family. These memoirs reveal the long periods of uncertainty, of waiting, of hoping, and despairing with each new diagnosis and treatment. They describe the humor found in interactions with friends and medical environments alike. And they show the indomitable spirit of ordinary people.

Will Schwalbe's compassionate, humorous, and highly personal The End of Your Life Book Club is one of these great cancer combatant memoirs. In it, Schwalbe documents his relationship with his mother as she (and he) deal with her pancreatic cancer, usually a terminal form of the disease. Mother and son find themselves spending many hours in medical facilities waiting for appointments and treatments, passing the nervous minutes discussing any small matter, including the books each has recently read, to distract themselves. 

Seizing on their shared interest of reading, they form a two-person book club to insure that they read what the other is reading and can hold discussions that might take them away from the tedium of waiting. Through their comments about these books and the ensuing bantering talks, they slowly reveal details about their lives, their fears, and their hopes.

We learn that Mary Anne, Schwalbe's mother, is not merely a cancer patient, but a woman of wit and humor, of contemplation and intelligence. She is shown to be a complex, internationally-know humanitarian, the founder of the Women's Refugee Commission, a fundraiser for a new library in Afghanistan, director of admissions for major colleges, and a world traveler. And, of course, she is a voracious, opinionated reader. 

We also get to know Will Schwalbe and his struggles to cope with a family member facing terminal cancer. His worries and his hopes rise and fall with her treatments, revealed through the conversations between son and mother over books. The buoyancy and sadness these two experience with each diagnosis, pulls readers slowly and inexorably into their lives, their thoughts, and their emotions. Truly, these are two people you love getting to know.

While this may seem a depressing theme, the book is uplifting, funny, and introspective. Their dialog is witty and pointed as they argue over authors, chastise each other's book selection, and wander off-topic into areas that reveal their character.  

Each chapter focuses on a specific time period in her treatment and the book currently up for discussion. Schwalbe helpfully includes a bibliography at the end of the book listing all titles mentioned in their discussions, offering a plethora of reading temptations for any book lover.

The End of Your Life Book Club is highly recommended by one who has been there (me) as an accurate, sensitive portrayal of two individuals, one trying to maintain her wit and individuality while facing cancer treatments, and the other struggling with issues of care and support for a family member. Their relationship, their love of life, and their passion for books are inspiring, funny, and poignant. Please read this book.

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Mukherjee, Siddhartha. The Emperor of All Maladies.

Complete history of cancer from its first appearance and initial treatments to current efforts in the battle with this disease. Extremely readable and fascinating in its clear writing style, its depth of research, and its introduction of key milestones in cancer discoveries and treatments. 

Hitchens, Christopher. Mortality.

One man's personal thoughts on his battle with cancer. Very compelling reading to help readers understand what someone with this disease is feeling regarding his illness, how friends interact with him, care from his doctors, and his plans.

Diamond, John. Because Cowards Get Cancer Too: A Hypochondriac Confronts His Nemesis.

Thoughtful, personal, and humorous account of John Diamond's long struggle with cancer as originally told through his column in the Times of London. Highly recommended along with the Hitchens' book for anyone who wants to know what having cancer is like. His words ring true to me as a fellow cancer patient.

Halpern, Susan. The Etiquette of Illness: What to Say When You Can't Find the Words.

Excellent suggestions and practical applications for talking (or not talking) to people with illness: how to say what you want without causing offense or embarrassment, what they want you to say, when to just remain silent. Very valuable examples and advice for well-intentioned friends and family of patients of all ages and illnesses.