The Artist as Culture Producer: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life is an essay collection edited by Sharon Louden in an effort to combat the stereotype that artists are working in studios alone, toiling away in solitary – even self-absorbed – pursuits. The essays are each by an artist who “reaches outside of the studio to extend creative energies and pursuits into his or her community.” She goes on to say she chose these artists for many reasons including their generosity and that “they inject creative culture into the cracks of society, where they alter the direction of small towns and large cities”. Each of the essays is as different…
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Wisdom From Every Year of Life
100 Years: Wisdom From Famous Writers on Every Year of Your Life is a book that has short quotations about every year of life from birth through age 100. I flipped through it a few times before reading it in full. I checked out the selections for my current age. Furthermore, I checked certain ages that seemed to be important milestones in my life. I even glanced at friends’ ages. However, this morning I finally sat down and read it from cover to cover. When I did, I discovered that doing so offers more than the sum of its parts. There Is Wisdom in Every Age Joshua Prager carefully curated the…
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Therapist Memoir: Annie Rogers’ Shining Affliction and Unsayable
This post is about two therapist memoir books. I originally published this as two separate posts, which I’ve combined and updated here. The therapist memoir The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma by Annie Rogers, PhD is one of my favorite books that I was assigned in grad school. I first read the book in one day. Then I read a big chunk of it for a second time shortly after. Then after that, I went back and checked out Rogers’ first book. It’s called A Shining Affliction: A Story of Harm and Healing in Psychotherapy. It’s another therapist memoir from earlier in her career. About Annie Rogers, Therapist Memoir Author Annie Rogers…
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Dementia Memoir: Remembering the Music, Forgetting the Words
This is a book review of a dementia memoir. I originally published this review here on the blog in 2014. As I update what was lost in my blog transition, I found that I wanted to share this again. The full title of this book is Remembering the Music, Forgetting the Words: Travels with Mom in the Land of Dementia. That does a good job of summing up what this dementia memoir is about. The book, by Kate Whouley, is her experience with her aging mother as her mom declines into Alzheimer’s. Although that sounds sad, she manages to put a positive spin on the experience. Therefore, I found it…
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Just Girls: YA LGBTQ Book Review
Just Girls is a young adult LGBTQ novel that stands out to me as innovative and aware. Simultaneously, it touches on the topics that affect many teenagers as they enter the college scene for the first time. In other words, it isn’t just for the LGBTQQIA community. However, it doesn’t shy away from its role as part of the advocacy for that community. The Story of Just Girls Just Girls is the story about Ella Ramsey, a MTF transgender woman who is starting as a new student in college. She hasn’t come out to people there even though she has gone through the coming out process in her hometown. Therefore, she faces…
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5 Books About Walking to Inspire as You Move through the World
Did you know that there are some great books about walking? Walking is so powerful, yet people often overlook its value. Personally, I walk every day. I went car-free when I moved to San Francisco thirteen years ago. I do take shared transportation a lot these days, but I still walk when I can. Plus I adopted my pup three years ago and she encourages me to get out for walks every day. When I get lazy about walking, there are books about walking to inspire me to get out there again. Here are five books about walking that I’ve read and recommend: 1. Walking in this World by Julia Cameron…
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Book Review: Art of Asking
This book review of the Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer is from the archives. I originally published in April 2015. I lost my posts for this site in an update problem and am slowly restoring the posts I think are important. Since I really loved The Art of Asking, I wanted to be sure to share this again. I read a lot. And I like most of the books that I read. But rarely am I so moved and touched by a book that I have to tell everyone about it over and over. I recently read The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer, and I find that I…
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Book Report: The Battle of Junk Mountain
On January 1st, I read The Battle of Junk Mountain. I read 82 books last year, but I realized that very few of them were fiction. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. I love non-fiction, particularly memoir. However, I’ve been reading primarily non-fiction for years, and I want to start re-incorporating some fiction into my life. Recently, I accidentally got several young adult novels from the library. The Battle of Junk Mountain was one of them. So I decided to kick off the new year right by reading it. It’s intended for young readers, so it’s a really fast read. I probably finished it in an hour. And it…
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Book Review: Always Too Much and Never Enough
Jasmin Singer is a vegan, lesbian, animal rights activist and author whose 2016 memoir Always Too Much and Never Enough shares her story of weight gain and loss on the path to understanding the core of her own true identity. She shares raw, intimate details of her life including the journey from actor to activist the complexity of being the much-loved but always-overweight daughter of a thin, beautiful mother a college date rape the death of a beloved grandmother and the many other nuances that make up a woman’s life. This is all set against the backdrop of navigating her relationship with food. Moreover, it’s about dealing with her own body…
