Archive for the ‘Psychology’ Category

Cash and Caldwell Memoirs Rising

Friday, August 6th, 2010

Two women’s memoirs are likely to get significant media attention next week.

Rosanne Cash’s Composed, about her music career and life as Johnny Cash’s daughter, is already getting admiring attention, though holds are modest on light ordering at libraries we checked.

The Los Angeles Times calls it “one of the best accounts of an American life you’ll likely ever read. Yes, Cash comes from a well-known family and makes her living in the entertainment business, but ‘Composed’ is really about her spiritual growth as a daughter, a sister, a mother, a lover, a wife and an artist.”

New York Magazine profiles Cash and O, the Oprah Magazine selects it as one of 10 Books to Pick Up in August 2010.

Composed: A Memoir
Rosanne Cash
Retail Price: $26.95
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Viking Adult – (2010-08-10)
ISBN / EAN: 0670021962 / 9780670021963

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Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell is the Boston Globe book critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist’s account of her deep friendship with writer Caroline Knapp. Like Caldwell, Knapp was single by choice, dedicated to her writing and recovering from alcoholism, before she died of cancer in 2002.

Laura Miller in Salon calls it

…a slender and beautiful book… [Caldwell] never stoops to tear-jerking or sentiment. Which is not to say she won’t make you cry. It might be something as simple as her first-page description of love’s tempo that does it: “For years,” she writes, “we had played the easy daily game of catch that intimate connection implies. One ball, two gloves, equal joy in the throw and return.”

It was also a LA Times summer reading pick, and the #3 Indie Next pick for August .

Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship
Gail Caldwell
Retail Price: $23.00
Hardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: Random House – (2010-08-10)
ISBN / EAN: 1400067383 / 9781400067381

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

Hollywood: A Third Memoir by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster) is a new series of reminiscences from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and screenwriter. Booklist says the chapters are “disconnected,” and “his descriptions are not always charitable, but they are consistently sharp, interesting, and enjoyable.”

Where There Is Love, There Is God: A Path to Closer Union with God and Greater Love for Others by Mother Teresa (Doubleday) offers more wisdom from Mother Teresa culled from private lessons she gave to fellow nuns.

The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World’s Most Perplexing Cold Cases by Michael Capuzzo (Gotham) is about the Vidocq Society, a real-life crime-solving group.  USA Today has a Q&A with the author. This one’s also an August Indie Next pick.

Fascinated by STUFF

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

Lately, I can’t stop talking about an adult galley I just read, Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things. Turns out I’m not the only fascinated by it. Last night, the authors, Randy Frost and Gail Steketee were featured on NPR’s Fresh Air. The book is now rising on Amazon and libraries are showing significant holds in libraries.

No wonder; it’s truly a compulsive read. Frost and Steketee write about people who collect stuff to the extent that it interferes with normal everyday living…no livable space due to piles and piles of things most people feel no need to collect, whole rooms filled, tunnels formed between dangerously tottering layers of clothing, books, newspapers and trash.

Frost and Steketee begin their examination of this psychological condition with by looking at one  of the most well-known case, the Collyer brothers of New York who died trapped in their piles of junk (they were the protagonists in E.L. Doctorow’s novel Homer and Langely).

These are not dry case studies but rather an empathetic exploration of theories and observations of why a person might become a hoarder. The book helps us examine our own hoarding tendencies and the triggers that may cause it. In addition to working with the individuals who are suffering, the authors devote a chapter to the effect excessive collecting has on relationships, especially with hoarders’ children who must learn to survive living with a parent who cannot stop creating chaos in the home.

Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things
Randy O. Frost, Gail Steketee
Retail Price: $27.00
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt – (2010-04-20)
ISBN / EAN: 015101423X / 9780151014231

New Approach to Autism

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

A new program for teachers and parents of toddlers with autism is producing encouraging results.

The NYTWell” blog points to a report in the Journal of  the American Academy of Pediatrics that shows the Early Start Denver Model (E.S.D.M.) resulted in increased I.Q.’s.

The “Well” blog also interviews one of the co-authors of a new book describing the program. Libraries we checked have not ordered it.

Early Start Denver Model for Young Children with Autism: Promoting Language, Learning, and Engagement
Sally J. Rogers PhD, Geraldine Dawson PhD
Retail Price: $48.00
Paperback: 297 pages
Publisher: The Guilford Press – (2009-12-09)
ISBN / EAN: 1606236318 / 9781606236314

Jung’s RED BOOK

Monday, September 21st, 2009

NYT Mag

We didn’t see this one coming; featured in the NYT Magazine this week is a $150 book, which quickly rose to #4 on Amazon, just three spots away from The Lost Symbol.

The book is Carl Jung’s record of his own hallucinations during a mental breakdown, which he chronicled in words and drawings in a red notebook. Although Jung believed that The Red Book was the source of all his works, he never published it and left no instructions regarding whether to do so after he died. For years, The Red Book was kept in a bank vault and very few people were allowed access to it. The NYT Magazine’s story details how the book came to be scanned, translated and is about to be published.

Libraries we checked do not show it on order.

RedBook Spread

(the above spread comes from W.W. Norton’s catalog)

The Red Book
C. G. Jung
Retail Price: $195.00
Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. – (2009-10-07)
ISBN / EAN: 0393065677 / 9780393065671

Also making a big leap on Amazon is another title mentioned in the article. It is now at #196

Memories, Dreams, Reflections
C.G. Jung
Retail Price: $14.95
Paperback: 448 pages
Publisher: Vintage – (1989-04-23)
ISBN / EAN: 0679723951 / 9780679723950