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June 28, 2009 —
Never let them see you cry.
That used to be your motto – tears can be so inappropriate, right? – but these days, you can’t help crying and you don’t know why.
Maybe it’s the economy that’s got you down. Certainly, job and money stresses aren’t helping. Family obligations are overwhelming and your confidence level is kaput. Your spouse keeps wondering what’s wrong, and you wish you could say. Worse, everybody thinks you can just “snap out of it”.
When you’re experiencing depression, that’s just not possible, says Stephen S. Ilardi, PhD, and in his new book “The Depression Cure”( c.2009, DaCapo LifeLong – $25.00 / $31.50 Canada – 289 pages), he has hope for sufferers and their families.
In his research and his work with patients diagnosed with depression, Stephen Ilardi noticed something fascinating: modern-day hunter-gatherer bands have few, if any, incidences of depression. Conversely, the rate of depression in industrialized society has steadily risen to the point where fully 25% of us are at risk in our lifetimes.
Ilardi says he finally realized that our bodies and our minds weren’t created for the lifestyles that most of us have today. In addition to bad eating habits and lack of physical activity, we’ve become a society of stuck-indoors, sleep deprived loners. These things, says Ilardi, contribute to the crushing pain of depression.
But why do some people bounce back from adversity and others don’t? Their genes have something to do with it, Ilardi says. Child abuse and trauma certainly are factors, as is gender (women are twice as likely to be depressed) and lifestyle. Another major hallmark of depression is a mind consumed by ruminating, runaway thoughts.
So you think you might have the symptoms of depression. What can you do?
In this book, Ilardi outlines six steps you can take to overcome depression, whether you’ve tried drugs or not, whether they’ve worked for you or not, in a method he calls TLC (Therapeutic Lifestyle Change). The steps are simple to implement; you might even be doing some of them already. Even if you aren’t a depression sufferer, you can follow Ilardi’s TLC program, too.
And in case you missed it in the introduction, there – finally, on page 216 – is the disclaimer you need to read: see your doctor first. Tell your physician what you have in mind – particularly in regard to dietary supplements - and get clearance before you start any kind of program.
Lagging disclaimer and mega-dosing supplements aside, “The Depression Cure” is intriguing. Author Stephen S. Ilardi seems to be onto something when he points out that our ancestors didn’t sit at a desk all day and fight traffic to go home stressed-out. Other researchers have offered support for some of what Ilardi is claiming, albeit not together in a six-step method. I think, overall, this book worth checking out, but with caution. Even Ilardi says there is no one-size-fits-all fix for what ails ya.
Pick up a copy of “The Depression Cure”. With your doctor’s blessing, a fair amount of effort, and this book, “snapping out of it” might be a snap.
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Book Review: At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream
June 19, 2009 —
Someone is sleeping in your bed.
Okay, so it’s not really your bed any more. In fact, it’s not even your home these days but visiting the place where you grew up makes you remember your childhood. Everything is different through adult eyes – the rooms look so tiny! - even though it seems like nothing’s changed.
But you did, the second you moved out.
You can click your heels together all you want, but can you ever really go home again? Read the new book “At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream” by Wade Rouse (c.2009, Harmony – $23.95 / $27.95 Canada – 272 pages), and you’ll see...
When he was a little boy growing up in the Ozarks, Wade Rouse spent many happy hours sitting on a glider on a hill with his grandmother. There, she shared her wisdom, quoting a much-loved, bedraggled (and pilfered) copy of Walden by Thoreau.
Rouse says he couldn’t get away from the country fast enough.
As soon as he could, he moved to the city, where Ikea and Starbucks were a quick drive away. He and his partner, Gary, practically lived at the gym and the tanning booth. Keeping up with fashion and celebrities and shopping were high priorities.
But something was missing.
Signs were pointing Rouse to a different place in his life. While on vacation to Saugatuck, Michigan, he found it.
Rouse and Gary never planned on moving, but the cottage was too perfect. It was perched on the edge of woods, near a farm with horses and another with blueberries. There was a to-die-for view of nature out back and a rusty pink trailer next door. Lake Michigan was a mile away. Who could resist?
In the new house, channeling Thoreau, wanting to write, and desperately looking for a New Wade, Rouse tried to live by ten tenets that Walden’s most famous resident embraced, modernized to fit a new century. But Michigan has snow – lots of it – and wild animals and germ-filled dirt and bare feet. There are back-to-nature types there, and hunters and rednecks. And this stretch of Michigan lacked Ikea, well-stocked grocers, and a corner Starbucks.
How could a gay man from the city possibly thrive?
How could you not love a book that starts out with “There’s a raccoon on my head”?
Author Wade Rouse is introspective and sarcastic, often in the same sentence – a writing style that’s intimate yet hilarious. He paints a perfect picture of his surroundings and the people he lives near, exaggerating the ridiculous and noting the kindness. He’s willing to poke fun at himself and Gary, their peccadilloes and their relationship, and their fears while becoming accustomed to new surroundings. And Rouse’s memories of his parents, his childhood, and his beloved grandmother will melt your heart.
While I don’t know that I’d give this book to Grandma, I really loved it and I think you will, too. Pick up “At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream” and see that you can always go home, as long as you clearly know where it is.
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( c.2009, Grand Central Publishing – $25.99 / $28.99 Canada – 379 pages)
Book Review: After Etan
June 7, 2009 —
One minute. Maybe less.
You can’t even say you turned your back. You only glanced at something there, admired something here, and in that breath of time when your eyes were elsewhere, your child disappeared.
You couldn’t think but your mind raced. You couldn’t speak, but you screamed his name. When your child is missing – even for fifteen seconds – it’s not anywhere near your worst nightmare.
It goes way beyond it.
In the new book “After Etan” by Lisa R. Cohen( c.2009, Grand Central Publishing – $25.99 / $28.99 Canada – 379 pages), you’ll read the true account of a child’s disappearance thirty years ago, how it affects us even now, and why you should still be concerned.
It was May 25, 1979, the school year was almost over, and for months, Etan Patz had begged his mother for more independence. Finally relenting, figuring that she could keep a long eye on him in the two-block distance between their apartment and the school bus stop, Julie Patz allowed Etan to walk himself to the corner.
She watched him for a few minutes then returned inside, confident that he’d be fine. But six-year-old Etan never made it to school.
This being a time before AMBER Alerts, missing child databases, or even little faces on milk cartons, the Patz’s friends and neighbors quickly mobilized and began a search. The police were contacted, and door-to-door canvassing was done. “Missing” posters were hung on every corner in Manhattan. Everyone even remotely connected to the Patz family was interviewed, but Etan had seemingly vanished without a trace.
But the trace was there.
Three years after Etan Patz went missing, prosecutor Stuart GraBois moved into the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York. GraBois was tenacious and relentless, and with the backing of then-mayor Rudy Guliani, he sunk his teeth into the Patz case. Starting from scratch, GraBois re-interviewed everyone and pored over stacks of boxes of documents. He chased every clue, even ones out-of-country. His persistence made enemies, including the parents of Etan Patz.
But GraBois had a reason for the digging: he knew that six-year-old boys didn’t just disappear on their own.
He also knew that monsters really do exist.
Officially, the disappearance of Etan Patz hasn’t been solved, but author Lisa R. Cohen leads readers to a possible conclusion shared by many, including Etan’s father. Along the way, Cohen spins a tale that’s horrifying in the brutality of the crime, fascinating in the way it changed our national and local treatment of missing child cases, and thrilling in the jailhouse and legal maneuvers meant to catch the man GraBois says made a “90 percent confession”.
As a coup de grace to her tale, Cohen reminds us that this suspect, now behind bars, may be released from prison in the not-too-distant future.
Legal thriller and true crime fans will race through this real story. If you’re looking for a keep-you-up-all-night book, this is one to grab because - although it’s going to make parents cringe, cringe again, and hug their children tight - missing “After Etan” would be a crime.
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Book Review: Eve: A Novel of the First Woman
May 31, 2009 —
Imagine that an anonymous benefactor just bestowed upon you an unexpected gift: a new home with everything you could ever want in it.
The temperature in this home is always just right; the furniture, comfortable. You’re never hungry when meals magically appear at your table. Exploring this magnificent home becomes more entertaining than anything you’ve ever seen on TV, and the landscaping astounds you.
The cost? Not a penny.
But then, one little mistake – one very human error – and you’re booted from this home and out on the streets. How would you live with the memories of time spent in Paradise? In the new audiobook “Eve” by Elissa Elliott, (d c.2009, Brilliance Audio – $38.99 – 13 CDs / approx. 16 hours) you’ll hear a woman’s epic story of loss and love.
Once upon a time, there was Eden and it was beautiful. Animals roamed, flowers bloomed, and Elohim was there. But that was then, and now, pregnant with her latest child, Eve struggles with memories of a happier time.
She recalls innocent days when she could spend hours in the Garden, just listening to Elohim. Now, when she speaks to Him, He never answers. She wonders if He still loves her. She wonders if He will ever forgive her.
Eve remembers learning to know Adam, and the delight they had in naming the animals. She remembers the joy of newness. She also remembers how the serpent tricked her, and how Elohim was hurt by her betrayal.
It had been a struggle since their banishment, but Eve’s family is surviving: Cain, headstrong and angry over nothing. Sensitive Abel, now a shepherd. Naava, on the verge of womanhood and reaching for independence. Aya, smart and resourceful despite her handicap. And the twins - double gifts - Dara and Jaken.
But everything changed when the People from the City came to visit. Taken aback by the sight of the women, Eve reluctantly gave them what they wanted. Though it hurt her heart, she let them take something precious to her, never knowing that it would set her family down a path of destruction, loss of faith, violence, and death.
Do you have a patient boss? You’d better hope so, because listening to “Eve” on your commute is going to make you late. You’ll want to hear “just one more minute” of this positively beautiful novel.
Spinning a tale that’s both lush and lyrical, author Elissa Elliott gives Eve a complex humanity as a mother worried about her children and as a wife who sees her husband slipping away. She feels bereft and abandoned, powerless to stop the changes she sees. Elliott’s story sticks pretty close to the Biblical version, though still making Eve seem familiarly, comfortingly contemporary.
What I liked best about this audiobook is that it’s read by three different performers. Sandra Burr, Tanya Eby Sirois, and Ellen Grafton bring their characters to life, which gives “Eve” even more listenability.
Take this audiobook to work with you. Take it home, take it on vacation, but don’t miss it. If you crave a novel experience, “Eve” will be Paradise to you.
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