All Reviews
Reviews are listed in reverse chronological order, with the most recent review appearing first in the list.
Paradise Lodge
Very much set in late 1970’s England, Paradise Lodge is narrated by Lizzie Vogel, a 15 year old school girl who gets a job working at a resident…
Re-Visioning Psychiatry
As its title suggests, this is an ambitious volume, its thesis that mental disorders cannot be understood, let alone responded to, by any one discipline…
The Inseparables
The formula of the story of three generations of women in a family is a good one. However, it has been done often, and it feels all too familiar. In Stua…
The Memory Book
There’s been a trend in teen terminal diseases in YA novels, at least since Jodi Picoult’s…
The Science of Shame and its Treatment
The book, entitled The Science of Shame and its Treatment is written by Dr. Geral Loren Fishkin, a clinician whose narrative about shame relies…
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The Self
Understanding human subjectivity is always a fascinating challenge for philosophers. Jonardon Ganeri’s book, The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness and…
The Tourist
The Tourist is a science fiction novel about time travel, without much science. It is more about the perplexities that time travel would produce…
Tolerance Among The Virtues
VENN – HUMAN ACTS Human beings act and interact with others in their families, so…
What Freud Really Meant
The premise of Sugarman’s book What Freud Really Meant (WFRM) is that Freud’s theories are frequently misunderstood as overly simplisti…
While the City Slept
Eli Sanders is a Seattle journalist, and in While the City Slept he paints a detailed picture of…
You Will Know Me
You Will Know Me is a novel about a family with a 15-year-old daughter who is very talented at gymnastics. It shows how Katie and Eric are…
Avalanche
Julia Leigh, now in her forties, sets out her experience of trying and failing to have a child using assisted reproductive services. It’s a tale of almos…
Beautiful Wreck
I just finished the memoir Beautiful Wreck, Sex, Lies & Suicide by queer feminist writer, mental health advocate, & activist for social…
Cognitive Unconscious and Human Rationality
Various paradigms have sought, over the years, to explain how we think and make decisions, with high loading on the idea of rationality. However, researc…
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Embodied Selves and Divided Minds
Michelle Maiese’s Embodied Selves and Divided Minds argues that the understanding of human consciousness as essentially embodied, is crucial for…
Every Exquisite Thing
This YA novel is about the power of stories for some teens and coping with horrible events. Nanette O’Hare is a smart student who does not have any real…
Fellside
Jess wakes up in hospital to find that she has been in a fire and she is disfigured. Then she is shocked to be charged with starting the fire and causing…
Happy Family
This sprawling novel of two generations has an adoption at its center. In the early 1960s, Sol Matzner, and East Coast Jewish doctor, meets a young Itali…
Just Life
Abramson’s novel features a vet Samantha Lewis devoted to dogs who runs a dog shelter. Other central characters are an ex-cop who had to shoot his own ca…
Life Reimagined
The book begins with the author describing what it felt like to have a heart attack scare, with her father’s passing the night the author was in the hosp…
Loner
Teddy Wayne’s third novel features a college student David Federman in his first year at Harvard who obsessively follows fellow student Veronica Morgan W…
Parents and Digital Technology
In Parents and Digital Technology: How to raise the connected generation, Suzie Hayman and John Coleman provide a guide for parents who are stru…
Philosophy and Psychiatry
Philosophy, psychiatry and avoiding ‘real mischief’ “What is Dr. Mon…
Run Down
First a few words about the genre. Most of us love mysteries. Why? Because when well written they provide a challenge to what Hercule Poirot calls “the l…
Sexting and Young People
Sex has always sold, whatever it is one is selling. This can be particularly true when the sex in question is somehow scandalous or atypical. Not surpris…