Join Me! By Danny Wallace (Plume)
Just to see what would happen, Wallace took out an ad in a London
newspaper asking strangers to “join him”—no reason
supplied. To his surprise, the group took on a life of its own: A
thousand members, Web forums and a mission to do good deeds followed. An
optimistic and consistently funny demonstration of networking, promotion
and the need to belong.
The Fat Girl’s Guide to Life By Wendy Shanker
(Bloomsbury)
Wendy Shanker is fed up. Other people have destroyed her
self-esteem, leaving her more concerned with being thin than being happy.
Well, no more, damn it!
The Fat Girl’s Guide to Lifetracks
Shanker’s experiences with weight loss, health, self-esteem and the
diet industry as she argues that you can be fit, fat and happy.
The Mind at Night: The New Science of How and Why We Dream By
Andrea Rock (Basic Books)
In 1965, Paul McCartney woke up with a melody in his
head—“Yesterday” later became the most popular radio
tune of all time. In
The Mind at Night,Rock probes everyday questions:
Why do dreams seem real? Do we solve problems in our
sleep?Heavy on anecdotes, this book tells the inside story of
sleep research.
Borderlines: A Memoir By Caroline Kraus (Broadway)
What happens when a friendship gets violently, heart-wrenchingly,
possessively intense? Kraus’ tale of an obsessive and romantic
friendship tops most love sagas in originality and lurid drama, which
makes for gripping reading. Chapters without crazy Jane tend to get mired
in family minutiae, but the memoir is, in the end, a powerful tale of
entanglement.
How I Learned To Cook and Other Writings on Complex Mother-Daughter
Relationships Margo Perin, ed. (Tarcher)
The combined effect of these stories is both disturbing and
impossible to dismiss. Hillary Gamerow’s offhand familiarity with
outright malice in the title story is stunning, and the excerpt of Ruth
Kluger’s “Still Alive,” about her deportation to
Auschwitz with her mother, is profound.
Necessary Dreams: The Vital Role of Ambition in Women’s
Changing Lives By Anna Fels (Pantheon)
A treatise on female ambition turns into a litany of female
frustration. Fels’ basic argument: Recognition and support are
essential for success in career and in life, and women don’t get
enough of either. Point taken, but this thoroughly researched (and
stiffly written) book offers little new insight or new hope.
The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why By Dalton Conley
(Pantheon)
This careful sociological study explores how economic inequality
begins at home—especially in larger and poorer families. Each case
study is a mini-mystery that begins by detailing the forces that act upon
a family of siblings and ends by revealing which one becomes a CEO, and
which a heroin addict.
Wider Than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness By Gerald
Edelman (Yale University Press)
Nobel laureate Edelman has tackled this subject before, but his
theory of how evolution has shaped the brain and consciousness is itself
still evolving. His latest, intended for a lay audience, is a slender
volume. Laden with a brief course in neuroanatomy and peppered with
technical terms, it is nonetheless a heavy lift.
Tags:
ambition,
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basic books,
book,
caroline kraus,
crazy jane,
danny wallace,
diet industry,
entanglement,
everyday questions,
friendships,
good deeds,
london newspaper,
malic,
minutiae,
mother daughter relationships,
new science,
perin,
romantic friendship,
sagas,
siblings,
sleep research,
web forums,
wendy shanker
