Where Did I Leave My Glasses?: The What, When, and Why of Normal Memory Loss by Martha Weinman Lear is a book that could almost be funny if it only happened to someone else. Lear’s research turns up some answers that make memory loss even less funny. She questions of the experts that many of us might be reluctant to ask, fearing the answers. Are there characteristics or traits that make memory loss a sure thing or bring it on earlier than “expected”? And when does memory loss “normally” kick in? Will we all experience memory loss or are there factors that bring it on and/or factors that can delay it? Is age, or education, or family history a factor? The answers may surprise and perhaps shock you.
BOOK EXCERPT - Chapter One: Say Hello to Whatsisname
Here am I, chasing some elusive name up and down the windowless corridors of my mind—Yoo-hoo, name, wait for me!—and the merry little bugger keeps outrunning me, pausing every now and again just to give me the business, make me think I can grab it, and my annoyance turns to frustration, then to indignation, then to impotent laughter—I? practitioner of words, fumbling around in the dark for a Tom, a Dick, a Harry? How absurd.
I begin the usual lament: “I can’t remember his name, it’s right here on the tip of my tongue, this is driving me crazy, you know, way back when Whatsisname was president, the Contract with America guy, what the hell was his name?” Read more… >>
Looks: Why They Matter More Than You Ever Imagined is written by Gordon L. Patzer, Ph.D., founding director of the Appearance Research Institute and a tenured professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago. Dr. Patzer has investigated “lookism” and the physical attractiveness phenomenon for more than thirty years. I was fascinated by his research and appalled by many of the stories including one about a woman chosen to be on, and then rejected by, the Extreme Makeover reality show.
From the publisher:
It’s true that beauty pays. Better grades, success in romance, higher salaries -these are just a few of the well-documented advantages bestowed upon the good looking at the expense of everyone else. But the beauty fixation gets even uglier than that. A constant flood of images celebrating the thin and glamorous has triggered deadly eating disorders, dangerous cosmetic surgeries, and unhealthy obsessions that are affecting women and men of all ages-even young children.
Dr. Gordon L. Patzer has spent more than thirty years studying this phenomenon. Here he uses original research to provide a unique examination of physical attractiveness and how it has changed the lives of both men and women.Looks is the first book to explore how attractiveness affects every aspect of our lives-from whom we choose to befriend and hire to the candidates we choose to elect and whom we presume to be innocent or guilty in a court of law. Unflinching and revealing, Looks uncovers the sometimes ugly truth about beauty and its profound effects on all of us.
Multiplicity: The New Science of Personality, Identity, and the Self is a fascinating book by author Rita Carter, an award-winning science and medical writer. Carter lives in Oxfordshire, England, and is the author of several books about the brain, including Mapping the Mind and Exploring Consciousness.
Multiplicity has several exercises such as the one in Chapter 6: How Multiple Are You? that is designed to find out the degree of separation between your personalities, not the number you have or what they are like, as another exercise later in the book will help discover this information. Read more… »
The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (And How To Do Them), by Peter Sagal, takes a look at seven vices: 1) Swinging or Dinner Parties Gone Horribly Wrong; 2) Eating or Sodom’s Restaurant; 3) Strip Clubs or Sure, They Like You. Really.; 4) Lying or This Chapter Will Change Your Life and Make You Millions!; 5) Gambling or Dice, Cards, Wheels, and Other Lethal Weapons; 6) Consumption or How to Keep Up with the Joneses When the Joneses Are Insane; and 7) Pornography or You Can Look, but You Can’t Admit It.
Read more… »
Sandra Ingerman is the author of the psycho-spiritual self-help book How to Heal Toxic Thoughts: Simple Tools for Personal Transformation. The book contains short exercises for readers to do to help create positive energy in their lives. Click on the video link above for my review.
