Book Corner 2023.43

Pet

by Catherine Chidgey

I’m not sure, but this might be what they call a “thriller”? Kind of a mysterious shocking story about a creepy teacher. I was drawn to it because it takes place in a Catholic school in the 80s. It’s New Zealand, so it was fun to learn a few of their slang words and a bit of their culture. I had never heard of a “winceyette” or “abseiling”, for example.

Anyway, a beautiful teacher comes to town and makes various girls her “pets.” She drives a wedge between two old friends. Shocking mysterious things happen which I shouldn’t divulge.

I loved how they got Catholic school spot-on! The dwindling number of aging nuns, who “taught” special subjects like singing. The way, if the principal or priest or anyone would walk into the classroom, everyone had to stand up and say in a sing-song voice, “Good afterno-on, Sister So-and-So!” And, “You couldn’t receive Holy Communion if you had eaten in the last hour; you couldn’t allow the body of Christ to slosh around in your stomach with the cornflakes and bacon.” Nobody else seems to have remembered that rule. And how it was easy to follow because it was at least a half hour in church before communion even started, so you really only had to ‘fast’ the last half hour before leaving.

Stumbling

“To have high morale is to believe that you are able to do the things you want to do; to have low morale is to believe the opposite… Morale is your motive force, and you live or die by its maintenance.” https://guzey.com/morale/

Outward: beautiful day

Forward: going to give a talk at the Fair!

One bad thing: something gross happened, will not elaborate.

Here’s a picture of bright red fungus we saw on a walk over the weekend.

Book Corner 2023.42

Outlive

by Peter Attia, MD

Dr. Peter Attia is an oncology surgeon, a data guy, and an extreme athlete with trauma in his past. That all plays into his approach to longevity: lots and lots of screening, monitoring, and “training” for old age as if you were training for a sporting event.

The chapters on exercise and nutrition were fantastic. My favorite quote: “Cardio or weights? Low-carb or plant-based? Olive oil or beef tallow? I don’t know. Must we really take sides?” This is NOT a book telling you the One True Secret to long life; it all depends. Some certainties though: Exercise is the best medicine. If your metabolism is not functioning well, make it a priority to get that under control. Screen for everything, screen early, screen often.

Then come chapters on sleep and emotional health. I had really been looking forward to the chapter on sleep, as it’s kind of a bugaboo for me. I had grown to feel I could trust his opinions, and I wanted know what he thought about better sleep through pharmaceuticals. He had stated in an early chapter that he had nothing against using medications in general where appropriate, such as statins; so it felt promising that I wouldn’t get some knee-jerk anti-medication attitude.

I started reading the chapter one night shortly before bedtime, and didn’t get up to any of the advice; just lots of emphatic “Sleep is crucial! Quality, uninterrupted sleep! It’s a must! You risk Alzheimer’s if you don’t get it!” Nice scary nightmares to put a random chronic insomniac to sleep with.

The next night I delved in further. Alas, he’s anti-Ambien. Ambien sleep isn’t REAL sleep and yadda yadda yadda. However to give him credit, he had positive things to say about trazodone.

The whole sleep chapter was disappointing and did not feel nearly as data-driven as the previous chapters. It just felt like he got it in his head that sleep was very important to health and decided it warranted a whole chapter on a par with exercise & nutrition, but he didn’t want to put any work into it.

For the emotional health chapter, I commend him for telling so much of his personal story. This chapter was driven by his own experience and that was OK.

I guess the real overarching theme of the book, though, was that everyone is different, and you must find what works for YOU. Your exercise ability, your own metabolic reactions – these are going to determine the “right” exercise and diet for you. He could have been a LITTLE more understanding about chronic insomnia, though, and respected that different things work (and don’t work) for different people. As I said, a bit of a bugaboo for me…

Book Corner 2023.40

Elderhood

by Louise Aronson

First, the negatives. I am so glad to be done with this 300-page book. Did this woman have any editor whatsoever? She must have put down every single thought on the subject of elderliness that ever entered her mind.

Now the positives. I liked learning about geriatrics. I feel a geriatrician is exactly what my mother-in-law needs – a whole-person doctor. (If only I could get her out of the house to see one.)

And I did feel inspired to bookmark one thing. Why do we all hesitate to call ourselves “old”? “Imagine a forty- or fifty-year-old saying, ‘I don’t like to think of myself as an adult. I’m just a kid who’s been around a few extra years.'” Well, actually, I can and do know at least one person who’s said something to that effect, so, not so shocking… “Or a children’s hospital that eschews the term ‘child’ because of its association with immaturity, and instead markets itself as serving short, unemployed people.” OK, that part is funny to imagine.