by yoursl | Jan 23, 2017 | Book Reviews |
I am reviewing books through the Blogging for Books program in an effort to support my community’s Little Free Library, thus the addition of book reviews outside of the usual sexual health topics to Your Sexy Librarian postings. After being reviewed, the book gets stamped “Always a Gift, Never for Sale” and placed into a Little Free Library for others to enjoy. My latest book selection is Cure: A Journey Into the Science of Mind Over Body written by award-winning science writer Jo Marchant, which was released on January 19. Cure is Marchant’s third book. Marchant’s Decoding the Heavens solves the mystery of the world’s first computer and The Shadow King explores the life of King Tut’s mummy. Based in London, Marchant has a PhD in genetics and medical microbiology. Her formal education in science shines through in Cure in the way she presents material in this book. Marchant zipped around the world compiling research for Cure. She discusses the placebo effect, in which there is a beneficial effect of a medical treatment that is attributed to the mind itself because the treatment is inert, for various disease states, such as autism, chronic pain and Parkinson’s. She spoke to many doctors, researchers and patients for different perspectives on the placebo effect itself and looked at research about the placebo effect. Marchant explores the nocebo effect, which is the opposite of the placebo effect, in which a negative expectation of a phenomenon causes it to have a greater negative effect than it otherwise would. She uses the present-day example of suspected mass poisoning of female students at Bibi Hajerah High School...
by yoursl | Jan 1, 2017 | Book Reviews |
I am reviewing books through the Blogging for Books program in an effort to support my community’s Little Free Library, thus the addition of book reviews outside of the usual sexual health topics to Your Sexy Librarian postings. After being reviewed, the book gets stamped “Always a Gift, Never for Sale” and placed into a Little Free Library for others to enjoy. My latest book selection is Conscious Uncoupling: 5 Steps to Living Happily Even After written by Katherine Woodward Thomas, which was released on October 18, 2016. This is Woodward Thomas’ second book. I chose Conscious Uncoupling because I was curious about what Woodward Thomas’ thoughts on ending relationships “in a whole new way.” When the book arrived, I had to explain to my partner Dutch that this was for a book review project. It was this book or a book on 52 ways to meditate. Dutch laughed at my dilemma because I cannot sit still long enough to relax, little on meditate. Since I blog about sexual health and relationships, Conscious Uncoupling seemed to be the best book review option at the time. Woodward Thomas wrote her latest book because her own marriage was ending in divorce and she did not want to create bitterness or unpleasantness for her daughter as her divorce progressed and eventually finalized. Woodward Thomas, a licensed marriage and family therapist, backs up her suggestions on keeping a break-up civil with solid grounding in sociology and psychology. She uses splashes of positive quotations throughout her book, which I enjoyed. An example I particularly loved is, “Divorce becomes a holy moment when you choose to use...
by yoursl | Dec 18, 2016 | Book Reviews |
I am reviewing books through the Blogging for Books program in an effort to support my community’s Little Free Library, thus the addition of book reviews outside of the usual sexual health topics to Your Sexy Librarian postings. After being reviewed, the book gets stamped “Always a Gift, Never for Sale” and placed into a Little Free Library for others to enjoy. My latest book selection is Tough as They Come by retired U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Travis Mills of the 82nd Airborne, and coauthored with Marcus Brotherton, which was released on October 27, 2016. The foreword is written by American actor and veteran advocate Gary Sinise. The cover of Tough as They Come states, “Thousands have been wounded in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Five have survived quadruple amputee injuries. This is one soldier’s story.” This description is essentially why I choose this book to review. I work in the medical field and was hoping SSG Mills’ personal story would help me find new motivation for helping my patients through their disease diagnosis and subsequent progression. This book certainly delivered motivation, by the truckload. Tough as They Come has been the best book I have reviewed thus far through the Blogging for Books program. “Best” in the sense of wanting to read the entire book without putting it down. I read every word on every page and did not want to be distracted in the process, which I cannot say about my previous book review choices. SSG Mills’ story is written from the heart and is humorous and gritty, even when recounting his darkest days after having...
by yoursl | Nov 27, 2016 | Book Reviews |
I am reviewing books through the Blogging for Books program in an effort to support my community’s Little Free Library, thus the addition of book reviews outside of the usual sexual health topics to Your Sexy Librarian postings. After being reviewed, the book gets stamped “Always a Gift, Never for Sale” and placed into a Little Free Library for others to enjoy. My latest book selection is The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill by American author Greg Mitchell, which was released on October 18. Mitchell has written a dozen non-fiction books on United States politics and history of the 2oth and 21st centuries. Miller blogs actively about media and politics. His writing is on point and will hold the interest of the reader until the very end of the story. I chose this particular book because I wanted to learn more about the Berlin Wall, which existed when I was born and was removed when I was a little girl. I knew the clinical aspects of the Berlin Wall without knowing much about the personal perspective of those who experienced life behind the Berlin Wall. The Tunnels is a collection of accounts of real people who were desperately trying to flee East Berlin. They risked their lives, prison and Stasi torture to liberate themselves, their friends, family and even strangers from East Berlin. As the Berlin Wall became a more permanent structure that was increasingly difficult to cross, the liberators went underground and began tunneling under the Wall. Tunnels were physically dangerous and put the liberators at great...
by yoursl | Oct 17, 2016 | Book Reviews |
I am reviewing books through the Blogging for Books program in an effort to support my community’s Little Free Library, thus the addition of book reviews outside of the usual sexual health topics to Your Sexy Librarian postings. After being reviewed, the book gets stamped “Always a Gift, Never for Sale” and placed into a Little Free Library for others to enjoy. My second book selection is Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World written and illustrated by Rachel Ignotofsky, which was released on July 26. I chose this book because, when I was younger, most of the books available about history and science focused primarily on the contributions made by men and subsequently overlooked the accomplishments made by women. To see a book devoted to women in science was very exciting. I jumped at the opportunity to review this book! When the book arrived, I was a little bit disappointed. The main font used in this book is less than the standard sized font used for most books, which can be a physical challenge for some readers. The second font used in Women in Science for the side elements is a different type-set and one I had to get accustomed to reading because the “e” is written as a backward “3.” In addition, I question the design choice to use bright colors such as fuchsia and yellow on dark grey backgrounds on the illustration pages as this is garish and headache-inducing. Black type set on the same oddly colored background colors was just slightly easier to read on the biography pages. Ignotofsky pairs an illustration with...
by yoursl | Jul 18, 2016 | Book Reviews |
I am reviewing books through the Blogging for Books program in an effort to support my community’s Little Free Library, thus the addition of book reviews outside of the usual sexual health topics to Your Sexy Librarian postings. After being reviewed, the book gets stamped “Always a Gift, Never for Sale” and placed into a Little Free Library for others to enjoy. My first book selection is I Am No One by Patrick Flanery, which was released on July 5. This is the third novel by the American-born author; all three of his works have received praise by critics. The cover art of I Am No One is clean and crisp with a hint of urban flare. The serif font looks sophisticated and is easy to read. The pages in my hardback copy are offset to give the pages more texture and definition, which in turn gives the book a feel of quality as each page is turned. I have not read Flanery’s previous novels nor any of his essays. My first impressive of his writing style is that it is similar to Jack Kerouac’s with the exception of Flanery’s use of punctuation. While Kerouac mainly disregarded punctuation, Flanery overuses commas to such a degree that the number of commas on a page can be distracting. Here is an example of Flanery’s writing and use of commas from the first chapter: “This is not something that tends to happen in Britain, where suspicion of strangers is so deeply ingrained in the national psyche, perhaps from the years of the IRA threat, or even more distantly, from the suspicion of...
