Habits – why we form them and what helps us keep them – is a topic that’s been on my mind much lately. There have been periods of time in my life where good habits were beyond habit – they were my nature. But recently, I have found it difficult to build those good habits back into my life. A quick and engaging read, Charles Duhigg begins with an explanation of how habits work on cues, with a resulting reward – known as the habit loop. […]
A Book That Rubs in What We’ve Lost
Like many people, I’m sure, I set out to find some of Carrie Fisher’s writing after hearing of her passing, and crying a lot over various tumblr posts about the fierce, proud, witty, wonderful woman we’d just lost. It was surprisingly easy to get my hands on a copy of Wishful Drinking, Fisher’s short, sharp memoir that’s largely just a collection of anecdotes about her remarkable and exciting life, and I devoured it in a matter of hours. It definitely did not help with the […]
Do you know anyone like the Columbine shooters? You might.
What is Columbine to you? Before April 20th, 1999, Columbine was simply a school to most people, if not the flower for which it was named. After the devastating shooting that took 13 lives and terrorized hundreds more, Columbine was a symbol of mass murder and disaster. Maybe you have heard of Columbine, maybe you haven’t. But whatever Columbine was to you before reading this book, will surely change. Columbine is a media driven narrative. As the events of the Columbine shooting unfolded, that narrative […]
Bellevue ain’t just for crazies any more
Bellevue has seen some sh*t. As New York City’s oldest public hospital, Bellevue hospital has been on the front lines of virtually every health crisis that hit our fine shores in the past 280 odd years. In this breathtakingly detailed history, Pulitzer Prize winning author, David Oshinsky (author of the equally cheerful Polio: An American Story), takes readers through this medical institution’s storied past. That description makes it sound like a bit of a snoozer. But, a textbook this is not. This well-paced tome puts […]