Quitting smoking, laughing more, being kinder to Mom—for whatever you've decided to do differently this year, we have a thoughtful, inspiring story to help you succeed.
The Addict
By Michael Stein
288 pages; Morrow
Quit Smoking: Michael Stein Knows How Hard It Is, but He Makes You Long to Do It
Millions of Americans are addicted to prescription pain medication, and after reading Michael Stein's new book, you may wish you could make every one of them an appointment to see Stein at his Rhode Island clinic. Charting a year in the life of the internist-author and a young woman whom he is trying to help kick a nasty Vicodin habit, The Addict considers the possibilities and limitations of buprenorphine, an opiate blocker that Stein prescribes to reduce the agony of detoxification, and reveals the complexities of working with the often desperate people who come through Stein and his colleagues' office. Clearly, Stein believes that his ability to heal is directly related to his ability to listen to, and care about, his patients—to understand who they are and how they got that way. All of which makes The Addict more than a narrative about the forward and backward steps that lead from addiction to recovery. It's a useful, sensible, and often inspiring guide to how the medical profession does—and should—treat the sick, and the sick at heart.
— Francine Prose
E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems, 1904 -1962
By E.E. Cummings
1136 pages; Liveright
Up Your Intimacy: Get Your Partner—and Yourself—in the Mood by Reading Him the World's Sexiest Poems
Playful, radical experiments with spelling, syntax, and punctuation are Cummings's poetic signature. Less well known—his gift for erotic verse: "i like my body when it is with your / body."
— Carmela Ciuraru
Bossypants
By Tina Fey
288 pages; Reagan Arthur Books
Laugh More: Let Tina Fey Crack You Up with Her So-Funny-Because-They're-So-True Essays
Holmes met Tina Fey, then head writer and a performer on Saturday Night Live, while guest-hosting in 2001. ("I was terrified doing that show," she admits.) Years later she'd find herself identifying with Fey while reading the 30 Rock star's comic essays. "She writes with such a true voice about being a mom—from the funny things your kids do to your fears for them. When I heard Tina was pregnant again [Fey had a second daughter in August], I thought, That's great, but I hope she's writing a second book."
— As told to Abbe Wright
The Long Goodbye
By Meghan O'Rourke
320 pages; Riverhead Hardcover
Most Moving Book of 2011
Repair Your Relationship with Mom: Meghan O'Rourke's Memoir Reminds You Why Now Is Better Than Later
"After a loss, you have to learn to believe the dead one is dead. It doesn't come naturally." That seemingly simple observation is just one of the many profound thoughts in Meghan O'Rourke's The Long Goodbye (Riverhead), an achingly moving memoir about her mother's death in 2008 at age 55. Despite her brainy pedigree—Yale graduate, prizewinning poet, one of the youngest editors ever at The New Yorker—O'Rourke manages to make her erudition accessible: Maybe Hamlet wasn't a natural depressive, she suggests; after all, he'd just lost his father! Weaving together memories of her mother (a teacher and school administrator who often encouraged her very serious daughter to "lighten up") with lines of literature and discussions of cultural attitudes toward mourning, O'Rourke both questions the common wisdom that grieving occurs in linear stages and offers up a very personal portrait of pain. "I don't just miss my mother's soul," she writes. "I miss her laugh, her sarcasm, and the sound of her voice saying my name." Barbara Kelly O'Rourke used to bid her daughter goodnight with the line, "I love you to death." With this unusually intelligent and emotional book, her daughter makes clear that we can, in fact, love beyond it.
— Sara Nelson
A Tale of Two Cities
By Charles Dickens
834 pages; Penguin Books
Increase Your Savings: Nothing Will Motivate You to Stick to It More Than Dickensian Characters in Debtors' Prison
Beginning and ending with some of English literature's most famous lines, Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities thrives on tension and conflict, all set against a bloody backdrop of the French Revolution. The novel's sense of urgency and intimacy will draw you in and propel you through one of the most tumultuous times in history.
How God Changes Your Brain
By Mark Waldman, Andrew Newberg MD
368 pages; Ballantine Books
Be More Present: Get Inspired by the Science Behind Meditation
How God Changes Your Brain may just change the way you think about God. Authors Andrew Newberg, MD, and Mark Waldman, researchers at the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania, have interviewed and scanned the brains of the actively faithful, including Franciscan nuns in contemplative prayer, Buddhists meditating, and Pentecostal church members after inviting the Holy Spirit to enter them. The various practices, the authors found, evoke different feelings as well as corresponding changes in the brain. Contemplative prayer and Eastern meditation generate a sense of "oneness" with God or the universe, practitioners report—and this is actually confirmed by decreased activity in the parietal lobe, a region of the brain that's responsible for our perception of boundaries between ourselves and others, of being distinct from the rest of the world. Pentecostals speaking in tongues, on the other hand, feel that an outside entity is communicating with them—and in their case, activity in the parietal lobe increases. The way one views God also activates different parts of the neural circuitry: Thinking of a loving being causes the compassion centers to light up, whereas belief in an authoritarian spirit stimulates regions that prime the brain for fighting.
Newberg and Waldman devote the last chapters of the book to specific exercises drawn from both spiritual traditions and modern brain science—meditative, physical, and interpersonal techniques that can be used by anyone, atheist or believer, to enhance cognitive function, emotional serenity, and communication with others. To improve well-being in general, they say, the four most important elements to include in your life are cultivating faith (in God or another power, or simply in the belief that a positive future awaits you), engaging in dialogue with others, getting aerobic exercise, and meditating.
— Gabrielle Leblanc
The Grapes of Wrath
By John Steinbeck
464 pages; Penguin Classics
Make a Difference in Your Community
"This novel radicalized me. It changed my life. It made me a dedicated advocate of organizing and collective bargaining," says Ashley Judd, who came upon the classic when she was a young actor just starting out. "It was about 1991, and my acting teacher, the great Bob Carnegie, kept the fees at the school very low so that we didn't have to waste our time working as waiters. He wanted us to be able to go to museums, to see theater, to read. And I took him seriously: I read one Steinbeck novel after another, and the next thing I knew I had read his entire works—I even read the journal he kept while writing Grapes."
— As told to Sara Nelson