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What to read this Halloween, based on your ideal spooky activity

Whether you’re a homebody or a thrill-hunter, we’ve got a seasonal, spine-tingling read for you.
Whether you’re a homebody or a thrill-hunter, we’ve got a seasonal, spine-tingling read for you.
NonfictionLifestylesCookbooks

Bodega Bakes

In the personable Bodega Bakes, pastry chef Paola Velez presents just that: sweets that can be made solely from the ingredients found at a corner store.
In the personable Bodega Bakes, pastry chef Paola Velez presents just that: sweets that can be made solely from the ingredients found at a corner store.
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The Good Girls

When two teenage girls from a low-caste, high-poverty farming region in India were found hanging from a tree, it lay bare caste divisions, family strife, political corruption and stubborn attitudes toward women, girls and sexual purity.
NonfictionSelf-Help

Chatter

Review by Harvey Freedenberg

In Buddhism it’s referred to as “monkey mind”—that cascade of often critical and judgmental self-talk that runs in a ceaseless loop in our heads. In Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It, experimental psychologist and neuroscientist Ethan Kross provides a useful introduction to some of the intriguing research on this phenomenon and offers a toolbox full of constructive techniques for quieting our persistent inner voice or, better yet, turning it in a positive direction.

When he received an anonymous threatening letter several years ago, Kross, who directs the Emotion and Self-Control Laboratory at the University of Michigan, first turned inward to investigate how our default biological state creates an “inescapable tension of the inner voice as both helpful superpower and destructive kryptonite.” Any attempt to silence that voice, he explains, is doomed, but through a process of trial and error, most people can find some method of transforming it from foe to friend.

Relying on a host of laboratory studies and compelling anecdotal evidence—like the story of major league pitcher Rick Ankiel, who suddenly lost the ability to control a baseball but reinvented himself as an outfielder—Kross is an amiable guide through this fascinating and complex territory. He illustrates the value of the simple act of distancing—visualizing oneself as a third-party observer or invoking mental time travel—to gain perspective on how a momentary crisis might appear to a neutral party or with the benefit of hindsight. In one experiment, something as simple as a temporary shift from negative “I-talk” to referring to oneself in the second or third person provided dramatic benefits. And in one revealing chapter, Kross explains how placebos and rituals can help tame the worst aspects of the inner voice.

“The challenge isn’t to avoid negative states altogether,” he concludes. “It’s to not let them consume you.” Anyone seeking help along that road will find Chatter a useful traveling companion.

In Chatter, experimental psychologist and neuroscientist Ethan Kross offers a toolbox full of constructive techniques for quieting our persistent inner voice or, better yet, turning it in a positive direction.

We Had a Little Real Estate Problem

Richly researched and told through the vibrant voices of Native American comics, Kliph Nesteroff’s extraordinary We Had a Little Real Estate Problem chronicles a legacy deserving of inclusion in the history of comedy.

NonfictionMedicineAmerican History

The Doctors Blackwell

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Florence Nightingale and Dorothea Dix loom large as women who reformed health care in the 19th century—in the fields of nursing and mental health, respectively—but Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell have remained largely unrecognized for their roles in medical history. No longer, though, for Janice P. Nimura’s compelling biography The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine reclaims the sisters’ enduring contributions to medicine and to women’s history.

In breathtaking prose and exhaustive detail, Nimura chronicles the lives of the Blackwell sisters—their childhood in England, their immigration to America, the challenges they faced as they made their way in the medical profession and their eventual establishment of institutions that would provide both access to quality medical care for women and a place where women could study medicine in order to practice it.

Attracted to healing as a teenager, Elizabeth saw medicine as a noble vocation, but as she sought to embrace her calling she encountered resistance at almost every turn. Eventually she was able to graduate from Geneva Medical College in New York, becoming the first woman in the U.S. to earn a medical degree, after which she set up a practice in New York City. Emily followed in her older sister’s footsteps, attending Rush Medical College in Chicago and the Medical College of Cleveland, where she became the third woman in the U.S. to receive a medical degree. In 1857, the two sisters founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, and in 1868 they opened the Women’s Medical College in New York City, where Elizabeth taught courses on sanitation and hygiene and Emily taught obstetrics and gynecology. By 1900, the college had trained more than 364 women, and the sisters’ work led to thousands of women becoming educated in the medical field. 

Nimura’s compelling biography not only recovers the lives and work of Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell but also provides a colorful social history of medicine in America and Europe during the mid- to late-19th century.

Janice P. Nimura’s compelling biography The Doctors Blackwell reclaims two sisters’ enduring contributions to medicine and to women’s history.

NonfictionHistoryEuropean History

Hitler and Stalin

Review by Roger Bishop

Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin never met, but between 1939 and 1945 they had a strong relationship, briefly as allies and then as enemies. In his riveting Hitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War, Laurence Rees, historian, bestselling author and acclaimed BBC documentary producer, brings this six-year period vividly alive. Rees has devoted his professional life to World War II and Holocaust history. What sets his newest account apart is that he interviewed more people who had direct experience working for these two men than any other historian to date. Rees’ skillful incorporation of these eyewitness accounts, carefully checked for reliability, gives a “you are there” feeling to events.

The most important connection between Hitler and Stalin was that each believed he had uncovered the secret of existence, but those “secrets” were definitely distinct. Hitler’s starting point was race—that the Jewish people were responsible for all that was wrong in the world. Stalin, inspired by the work of Karl Marx, became a revolutionary. Each hated the other’s belief system, though Stalin was a keen reader of Mein Kampf.

Rees gives us detailed, nuanced portraits of these two men. Hitler was charismatic, but only to those who agreed with him. Stalin exercised power through his profound understanding of working through committees. Hitler expressed a vision but was not realistic about implementation, while Stalin was much more detail oriented. They both demonstrated contempt for weaker nations and ruthlessly pursued actions that showed their total disregard for the lives of their supporters as well as their enemies. During their leadership, they were responsible for the deaths of at least 27 million people, but because they were suspicious of others, they were emotionally isolated from the suffering they caused. Rees also notes that because of the infamy of Hitler and the Holocaust, less attention has been paid to Stalin’s horrendous crimes, which has allowed him to escape the level of censure that he deserves. 

There are other fine, very long biographies of these dictators. However, this excellent book for the general reader is shorter and gives an authoritative and very readable understanding of who Hitler and Stalin were and what they did.

Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin never met, but between 1939 and 1945 they had a strong relationship, briefly as allies and then as enemies, and Laurence Rees brings this six-year period vividly alive.

Four Lost Cities

As Annalee Newitz shows in the marvelous Four Lost Cities, an ancient city’s fate was determined by complex interactions of politics, the environment and human choices.
NonfictionMemoir

Between Two Kingdoms

Review by Alice Cary

Twenty-two-year-old Princeton grad Suleika Jaouad was working as a paralegal in Paris when symptoms of acute myeloid leukemia sent her home to Saratoga Springs, New York, to live with her Swiss-born mother, an artist, and her Tunisian-born father, a French professor at Skidmore College. Raised to roam the globe, Jaouad found that her world had suddenly shrunk to a hospital room at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where she underwent a stem cell transplant and other grueling treatments, which she began chronicling in a New York Times column called “Life Interrupted.” Her engrossing memoir, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of Life Interrupted, paints a more complete portrait of her experiences during and after treatment.

Jaouad was supported by her parents and a new boyfriend, who put his life on hold for several years to care for her. The ups and downs of their relationship eventually became fraught. She was also buoyed by other cancer patients her own age, including two gifted, beloved friends, an artist and a poet. As she relates these stories, her honest and reflective voice spares no one, not even herself.

Later Jaouad was stunned to discover that “the hardest part of my cancer treatment was once it was over.” She no longer had her support system, and she felt paralyzed by fear. In an effort to reenter the world after treatment, she set out on a 100-day, 33-state solo pilgrimage to connect with an intriguing array of people who had reached out to her during her illness, including a California mother who had lost her adult son to suicide, a bighearted cook on a Montana ranch and a Louisiana death row inmate named Lil’ GQ. She learned valuable, unexpected lessons from all.

Jaouad’s cancer treatment narrative and travelogue are equally compelling as she deftly mixes moments of grief, anger and despair with joy, gratitude and hefty doses of self-deprecating humor. For instance, as a brand-new driver, the first thing she did when setting out on her journey was drive the wrong way down a New York City street. Not long afterward, she had to look up a YouTube video to help her set up her tent.

Between Two Kingdoms is a thoughtful book from a talented young writer who never sugarcoats or falls prey to false hope. As Jaouad writes, “After you’ve had the ceiling cave in on you—whether through illness or some other catastrophe—you don’t assume structural stability. You must learn to live on the fault lines.” Her message will ring helpful and true to many, regardless of the challenges they face.

Suleika Jaouad’s engrossing memoir, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of Life Interrupted, paints a portrait of her experiences during and after treatment for leukemia.

American Baby

Gabrielle Glaser’s extensive research into adoptions that took place between World War II and 1973 reads like a well-crafted, tension-filled novel.
FictionYA FictionYAMemoirComing of Age

The Hold List: Sweet & surprising love stories

Feature by the editors of BookPage

Typically in this column, the BookPage editors try to pick a topic that is an unexpected challenge—like books to read in public or our preferred characters to partner with for a zombie apocalypse. This month’s theme is perhaps the broadest it’s ever been, as these five books are all love stories, though not necessarily in ways you’d expect.

Jazz

In my opinion, Jazz is the most underrated of Toni Morrison’s books. As expansive and bold as Song of Solomon, as ardent and poetic as Tar Baby and almost (almost!) as tragic as Beloved, Jazz is a story of overwhelming, destructive passion. It was published just a year before Morrison won the Nobel Prize, and she was clearly at the height of her powers, with all her skills on glorious display in every passage. Take the descriptions of Joe Trace’s affair-­addled conscience, or the tense yet loving exchanges between Alice and Violet, or Golden Gray’s surreal backstory. Each of these story­lines shows the disastrous effects of love gone awry. Jazz is not a sweet love story, but that doesn’t diminish its beauty. The humanity, the depravity and the tragedy all elevate the story, and the characters are treated with the utmost sympathy. As with the finest of novels, the real love story isn’t on the page; it happens between the reader and Morrison herself.

—Eric, Editorial Intern

My Life in France

Is there another book more overflowing with love stories than My Life in France? Julia Child’s memoir about her years in Paris, Marseilles and Provence is a three-pronged romance about her love for France, her love for cooking and her love for her husband, Paul. (In the film Julie and Julia, Paul is played by Stanley Tucci, which makes him even more lovable.) From the moment Child sits down for her first meal in France—marveling at wine being served with lunch and wondering aloud what a shallot is—until, having established a French home-cooking empire, she lounges with James Beard at her summer home in Provence, she is a marvel of wit, candor and unpretentious enthusiasm for the pleasures of food. In an age when you might feel compelled to drape your excitement with a layer of irony, so as not to seem uncool, it’s cheering to read the story of one woman whose small dreams blossomed as she watered them with sincere love.

—Christy, Associate Editor

Wives and Daughters

The sheltered daughter of a country doctor, Molly Gibson finds her perfectly happy life upended when her father marries the snobbish, shortsighted and dictatorial Hyacinth Kirkpatrick. But there is a silver lining: her utterly fabulous, breezily charming new stepsister, Cynthia. In a lesser book, Cynthia would be an 1830s version of a Jane Austen mean girl, like Caroline Bingley or Mary Crawford. But due to author Elizabeth Gaskell’s ceaseless, penetrating empathy, Molly and the reader come to understand how Cynthia’s wit and flightiness serve as defense mechanisms, and how under all her glamour and coquetry, she is still just a teenage girl doing her best. Molly and Cynthia fall in and out of love with various gentle­men, but the most tender relationship in the novel is between the two of them—two girls who have found the sister they always wanted and who see the best in each other even when no one else will.

—Savanna, Associate Editor

The Darling

We all love a love story, but let’s be real: Damage can be done when we take too many cues from fictional narratives. Caridad, the fabulously complicated Latina scholar at the heart of Lorraine M. López’s novel, is particularly caught up in the messaging of classic love stories, and she spends this dramatic, often funny tale sorting through serial relationships and beloved books by white men. As she seeks answers to who she is, she calls upon works by Henry Miller, Gustave Flaubert, Leo Tolstoy and other notable dead white guys who wrote about women but danced around topics like female sexuality and motherhood. Classic literature lovers may recognize The Darling as an homage to Chekhov’s 1899 short story “The Darling,” but Caridad stands on her own in this tale of self-discovery, ambition and desire. As she tests the limits of her romantic relationships, it becomes clear that the most complicated entanglement is when you love a book but cannot agree with the vision of its creator.

—Cat, Deputy Editor

Lovely War

Near the end of the criminally underrated film That Thing You Do!, Guy Patterson (played by Tom Everett Scott) asks Faye Dolan (played by Liv Tyler), “When was the last time you were decently kissed? I mean, truly, truly, good and kissed?” There are so many reasons to love Julie Berry’s historical fiction masterpiece Lovely War, not least of which is its delicious narration by Aphrodite, the goddess of love, but at the top of my list is this: It features the best kiss I’ve ever read. After being separated by the horrors of a world war, YMCA volunteer Hazel and British sharpshooter James reunite in Paris for one magical evening of dinner in a cozy cafe, dancing alone in a park with no music and then finally—well, I won’t spoil it. “There’s nothing like the rightness of it,” says Aphrodite. “Nothing like its wonder. If I see it a trillion more times before this world spirals into the sun, I’ll still be an awed spectator.” You will, too.

—Stephanie, Associate Editor

These five books are all love stories, though not necessarily in ways you’d expect.

The Three Mothers

The Three Mothers expands conversations about Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin beyond what these men gave the world to include what the world gave them through the lives of their intelligent, ambitious, trailblazing mothers.

Nonfiction

This Is the Voice

Review by Priscilla Kipp

After almost ruining his voice while trying to add vocal gusto to an improvised rock band, John Colapinto—an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker and bestseller author—discovered how much he didn't know about the voice. In This Is the Voice, he diligently delivers his newfound knowledge and hard-earned perspective, aided by an exhaustive lineup of scholars, scientists, historians, physicians and voice artists. From Cicero to rock stars to demagogues to opera divas to newborns, Colapinto learns, enlightens and entertains.

Humans begin to learn language even before birth, absorbing their mothers’ words from within the womb. Our ability to use the voice in speech secures our spot at the top of the food chain and separates us from our closest cousin, the chimp, only by the lower placement of the human larynx. Our voices gives life and meaning to our words—and as humans, Colapinto says, we do crave meaning. Differences in prosody, timbre, tone and pitch further color our communications.

To understand all this, Colapinto first examines the physiology and anatomy involved in speaking—how the vocal cords, tongue and lips work together with our lungs and brain to produce sounds. Things take a darker turn when he recounts how Hitler, along with other incendiaries, learned to use his voice to incite his followers to violence. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Barack Obama are here, too, their voices technically explained and offered as examples of how oratory can inspire.

This is an intensely researched compilation that includes evolution, history, politics and competing scientific theories, launched by Colapinto’s personal struggle to save his voice. Fact-heavy yet digestible, This Is the Voice requires time and attention to absorb, but it’s worth it. In the end, Colapinto's book becomes its own clarion call, asking that we listen to each other, despite our different accents and their dividing origins, and that we use the power generated by our brains, lungs and vocal cords to understand and respect the effects our voices have on each other.

In This Is the Voice, John Colapinto delivers exhaustive knowledge about the human voice, aided by a lineup of scholars, scientists, historians, physicians and voice artists.

The Rope

Alex Tresniowski draws upon his experience as a true crime author and former human interest writer for Time and People magazine as he recounts this tale.

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