Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life
By Dacher Keltner
Available: print book
Susan Cain wrote about Dacher Keltner in her recent book book Bittersweet as a foremost expert on the science of emotions and as a consultant to Pixar’s Inside Out. As I write this review, I am listening to the On Being Podcast episode where Keltner was a guest in February. His research looks at how emotions experienced are deeply infused into not only how we see everything in our world but even into our bodies as immune and inflammation responses. Awe remains a mysterious experience and yet it orients us in our ideas, insights, connection with art, music, religion and how we engage in the social world. Collective effervescence creates an experience of awe and is a vital force in our lives and the scientific research is fascinating as it relates to our health, history, and culture.
Unraveling: What I Learned About Life While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wool, and Making the World’s Ugliest Sweater
By Peggy Orenstein
Available: print book
Like many of us, the Covid pandemic caused life as we knew it to pause and yet the day to day stress of sending teens off to college, caring for aging parents and grief continued. Peggy Orenstein, an essential writer on adolescence, found herself with in a life changing moment during Covid lockdowns and embarked on not only knitting a sweater but to sheer, card, and spin the wool. In doing so, an unexpected journey of learning merged as she confronted major issues of our time, “climate anxiety, racial justice, women’s rights, the impact of technology, sustainability, and ultimately the meaning of home.” A vulnerable, hilarious and multifaceted memoir.
I Have Some Questions For You
By Rebecca Makkai
Available: print copy
An irresistible page turning novel that explores collective memory and the reckoning with past grief and trauma. Bodie Kane spent her high school years unhappily attending a boarding school in New Hampshire where during her senior year, a classmate is murdered. When Kane, a successful podcaster and film professor, is invited to return to the school as a guest lecturer, the unsettled uncertainties of the past emerge and Bodie Kane finds herself drawn back to the case.