#ereading

Always remember this. Note to all the parents out there! ❤️

Popular Psychology titles available now on the Axis 360 app!

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know by Malcolm Gladwell

4.04/5

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers -- and why they often go wrong. How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true? While tackling these questions, Malcolm Gladwell was not solely writing a book for the page. He was also producing for the ear. In the audiobook version of Talking to Strangers, you'll hear the voices of people he interviewed--scientists, criminologists, military psychologists. Court transcripts are brought to life with re-enactments. You actually hear the contentious arrest of Sandra Bland by the side of the road in Texas. As Gladwell revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, and the suicide of Sylvia Plath, you hear directly from many of the players in these real-life tragedies. There's even a theme song - Janelle Monae's "Hell You Talmbout." Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb

4.38/5

One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but. As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives -- a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can't stop hooking up with the wrong guys -- she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.

My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind by Scott Stossel

3.84/5

A riveting, revelatory, and moving account of the author’s struggles with anxiety, and of the history of efforts by scientists, philosophers, and writers to understand the condition

As recently as thirty-five years ago, anxiety did not exist as a diagnostic category. Today, it is the most common form of officially classified mental illness. Scott Stossel gracefully guides us across the terrain of an affliction that is pervasive yet too often misunderstood.

Drawing on his own long-standing battle with anxiety, Stossel presents an astonishing history, at once intimate and authoritative, of the efforts to understand the condition from medical, cultural, philosophical, and experiential perspectives. He ranges from the earliest medical reports of Galen and Hippocrates, through later observations by Robert Burton and Søren Kierkegaard, to the investigations by great nineteenth-century scientists, such as Charles Darwin, William James, and Sigmund Freud, as they began to explore its sources and causes, to the latest research by neuroscientists and geneticists. Stossel reports on famous individuals who struggled with anxiety, as well as on the afflicted generations of his own family. His portrait of anxiety reveals not only the emotion’s myriad manifestations and the anguish anxiety produces but also the countless psychotherapies, medications, and other (often outlandish) treatments that have been developed to counteract it. Stossel vividly depicts anxiety’s human toll—its crippling impact, its devastating power to paralyze—while at the same time exploring how those who suffer from it find ways to manage and control it. My Age of Anxiety is learned and empathetic, humorous and inspirational, offering the reader great insight into the biological, cultural, and environmental factors that contribute to the affliction.

The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison

3.99/5

By the New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy Exams, an exploration of addiction, and the stories we tell about it, that reinvents the traditional recovery memoir.

With its deeply personal and seamless blend of memoir, cultural history, literary criticism, and journalistic reportage, The Recovering turns our understanding of the traditional addiction narrative on its head, demonstrating that the story of recovery can be every bit as electrifying as the train wreck itself. Leslie Jamison deftly excavates the stories we tell about addiction--both her own and others'--and examines what we want these stories to do, and what happens when they fail us.

All the while, she offers a fascinating look at the larger history of the recovery movement, and at the literary and artistic geniuses whose lives and works were shaped by alcoholism and substance dependence, including John Berryman, Jean Rhys, Raymond Carver, Billie Holiday, David Foster Wallace, and Denis Johnson, as well as brilliant figures lost to obscurity but newly illuminated here.

For the power of her striking language and the sharpness of her piercing observations, Jamison has been compared to such iconic writers as Joan Didion and Susan Sontag. Yet her utterly singular voice also offers something new. With enormous empathy and wisdom, Jamison has given us nothing less than the story of addiction and recovery in America writ large, a definitive and revelatory account that will resonate for years to come.

Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's by John Elder Robison

3.92/5

Ever since he was small, John Robison had longed to connect with other people, but by the time he was a teenager, his odd habits—an inclination to blurt out non sequiturs, avoid eye contact, dismantle radios, and dig five-foot holes (and stick his younger brother in them)—had earned him the label “social deviant.” No guidance came from his mother, who conversed with light fixtures, or his father, who spent evenings pickling himself in sherry. It was no wonder he gravitated to machines, which could, at least, be counted on.

After fleeing his parents and dropping out of high school, his savant-like ability to visualize electronic circuits landed him a gig with KISS, for whom he created their legendary fire-breathing guitars. Later, he drifted into a “real” job, as an engineer for a major toy company. But the higher Robison rose in the company, the more he had to pretend to be “normal” and do what he simply couldn’t: communicate. It wasn’t worth the paycheck.

It was not until he was forty that an insightful therapist told him he had the form of autism called Asperger’s syndrome. That understanding transformed the way Robison saw himself—and the world.

Look Me in the Eye is the moving, darkly funny story of growing up with Asperger’s at a time when the diagnosis simply didn’t exist. A born storyteller, Robison takes you inside the head of a boy whom teachers and other adults regarded as “defective,” who could not avail himself of KISS’s endless supply of groupies, and who still has a peculiar aversion to using people’s given names (he calls his wife “Unit Two”). He also provides a fascinating reverse angle on the younger brother he left at the mercy of their nutty parents—the boy who would later change his name to Augusten Burroughs and write the bestselling memoir Running with Scissors.

Ultimately, this is the story of Robison’s journey from his world into ours, and his new life as a husband, father, and successful small business owner—repairing his beloved high-end automobiles. It’s a strange, sly, indelible account—sometimes alien, yet always deeply human.

Is It All in Your Head?: True Stories of Imaginary Illness by Suzanne O'Sullivan

4.05/5 stars

Which e-book service do you prefer that is not Kindle Amazon. I’m trying not to use Amazon for anything anymore, including for e-books. 

𝑾𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒂𝒏𝒚 𝒐𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒃𝒆 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒎𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂 𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒍𝒆 𝒓𝒆𝒕𝒓𝒐 𝒎𝒂𝒈𝒂𝒛𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒎𝒆? 𝑳𝒐𝒍

𝑰𝒕𝒔 𝒈𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒆 𝒐𝒇  𝑨𝒓𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑳𝒊𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒍𝒚 𝒂𝒔𝒘𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝒂𝒔 𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒑𝒂𝒔𝒕 𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒂𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒇𝒊𝒓𝒔𝒕 𝒈𝒂𝒔 𝒕𝒖𝒃 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒄𝒉 𝒌𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒅 𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒚 𝒂𝒎𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒏𝒔(𝒔𝒂𝒅𝒍𝒚) 𝑷𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆 𝒎𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒂𝒈𝒆 𝒎𝒆 𝒐𝒏 𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒊𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖'𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒍𝒚 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒃𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒐𝒓 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒕 :𝑫

Is this a fantastic new opportunity for self publishing authors to gain access to large audiences of readers? This story is from Good eReader, a site we recommend for news and opinion about ebooks and indie publishing.

Tap by Wattpad is a free app for short, chat-style stories. The stories unfold via chat messages, as if you’re reading someone’s text conversation. You move the story forward by simply tapping to reveal the next part. WattPad is experiencing tremendous success with this new app and over 125 million Taps recorded in the past few weeks.

One of the big reasons why Tap is so popular is primarily due to the Create feature that lets people create interactive stories in a variety of languages using a combination of text, images, and emojis. Storytellers can create custom story covers and can even help set the mood for their readers by adding images to appear behind the story’s chat bubbles. As soon as a story is created, writers can share it with others on social media, through email, and text message.

Over the course of the past few months there has been a popular movement to gravitate away from e-books and embrace addictive chat-style stories. Amazon Rapids was the first major initiative, although they do not offer any content creation for the average indie author. WattPad on the other-hand firmly embraces community based content creation. Some of the most successful Tap stories include;

Drunk & Hangry with Chrissy Teigen – a series of texts from Chrissy to her husband John Legend, begging him to make her something to eat.

Buried Alive – A man is kidnapped and buried alive. He texts his wife for help, only to discover something sinister.

Academy Awards – a text conversation between Meryl Streep and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who asks her to please stop being such a good actress.

Virtual Boyfriend – Allison downloads a Virtual Boyfriend app and begins chatting with him. Things get creepy when her ‘boyfriend’ turns out to be the ultimate stalker.

Barack and the Trump Train – a text conversation between Donald Trump and Barack Obama where Donald asks for a big presidential favor.