Pat Gaudette

‘Book Reviews’

Looks: Why They Matter More Than You Ever Imagined is written by Gordon L. Patzer, Ph.D., founding director of the Appearance Research Institute and a tenured professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago. Dr. Patzer has investigated “lookism” and the physical attractiveness phenomenon for more than thirty years. I was fascinated by his research and appalled by many of the stories including one about a woman chosen to be on, and then rejected by, the Extreme Makeover reality show.

From the publisher:

It’s true that beauty pays. Better grades, success in romance, higher salaries -these are just a few of the well-documented advantages bestowed upon the good looking at the expense of everyone else. But the beauty fixation gets even uglier than that. A constant flood of images celebrating the thin and glamorous has triggered deadly eating disorders, dangerous cosmetic surgeries, and unhealthy obsessions that are affecting women and men of all ages-even young children.

Dr. Gordon L. Patzer has spent more than thirty years studying this phenomenon. Here he uses original research to provide a unique examination of physical attractiveness and how it has changed the lives of both men and women.Looks is the first book to explore how attractiveness affects every aspect of our lives-from whom we choose to befriend and hire to the candidates we choose to elect and whom we presume to be innocent or guilty in a court of law. Unflinching and revealing, Looks uncovers the sometimes ugly truth about beauty and its profound effects on all of us.

Tantra For Erotic Empowerment: the key to enriching your sexual life by authors Mark A. Michaels and Patricia Johnson, a married couple, is essentially a workbook about the various aspects of Tantra. Each chapter discusses an aspect of Tantra, has an exercise, a message, and then questions to answer in a spiritual journal.

From the back cover: Authentic and engaging, this illustrated guide is unique in its holistic approach–showing how Tantric practice not only greatly enhances your sexual pleasure, but also leads to richer and more satisfying experiences in every area of your life. Relevant for anyone, regardless of relationship status or sexual orientation, Tantra for Exotic Empowerment features original techniques, self-exploration exercises, and provocative selections from classical and contemporary Hindu Tantric literature to help you discover the source of your own erotic power. Read more »

The Essence of Tantric Sexuality explains the Hindu Tantric tradition, its philosophy, and its principles. Authors Mark A. Michaels and Patricia Johnson, a married couple, have been teaching Tantra and Kriya Yoga together since 1999 and are senior students of Dr. John Mumford (Swami Anandakapila Saraswati), who has named them his lineage holders for the Americas and Europe. Michaels is a graduate of NYU School of Law, holds master’s degrees from NYU and Yale, and is a member of the New York State Bar. Johnson is a professional operatic soprano.

I had a difficult time getting into this book because it was too focused on theory and philosophy while I would have preferred more “how to” and less “why.” This is definitely a good book to add to the library of someone who needs to know the “why.” Read more »

History Lesson For Girls: A Novel by Aurelie Sheehan, is the story of two teen girls growing up in the 1970s. The teen years are difficult enough but add in dysfunctional family issues and sometimes terrible tragedy is the result.

From the back cover: In 1975, Alison Glass, age thirteen, moves to Connecticut with her bohemian parents and her horse, Jazz. Shy, observant, and in a back brace for scoliosis, Alison finds strength in an unlikely friendship with Kate Hamilton, the charismatic but troubled daughter of an egomaniacal New Age guru and his substance-loving wife. As the sincere but misguided “Women of History” plan the town’s bicentennial (complete with red, white, and blue Porta-Potties), the girls escape into the world of their horses, seeking refuge from the chaos in their lives.

I enjoyed this book even if it left me feeling more sadness for the characters than I would have liked.

The Girl’s Guide to Absolutely Everything by Melissa Kirsch is a hefty book, 478 pages in size, written for women in their 20s and 30s. It could certainly be a third less pages but then the nicely done typography and graphics would have to go and that would pretty much destroy the easy reading of this book.

The Girl’s Guide to Absolutely Everything is crammed with useful information on every topic a woman would need and/or want to know from health to work to fashion to manners to friends to love and more. Mixed in with the easy to read information and tips are websites, recommended books, authorities on various topics. Read more »

The Oldest We’ve Ever Been: Seven True Stories of Midlife Transitions contains essays gathered by Maud Lavin, from people of varied backgrounds, both men and women, who have made it to midlife. The writers, Allan deSouza, Calvin Forbes, William Davies King, Kim Larsen, Ellen McMahon, Peggy Shinner, and Maud Lavin together with Locke Bowman, not only talk about that part of their life but also things that have affected them as they’ve grown to middle age.

Excerpt from “Nothing Gained” by William Davies King:

I’ve read accounts of those people who one day just give away everything, purging themselves of material association. They report feeling liberated. It’s a Buddhist or Gnostic or Henry David Thoreau experience. I suppose the moment of my divorce might have been a good moment for me to do something like that. As I started into the garage, I did not like what I saw. During the twenty years in which I had lived with my wife, two decades of steady accumulation, I had found ways of inserting my collections carefully into the assemblage of our life together, mostly concealed. Removed to the garage, however, arranged in heaps, not carelessly but also not artfully, the things could be seen as symptoms of hoarding, which is a diagnosis, not a hobby. On that hot summer day, I took a moment to ask myself if my collecting could be a disease. Or could it be an art? I could not say, so I laboriously conveyed the cumbersummation of me to a new residence. It seems I had to keep the array in order to catch myself somewhere on the web.

Multiplicity: The New Science of Personality, Identity, and the Self is a fascinating book by author Rita Carter, an award-winning science and medical writer. Carter lives in Oxfordshire, England, and is the author of several books about the brain, including Mapping the Mind and Exploring Consciousness.

Multiplicity has several exercises such as the one in Chapter 6: How Multiple Are You? that is designed to find out the degree of separation between your personalities, not the number you have or what they are like, as another exercise later in the book will help discover this information. Read more »

Endings: A Novel is a first novel by Barbara Bergin, an orthopedic surgeon living in Austin, Texas with her husband and two children. Bergin and her husband own a ranch and she competes and has ranked nationally in the reined cow horse performance sport.

Bergin writes about what she knows, orthopedic surgery, ranching, and competition horse events. While she might go into too much detail at times, particularly during surgery, it doesn’t detract from the writing or the storyline. I enjoyed reading this book… I think.

I was expecting a different ending. I read the ending the first time and went back to read it again because I wasn’t sure I’d understood what had happened to all the characters. After a second reading I decided to read the last chapter a third time just to make sure I’d interpreted the chain of events correctly. I’m not so sure that the ending was the right one for the story but it’s the ending the author chose and it’s her story to end in any manner she chooses.