February Book Roundup
Recovery is the name of the game in February, as millions of Americans are sick with or healing from COVID-19, and the entire country is recovering from a chaotic four years. As everybody takes a collective deep breath, there's never been a better time to educate yourself about making society more compassionate, one person at a time.
This month, Shape editors are reading about keeping an open mind, living with chronic illness, dismantling and healing from white supremacy, and expressing sexuality in unconventional ways.
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant (2/2/21, Viking)
If there's one thing every American can agree on, it's that these are divisive times where people on both sides of the aisle feel passionately that they are right. As a result, it's more important than ever to keep an open mind and understand when to take another look at the facts and reevaluate your assumptions.
Adam Grant, Ph.D., teaches organizational psychology at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He's written three other books, including the #1 NYT Bestseller Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World.
Think Again is organized into three sections. The first section shows readers how to keep an open mind and avoiding getting stuck in the past with outdated (or factually wrong) ideas; the second section is about how you can persuade other people to reconsider the ideas they take for granted and reexamine the ideologies that shape their worldviews (citing examples like a Black musician who de-radicalizes white supremacists). The third section is built around building communities of lifelong learners, and the benefits of living in a world where everyone approaches ideas with a healthy degree of skepticism and nuance.
Using case studies and real-life examples, Grant makes a strong case for becoming a more flexible thinker. The first step? Identifying as an open-minded person who's always interested in new ideas. "If you can master the art of rethinking," he writes, "I believe you'll be better positioned for success at work and happiness in life." The three parts of the book — induvidual rethinking, interpersonal rethinking, and collective rethinking — work together to help you learn how to master the art of rethinking, and train yourself to think like a scientist. (Plus, if you want the TL;DR, Grant sums up his top 30 takeaways in the last pages.)
What Doesn't Kill You: A Life with Chronic Illness by Tessa Miller (2/2/21, Henry Holt)
Almost a decade ago, Tessa Miller was a bright-eyed journalist at Wired magazine on her way home to Illinois for the holidays, when she fell ill with debilitating stomach cramps and a mouth full of painful sores. In Illinois, she was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. She later tested positive for Clostridium difficile (C. diff), a life-threatening bacterium that causes inflammation of the colon.
In her first book, Miller details the many ways her life changed after her diagnosis, from the hours spent in doctors' offices to the life-saving fecal transplants from her nine-year-old niece. Throughout her decade of living with chronic illness, Miller received a crash course in the in's and out's of American healthcare and navigating relationships and careers with heightened stakes. She weaves her personal story with expert interviews and service journalism — there are sections on how to find a good doctor, how to talk about chronic illness with your partner, and how to navigate family relationships when you start to rely on your family for care.
Three out of five Americans live with a form of chronic illness right now, according to the CDC, and in a post-COVID world, that number is expected to rise significantly, per STAT News, as "long-haul" COVID patients report chronic fatigue syndrome or myalgic encephalomyelitis. (Dr. Anthony Fauci said the long-term effects are "something we really need to seriously look at.")
A no-nonsense guide to living with chronic illness, Miller describes What Doesn't Kill You as "what I wish I knew before I got sick forever," covering the the nitty-gritty of the healthcare system and more abstract lessons about family and self-love.
Do Better: Spiritual Activism for Fighting and Healing from White Supremacy by Rachel Ricketts (2/2/21, Atria Books)
You might know Rachel Ricketts from Instagram, where her account devoted to racial justice and spiritual activism has over 230,000 followers. She counts Emma Watson, Mandy Moore, and Elizabeth Gilbert as fans, and has administered anti-racism training at brands such as Google, WeWork, and Lululemon.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CKRW9HGATAK/
Her first book Do Better is a spiritually-inflected guidebook to antiracism, focused on helping white women understand how they've been perpetuating white supremacy, while also giving Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) the tools to heal from the damage inflicted by it. Ricketts builds the book around mindfulness exercises so readers can understand their own behaviors (for example: reflecting on a time you inadvertantly caused harm to BIPOC. What was the intention behind your action? What was the actual impact?) There are journaling prompts, reminders to set on your phone (similar to the astrology app Pattern), guided meditations, and breathwork.
A necessary, compassionate handbook on the ways you can, uh, do better and learn about yourself in the process.
Kink edited by R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell (2/9/21, Simon & Schuster)
A woman asks her reluctant husband to take her to a sex dungeon. A gay man has an unexpected, passionate encounter on his birthday. A woman in her early twenties wants to be understood, but enters a relationship with a man who wants to hurt her. An older white couple pays a young Black man to be the third person in their relationship. The stories in Kink are miles away from your average rom-com, and for the faint of heart, they might be difficult to read. That's exactly why the literary community is talking about them.
Edited by R.O. Kwon (author of The Incendiaries) and Garth Greenwell (author of Cleanness), this collection of literary erotica aims to reframe what kink means. Kink is often seen as "weird" or turned into a joke in pop culture, and the editors of the collection want to change that. "By taking kink seriously," they write, "these stories recognize how the questions raised in intimate, kinky encounters—questions of power, agency, identity—can help us to interrogate and begin to re-script the larger cultural narratives that surround us."
Featuring work by award-winning authors, like Alexander Chee, Melissa Febos, Carmen Maria Machado, Brandon Taylor, and Chris Kraus, this collection is a must-read for fans of romance novels who want to read outside their comfort zones.
