Terri Schlichenmeyer’s Book Picks: Books About Health
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm Sez
Every little sniffle. $28 – $30
Various page counts
It feels like you’ve caught them all, no matter how hard you try to avoid getting sick. You wash your hands, you cover your mouth and nose and wash some more. So now try these new health-related books and see if they don’t help.
They say that getting your steps in helps you live longer, and reading “Life After Cars” by Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon and Aaron Naparstek (Thesis, $28) will make you eager to do so, rather than drive. In this book, you’ll see what more than a century’s worth of automobile use has done to the air you breathe, the environment, wildlife, human health and safety, the economy, and to lost productivity. It’s a book that calls for change or, at the very least, more mindfulness.
The bad news is that it’ll be allergy season soon.
The good news is that “All About Allergies” by Zachary Rubin, MD (Plume, $30) exists to help you make sense of them. You’re sneezing, your eyes are scratchy, your nose can’t stop running, and breathing normally ain’t happening. Rubin offers cutting-edge information about various allergies including food allergies, asthma, hay fever, and other reasons you feel a mess during certain seasons. (Out 2/24).
Of course, you can be miserable alone but why, when you can find comfort in telling people how rotten you feel? And that’s okay, as you’ll see in “Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing” by Leslie John (Riverhead Books, $30), a book that shows how talking about your feelings, your health, and your secrets might actually be beneficial.
Being perceived as more vulnerable, says John, can help bring you closer to family, friends, and co-workers. It opens up empathy for you and others, and she says that talking about feelings and hard things can strengthen the relationships you have. Yes, there’s such a thing as TMI and here, you’ll learn where the line is and how you can share without crossing it. (Out 2/24).
And finally, you know you’re not the only one who’s ever been sick. Illness, in fact, is as old as mankind and in “The Great Shadow: A History of How Sickness Shapes What We Do, Think, Believe, and Buy” by Susan Wise Bauer (St. Martin’s Press, $30) shows readers how illness and disease have shaped human history.
What was illness like a few thousand years ago? Or even a couple hundred years ago? Bauer says that in a growing anti-science, anti-vaxx culture, we need to add the experience of illness to the conversation in order to understand how we got to this point and where we might be going. It’s a fascinating look at being sick that takes readers back through history, and forward.
And if these books don’t quite fit what you’re looking for and they don’t make you feel better, then head for your local bookstore or library and ask for assistance. The staff there has access to books about pretty much everything that ails you, so you can read up on it.
And get well.
