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OUT OF MY SKULL

Name: OUT OF MY SKULL
Author: James Danckert
ISBN: 978-0-674-98467-7

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF BOREDOM

by James Danckert & John D. Eastwood ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 9, 2020

Sound research and informed speculation best suited to an academic audience.

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If you can read the signs, boredom might just be your friend.

Boredom, note the authors, betrays a fundamental human need to be engaged with the world and to have agency in our actions. Taking a psychological approach to a universal condition, Danckert, a cognitive neuroscientist, and Eastwood, a clinical psychologist, seek to unify a fragmented area of inquiry and provide a framework for further study. The authors loosely define boredom as having the desire to do something but being unmoved by the options open to you in the moment. It is a subject full of both obvious and counterintuitive features (a little obvious in some of the authors’ discussions). Boredom is sending us a message, write the authors, and it’s anticipatory, a call to act. But boredom is biological, and our strategies for dealing with it are subject to paradox: “Our drive to avoid the distress of being bored can lead us to some dark places”—e.g., internet addiction and isolation. The authors claim that research suggests boredom is both a transient state and a disposition, that some of us are more prone to boredom than others, and that age is one of many factors—again, rather self-evident. While there is much of value in their presentation and the analyses of the work of other researchers, complete with a bevy of potentially useful insights, lay readers will have to hack through thickets of repetition to find it. With minor variations, Danckert and Eastwood tend to establish the same definitions and make the same points over and over. This is all clearly fascinating to the authors, who demonstrate their enthusiasm, and doubtless to colleagues involved in the subject, but one can’t escape the feeling that this entire book could have been distilled quite effectively into 50 pages.

Sound research and informed speculation best suited to an academic audience. (6 photos; 2 illustrations)

Pub Date: June 9, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-674-98467-7

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Harvard Univ.

Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020

Categories:

BODY, MIND & SPIRIT | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | PSYCHOLOGY

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THINK YOU'LL BE HAPPY

MOVING THROUGH GRIEF WITH GRIT, GRACE, AND GRATITUDE

by Nicole Avant ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 17, 2023

Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.

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Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.

“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”

Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.

Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023

ISBN: 9780063304413

Page Count: 288

Publisher: HarperOne

Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023

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I MUST BE DREAMING

by Roz Chast ; illustrated by Roz Chast ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 24, 2023

A sharp compendium of dreamy visions that could only have come from the iconic cartoonist’s sleeping mind.

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The renowned cartoonist taps into Freud, Jung, and Kabbalah to discuss what happens when the head hits the pillow.

Chast, famed New Yorker cartoonist and winner of the inaugural Kirkus Prize for Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? makes it clear that while your own dreams may be inherently interesting, listening to other’ dreams is markedly not. Thankfully, the author’s thumbnail depictions of dreams that span a cross section of her bedside dream journal bring just enough humor and wit for readers to be charmed instantly. “This book is dedicated to the Dream District of our brains,” writes the author, “that weird and uncolonized area where anything can happen, from the sublime to the mundane to the ridiculous to the off-the-charts bats.” Familiar classics—“alone at a party,” “teeth falling out”—sit alongside the bizarre and hilarious—e.g., “too many birds not enough cages.” Even actor Wallace Shawn, son of former New Yorker editor William Shawn, makes an appearance: “He and I were walking down Main Street in a town in Connecticut and I needed to point something out to him: ‘Look, It’s a Broccoli Patch!’ ” From “Recurring Dreams” to “Nightmares” to “Dream Fragments or Ones That Got Away,” Chast explores beyond the first blush of the strange and personal in dreams. She writes, “here’s what’s interesting: dreams come out of my brain…as I sleep, I am creating them…so why, as they unfold, am I always so surprised?!??” The author reaches for answers beyond Freud and Jung to a wider range of insights from Kabbalah, Aristotle, neuroscientists, molecular biologists, and more. Illustrations and visual storytelling weave together a broad range of content on dreams that offers insight while never feeling burdensome or overly analytical. Easy on the eyes and witty, this book will have readers reaching for their own dream journals.

A sharp compendium of dreamy visions that could only have come from the iconic cartoonist’s sleeping mind.