May Books

I read two books from my reading list this month.

First up was Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel.  

I really enjoyed this book. We start in the early 1900s with a young man moving to Canada from England, then fast forward to an author who lives on a lunar colony, and doing a book tour on Earth, then citizens of a different moon colony.  It sort of reminded me of Cloud Cuckoo Land.  I don't like giving too much away about these types of books because there are elements of time travel.  Usually time travel hurts my brain but this time I didn't seem confused by it and I just went with it.  I read this author's previous novel, Station Eleven, pre-pandemic, and it was about a pandemic. This book also had a pandemic feature to it and I feel like we have all realized that this will be part of our lives from now on.  A worthwhile book to pick up.

Next was Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb.

 

This is a non-fiction book. Lori is a therapist who lets us into her some of her sessions with her patients, as well as sessions with her own therapist.  

I have never gone to therapy and I have recently wondered if I should be, especially given the various "Better Help" ads on podcasts where it seems everyone should be going to therapy. I'm sure there are things I should 'work through' but to what end? I marked a few passages in the book that I felt could be explored more, and I made note of them to go back to later.  One of the myths that this book dispelled for me was that therapy is intended to have an end.  You should not think that you'll need therapy forever, rather you work through the thing you want to work through, and then come up with a termination date. So that makes me feel a bit more open to it because you don't need to think of it as something you need to do forever, but go, get the tools you need, and then apply them to your life without attending a session each week.