Guest Post by M.G. Noles

Sunita Puri’s memoir That Good Night: Life And Medicine in the Eleventh Hour is poetic, beautiful, and insightful.

The book traces Dr. Puri’s journey into the world of palliative care. Offering a collection of wisdom stories taken from her work with the dying, she gives us a view of death as a moment of dignity and grace.

Dr. Puri is the doctor whom hospitals call when a patient enters the terminal phase of illness. Some patients are antagonistic toward her presence and despise her, thinking she is encouraging them to give up. Yet, she is actually there to give dying patients and their loved ones the strength to know when it is time to let go. It is a fine distinction to make, but she does it beautifully.

In this memoir, Puri shares spiritual and philosophical insights into the dying process. She demystifies and unfolds the process of death as a journey we must all make. In so doing, she teaches lessons about the ways to embrace life until we must release it. And in that release can come great peace.

As she writes, “For we will each age and die, as my father told me years ago. We will lose the people we love. No matter our ethnicity, place of residence, income, religion, or skin color, our human lives are united by brevity and finitude, and the certainty of loss. Just as we strive for dignity and purpose throughout our lives, well before the light fades, we can bring this same dignity and purpose to our deaths, as we each journey into our own good night.”

As we all struggle to make sense of death and dying during this long and arduous road of the pandemic, Dr. Sunita Puri’s memoir shines a light in the darkness.

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That Good Night: Life And Medicine in the Eleventh Hour by Sunita Puri. Penguin Random House, March 2020.

Reviewer bio: M.G. Noles is a freelance writer. whose work appears on Medium’s The Pine Wood Review (https://medium.com/@writinglife). She also reviews books for GoodReads.com (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/118714169-mg-noles).

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Guest Post by Eron Henry

Information and news are increasingly weaponized. While not new, the weaponization of news and information has been set on steroids by the rise of social media. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and their counterparts in other countries, such as in Russia and China, have become the main source of news for citizens.

It is in and through social media that propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation thrive. The first, propaganda, is a way to tell one’s own story and can be used for good or ill. Advertising, for instance, is a form of propaganda. The second, misinformation, is false and faulty news that need not be deliberately false but can be harmful. The last, disinformation, is the deliberate spreading of false and misleading news and information with the intention to create confusion and cause harm.

Because social media is now the most widely used source of news and information, persons become easily misled and fooled because social media is a fertile breeding ground for misinformation and disinformation.

In Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It, Richard Stengel tells how false and faulty news is now normalized. The former editor of Time Magazine, Stengel was recruited by the State Department during the Obama Administration to counter misinformation and disinformation, especially those put out by Russia and ISIS, the terrorist group.

It was a Byzantine experience. An admixture of outdated technology, ill-prepared and ill-informed government officials and workers, turf wars, career ambitions, ego, and more, got in the way of countering the coordinated and concerted attack on truth and facts, both within the United States and globally.

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Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It by Richard Stengel. Atlantic Books, October 2019

Reviewer bio: Eron Henry is a communications consultant. He blogs at https://oletimesumting.com.

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Guest Post by Brian Phillip Whalen

I’m rereading Peter Orner’s collection of essays, Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live. (What a title! I’m also rereading Jonathan Franzen’s How to Be Alone.) Orner’s essays are ideal stay-at-home reading—easy-to-digest, elegantly composed—and his sparing prose is second-to-none at conveying depths of feeling in few words. The result is a perfectly-paced, heartfelt, sad, funny, and breathtaking book.

Orner seamlessly blends craft analysis (examinations of Chekhov, Welty, Malamud, Hurston, Wideman, Kafka, and scores of other writers) with memoir (stories of fathers, children, love, loss, joys, regrets, the pleasures—and solitude—of reading). Each essay is inspired by an act of reading, prompting explorations into the ways in which the books we read inform, intersect with, and sometimes mirror our lives:

It gets me every time. The way a story about characters, nonexistent people, pushes us back to our own, the people who do exist, who do walk the earth.”

It’s Orner’s voice, however, that draws me in. Though I’ve never met him, the feeling I get reading his essays is akin to sharing stories of hurt and redemption with an old friend over a cold beer, sitting on lawn chairs in the yard at sunset.

We have all done things we wish we could erase, forever, from the record. No matter how we airbrush our histories, the hurt we have caused will, always, reach out for us—like for me today—out of the December rain.”

Orner’s objective was to write about literature that “rattles the soul,” and in so doing, he amassed a collection of essays that continues to rattle mine. This is my go-to recommendation for readers wanting bite-size, ruminative literary essays—and these days, for anyone looking, as the title beckons, for some company in isolation.

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Am I Alone Here? by Peter Orner. Catapult, 2016.

Reviewer bio: Brian Phillip Whalen’s debut collection of fiction, Semiotic Love [Stories], will be released in 2021 (Awst Press). Find him here: www.brianphillipwhalen.com.

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Guest Post by Joshua Lindenbaum

When one thinks of courage, they usually think about someone going into a burning building to save a person’s life; however, Dr. Brené Brown provides a unique, much-needed lens in which to view bravery in a broader sense in her book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. The writing is a beautiful concert of personal anecdotes alongside empirically-based research. Furthermore, Dr. Brown reveals not-so-flattering details about herself, and therefore lives the practices in which she details in her book. It is a lovely trident of logos, pathos, and ethos designed to pierce into the stubbornness of convention and tradition, especially amongst men who have been taught to not show emotions.

This incredibly organized text uproots widely-held beliefs, such as “vulnerability is weakness.” On the contrary, in her previous book The Gifts of Imperfection, Dr. Brown declares, “vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.” She defines ” . . .  vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure,” which comprises everyday life, especially during this pandemic. That’s what I think many readers will appreciate about her work: Brown manages to quantify concepts like vulnerability, shame, and even joy. She includes accounts from her own qualitative research alongside a panoply of reliable sources. In addition to providing background, there are also practical steps in, for example, fostering trust. For instance, there’s a section on “the marble jar,” a metaphor used to help us in assessing whether an individual is trustworthy or not based upon specific criteria. This approach allows one the ability to express themselves while also creating boundaries against those that don’t deserve our trust.

I know what you’re thinking: this sounds like a corny self-help book. You are wrong. It is a humanity book. Step into its pages!

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Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown. Avery/Penguin Random House, April 2015.

Reviewer bio: Joshua Lindenbaum’s poetry has appeared in Drunk Monkeys, Breadcrumbs, Yes Poetry, The Bangalore Review, Five:2:One, 3Elements Review, Typishly, and elsewhere.

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Guest Post by Jaimie Hanson

Creativity. Merriam-Webster defines creativity as “the ability to create.” In Called to Be Creative, author Mary Potter Kenyon not only writes about creativity, what it is, what it means, how it affects and benefits us mentally, physically, emotionally, and even spiritually, but she does so by graciously giving the reader a glimpse into her own life throughout the book. This book will grant the permission we often feel we need to be a little (or a lot) creative, and you will be inspired and encouraged, for yourself, and I dare say for others in your circle, as you read through the pages. The chapters, each with their own creative focus, are supported by research and resources throughout the book and the easy-to-do exercises at the end of each chapter allow for the very guidance and reference we seek. Write in the margins, underline the ah-ha moments that speak to you, and get your creative self active.

Called to Be Creative, whether read individually or with a group (yes, even a Zoom group), belongs in everyone’s hands. It’s a book club book, a girlfriends group book, a book for those who are single or married, it’s even a book for guys (and dare I say it would be a fun challenge to create a space and opportunity for that to happen!). It’s perfect for families, for creative minds and those who don’t see themselves that way. A teaching tool for young moms, homeschool moms, and moms looking for a way to cure summer boredom. Add this book to your reading list, discover or uncover the creativity within you, embrace the creative opportunities, and be ready to be amazed as you laugh and smile, enjoying the creative moments within your everyday journey.

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Called to be Creative by Mary Potter Kenyon. Workman, August 2020.

Reviewer bio: Jaimie Hanson lives in the Midwest with her family. She enjoys writing and photography. You can find her sharing both on her blog at jelizabethhanson.com.