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Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020
| Contributor Information
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Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020 | Contributor Information
Although 2020 is (finally!) coming to an end, challenging months still lie ahead. Winter is kicking into gear, work stresses are mounting, there are renewed calls to limit socializing and travel, and you've most likely already torn through your Netflix queue. Thankfully, Medscape's annual holiday book recommendations are here to offer you a bit of hard-earned respite. Each of the books in this year's list was chosen because it speaks to the current moment while also providing unexpectedly comforting and inspirational ways to escape from it.
Image courtesy of Countryman Press
Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020 | Contributor Information
For those of us now spending more time at home than we'd ever envisioned possible, one of the most difficult questions is how to break up the tedium of the day. For Andrew Cotter, a Scottish sports broadcaster who suddenly found himself with no sports to broadcast, the answers were wagging their tails right by his feet: his Labrador retrievers, Olive and Mabel. This heartfelt memoir relates how Cotter used his downtime to begin reporting on "competitions" between Olive and Mabel in a series of viral videos, turning them into overnight canine celebrities and keeping himself a bit saner in the process.
Image courtesy of Milkweed Editions
Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020 | Contributor Information
One unforeseen upside to the loss of indoor spaces during this moment of social distancing has been the enthusiasm with which people have sought out nature as a salving replacement. This illustrated collection of nature essays is a perfect book to accompany you on long hikes, bike rides through the neighborhood, or short sojourns in your own backyard. Author Aimee Nezhukumatathil is hyperattuned to the ways even the most basic flora and fauna can be a source of marvel.
Image courtesy of Liveright
Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020 | Contributor Information
The 91-year-old Pulitzer Prize–winning naturalist Edward O. Wilson has spent a career blissfully following his lifelong intellectual passion for ants, the rewards of which he engagingly details in his latest book. Although his six-legged subjects are tiny, his observations are vast, unfolding over various continents and including 15,000 ant species. In a year when experts were greeted with alarming skepticism, Wilson offers a timely testament to the joys of scientific devotion.
Image courtesy of Little, Brown Spark
Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020 | Contributor Information
The unique pressures of COVID-19 have led to an uptick in mental health issues and weight gain among the general public. This book from Dr Uma Naidoo — psychiatrist, chef, and director of nutritional and lifestyle psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital — offers clinicians a valuable guide for treating both, with scientifically grounded recommendations on how to combat such conditions as depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders by reconsidering what and how we eat.
Image courtesy of Thomas Dunne Books
Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020 | Contributor Information
If you looked on with envy as your social media feeds filled with accounts of your now-housebound friends making their own bread during quarantine, this is the book that will let you finally join in with the latest culinary trend. In a series of easy recipes, the authors (one of whom happens to be a physician) break down how to create satisfying loaves, flatbreads, pastries, pretzels, and pizzas with just 5 minutes of active prep time.
Image courtesy of Knopf
Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020 | Contributor Information
The restaurant world has taken a tremendous hit this year. Immersive journalist Bill Buford's account of his time training with the expert chefs and bakers of Lyon, France, will have you very nearly tasting the world-class meals he describes and longing to return to indoor dining when the moment is possible again.
Image courtesy of Ecco
Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020 | Contributor Information
José Andrés offers an inspiring account of how he and other chefs sought to feed the residents of a hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. Andrés does not flinch on detailing the obstacles that continually imperil the team's humanitarian efforts, but his descriptions of eventually creating a system capable of dishing out 100,000 meals a day gives new meaning to the phrase "food is life." At a time when food scarcity and hunger issues abound, his account could not be more relevant.
Images courtesy of Penguin Press
Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020 | Contributor Information
We could all use a stiff drink. And even if you don't partake, Wright Thompson's story of America's most famous bourbon — Pappy Van Winkle, which sells for thousands of dollars a bottle — and the Kentucky family behind its unlikely success will quench your thirst for distraction and entertainment.
Readers with more of a do-it-yourself spirit are encouraged to seek out the recently published compilation of cocktails from the famed speakeasy Apotheke. It provides would-be mixologists with a detailed guide to pulling off an array of delicious libations that incorporate plant-based ingredients.
Image courtesy of Vintage
Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020 | Contributor Information
With a caustic wit that wrings humor from whatever it can, Samantha Irby's latest essay collection was greeted with some relief when it arrived in April 2020. Here was a book seemingly designed for our moment, when the need to laugh through the pain was perhaps never so great. In its review, the New York Times said that Irby "might be our great bard of quarantine." Irby's acerbic writing may very well make for the perfect companion for the long winter months ahead.
Image courtesy of Simon & Schuster
Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020 | Contributor Information
Jerry Seinfeld lets you in on his five decades in comedy by sharing, chronologically, the bits he meticulously crafted during that span, which saw him evolve from a fledgling stand-up comedian to supernova sitcom star. That Seinfeld has never been a topical comic works to the book's advantage. This year's events are without precedent, but jokes about lost socks, airline food, and absurd TV commercials prove evergreen.
Image courtesy of Daniel Defoe
Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020 | Contributor Information
As Mark Twain is reputed to have said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes." That will be readily apparent to those who pick up Daniel Defoe's newly reissued 1722 account of the bubonic plague that beset 15th-century London. As counterintuitive as it sounds, readers may take great consolation in contemplating the similarities between Defoe's classic and our own ongoing pandemic, and realizing that societies can and will make their way through a medical calamity.
Image courtesy of Grand Central Publishing
Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020 | Contributor Information
Although some may understandably shy away from dystopian or apocalypse fiction right now, especially when it deals with the spread of a deadly disease, Kira Jane Buxton's novel offers a decidedly unique take. She depicts a world in which nearly all humans are dead. The book is instead imaginatively told from the perspective of various house pets who survived. Nowhere near as silly as it sounds, Hollow Kingdom is surprisingly clever and comforting, and perfect for readers still drawn to postapocalyptic literature.
Image courtesy of Riverhead Books
Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020 | Contributor Information
Michelle Harper's moving debut memoir cuts through the often chaotic life of the emergency department to depict with stunning clarity the institutional ecosystem of tragedy and compassion that resides beneath it. Harper depicts the patients she has encountered during years working in Philadelphia hospitals with the same empathy and precision with which she describes her own life, from a turbulent childhood to the ever-present obstacles of being a female, African American physician. This book is perfectly timed to honor both patients who find themselves in crisis and their devoted caregivers.
Image courtesy of Riverhead Books
Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020 | Contributor Information
The simple gesture of breathing may not be so simple after all. Author James Nestor undercovers how we've strayed from the path of normal breathing, and at what cost to our health. His highly readable plea to let our lungs help us relax may be particularly practical for overburdened healthcare workers.
Image courtesy of Harper Wave
Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020 | Contributor Information
Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy (and President-elect Joe Biden's nominee for Surgeon General when he is in office) could not have predicted just how well-suited his book would be to the times when it was released earlier this year. Murthy makes a compelling argument that loneliness is an emerging public health crisis, which has surely been accelerated by living in our separate COVID-19 bubbles. Outlining strategies for combating loneliness, Murthy's book is both a guidance for navigating the current moment and a reminder of the opportunities for reconnection that await us after this pandemic.
Image courtesy of Basic Books
Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020 | Contributor Information
Journalist Wendy Moore provides a compelling history of London's Endell Street Military Hospital, which was set apart from most institutions of the early 20th century by being almost entirely staffed with women. In profiling the pioneering suffragette doctors and nurses who treated injured troops returning from the frontlines of World War I and the initial outbreak of the Spanish flu, Moore illuminates a moment when an overstressed healthcare system put aside its long-held biases to ensure its own preservation.
Image courtesy of Basic Books
Want to Get Away? Take a Mental Holiday With These Recent Books
John Watson | December 9, 2020 | Contributor Information
And if there's nothing here that piques your interest, you can trust Pulitzer Prize–winning book critic Michiko Kakutani to steer you in the right direction. This anthology of Kakutani's essays dives deep on some of the books that have meant the most to her. Kakutani's writing is a passionate argument for the pleasures of reading, as both a temporary break from our lives and the art form that allows us to most connect with our fellow human beings during a time when that's more essential than ever.
Yes, There Is a Role for Poetry and Fiction in a Pandemic
'They fancy themselves free. And no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences,' wrote Camus in 'The Plague', which Abraham Verghese sees as relevant to our collective experience of COVID-19.Medscape News and Perspectives, April 2020
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John Watson
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Disclosure: John Watson has disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
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