Author: Jennifer Graham

The Listening Path, by Julia Cameron (St. Martin’s Essentials, 190 pages)

Julia Cameron is a national treasure. Part creativity coach, part spiritual guide, total inspiration, she’s been a muse to a generation of artists since the publication of The Artist’s Way in 1992.

Cameron deals in blockage: writer’s block, painter’s block, potter’s block, dancer’s block, the thwarting of any creative impulse. She promised in The Artist’s Way that she knew the tools to unblock, to help others overcome resistance born of insecurity, failure and criticism so they can summon their art into existence. She calls it creative recovery.

Elizabeth Gilbert has said Eat, Pray, Love would not have been written without Cameron’s influence. Writers Tim Ferris and Patricia Cornwall and musicians Alicia Keys and Pete Townshend are among celebrities who swear by her exercises, which include freestyle journaling upon awakening (called “morning pages”) and a weekly solo outing she calls an “artist’s date.”

The Artist’s Way is a simple, sensible and comforting guide to breaking through the resistance, both external and internal, that can prevent people from doing their life’s work. If you haven’t already read it, order it right now. It’s the book you didn’t know you needed.

Unfortunately, while many of us need one The Artist’s Way, we don’t need 12. But a dozen other Artist’s Way titles have made their way into the world because of the success of the first. There is an Artist’s Way for parents, for midlife, for work. There is The Complete Artist’s Way, The Artist’s Way Workbook, The Artist’s Way Every Day, among other titles. And now there’s a new title in the series called The Listening Path, the Creative Art of Attention. Though the title is mercifully different, most of the content is not. And what’s new is tragically boring.

Cameron begins by rehashing the steps to creative recovery that she has been teaching for a quarter century. It’s unclear who the audience is. Presumably most people eager to read The Listening Path are already Cameron devotees, so she’s preaching to the choir here. Having convinced us (again) of the value of morning pages, artist’s dates and solo walks, she then addresses the importance of deep and thoughtful listening.

Again, this is not really new ground. The Artist’s Way also talks about attention and listening. Cameron sees artists as conduits; writers do not so much write as they take dictation, she believes. She says in The Artist’s Way, “I learned to just show up at the page and write down what I heard. Writing became more like eavesdropping and less like inventing a nuclear bomb.”

So in encouraging people to undertake a six-week course of active listening (to the environment, to others, to our higher selves, to “beyond the veil,” to our heroes, and to silence), she is elaborating on a well-worn theme. Ponderously.

I wanted to be interested, to be rapt, as she wanders through her days in New Mexico with her lizard-eating dog, Lily, listening to thunderstorms and friends and small, still voices within. But other than occasional horror about the lizard-eating, which Cameron never tries to prevent (the dog only eats tasty gray lizards, not striped ones, so there’s that), the book meanders at the gait of a 71-year-old with nowhere to be and 180 pages to fill. The plot, such as it is, involves Cameron lunching often with friends and discussing listening over steak tacos or sushi. There’s also a storyline, ultimately resolved, about how Cameron can’t get her lizard-eating dog to stop barking. (Cameron’s neighbors are very tired of listening to that.) And there’s way too much dialogue of Cameron speaking soothingly to Lily. (“It’s just hail, sweetheart.”)

Like other books in the series, the margins are filled with pertinent quotes (“There’s a lot of difference between listening and hearing” — G.K. Chesterton) and suggested exercises, some interesting, some tedious, some simply strange. (“I invite you to try woo-woo,” begins one.) Like the other books, each chapter ends with a series of questions, always asking if we’ve done our morning pages, artist dates and walks. All the accountability gets exhausting.

To be fair, I suffer from chronic tinnitus, so exhortations to listen more deeply to the shrill whine of crickets in my head cause me psychic pain. For those of you capable of experiencing quiet, Cameron’s latest may well be a welcome footnote to her earlier work, a gentle reminder of truths you already know. But for most people, The Listening Path is a duller version of Cameron’s earlier, compelling work. She’s written 40 books, plus plays, poetry and a feature-film script. Read Cameron, by all means, but put this one at the bottom of your list. C

BOOK NOTES
If you’re looking for a book by Amanda Gorman, the Harvard graduate who wowed the world with her poem at President Joe Biden’s inauguration, just wait nine months. Or you can pre-order.
The 23-year-old Gorman has two books coming out in September, which has to be breaking someone at Penguin Random House’s heart, because she could have sold a few million last week alone. The forthcoming Change Sings is a children’s book; The Hill We Climb is a poetry collection.
They’re already bestsellers on Amazon, doing better than Joe Biden’s book Promise Me, Dad (Flatiron, 304 pages) and Jill Biden’s Where the Light Enters (Flatiron again, 224 pages).
Meanwhile, reports of the publishing industry’s demise have been greatly exaggerated, according to Jim Milliot, writing recently in Publisher’s Weekly. Print book sales rose 8.2 percent in 2020, Milliott reported. That translates to nearly 751 million units (we presume that means books) sold, up from nearly 694 million the previous year.
Admittedly, part of the spike was because of parents schooling kids at home. They were buying education and reference titles and also books on games and hobbies to keep kids busy. Juvenile fiction also had a boost from the new releases from Stephenie Meyer and Suzanne Collins: Midnight Sun, which sold 1.3 million copies, and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, 1.2 million.
Adults were reading anti-racism titles and political books, to include the title that sold the most copies: Barack Obama’s A Promised Land (Crown, 768 pages). Despite its daunting length, A Promised Land sold 2.5 million print copies. In comparison, the best-selling fiction title, Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 384 pages), sold 1.1 million copies last year, even though it was released in 2018.
The worst selling genre of 2020? Bueller? Bueller? Travel books, down 40 percent from 2019.

Book Clubs

Author events

• REBECCA CARROLL Author presents Surviving the White Gaze. Virtual livestream hosted by The Music Hall in Portsmouth. Tues., Feb. 2, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $5. Call 436-2400 or visit themusichall.org.

• SUSAN CONLEY Author presents Landslide. Hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Online, via Zoom. Thurs., Feb. 11, 7 p.m. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• DIANE REHM Author presents When My Time Comes. Virtual livestream hosted by The Music Hall in Portsmouth. Tues., Feb. 23, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $5. Call 436-2400 or visit themusichall.org.

• PAUL KRUGMAN Author presents Arguing with Zombies. Virtual livestream hosted by The Music Hall in Portsmouth. Tues., March 2, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $5. Call 436-2400 or visit themusichall.org.

• THERESA CAPUTO the star of TLC’s Long Island Medium will present “Theresa Caputo: The Experience Live” at the Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St. Concord, ccanh.com) on Wed., April 7, 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at $39.75 (with option for a VIP Photo Op for an additional $49.95).

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

Language

• FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSES

Offered remotely by the Franco-American Centre. Six-week session with classes held Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. $225. Visit facnh.com/education or call 623-1093.

Special events

• EXETER LITFEST Literary festival will feature local authors, keynote speaker Victoria Arlen, book launches, a Saturday morning story hour for kids, and programs on various topics including publishing tips, mystery writing and homeschooling. Hosted virtually via Zoom by Exeter TV. Thurs., April 1, through Sat., April 3. Free and open to the public. Visit exeterlitfest.com.

Featured photo: The Listening Path by Julia Cameron

Beginners, by Tom Vanderbilt (Knopf, 320 pages)

If you’ve ever considered learning something after the age of 8, chances are you’ve been told how difficult it would be. It’s easier to learn a language or how to ski, or start to play an instrument, with the benefit of a young brain and the absence of fear.

Tom Vanderbilt acknowledged the challenge before him when he decided in his late 40s to learn to play chess with his young daughter. One researcher told Vanderbilt that his daughter would learn the game twice as fast as he could.

But, as they say, age and treachery can overcome youth and skill. And Vanderbilt wasn’t willing to accept being consigned to the indignity of being an “adult learner,” with the expectation that he was going to learn a new skill poorly, if at all. He decided to put up a fight. And what he learned, presented in Beginners, challenges the idea that our brains are on conveyor belts headed down after we reach a certain age, and that it’s not worth the effort to learn new skills.

Vanderbilt argues that we all should be learning new things right up to the time when the hooded guy with the scythe shows up. It doesn’t matter whether we have time, or if the things we learn have any obvious connection to our jobs, he says. Learning anything new, whether a skill or fact, delights our brains, which crave novelty. And it’s not just the things that we learn that benefit our lives, but the act of learning itself. There’s evidence, in fact, Vanderbilt writes, that taking on the challenge of learning multiple things at once — for example, signing up to learn Italian in the same month you’re also taking up crocheting — is even better for the brain than undertaking one new thing. And while that may sound stressful, taking up new pursuits actually alleviates stress, research has shown.

In any new or difficult endeavor, people often advocate “baby steps,” and Vanderbilt begins by drilling down on how children actually learn to walk. It’s not a side gig. Babies spend about a third of their day practicing walking for six months, and they don’t actually get it down perfectly until several years later, he says. They don’t learn to walk by marching about in straight lines, but by wandering across different surfaces in different patterns. And, of course, they fall down a lot. Learning for adults is much like that, Vanderbilt says. “Development does not always march uniformly in one direction. Infants may learn to walk, then briefly revert to crawling. Always be on the edge of the impossible,” he writes, adding, “Remember: If it feels easy, you’re probably not learning.”

Vanderbilt’s own journey of being a beginner began with chess but then expanded to singing, surfing, swimming and jewelry making, among other things. Given that his explorations were done in pursuit of a book, he had the blessing of a supportive wife and tax deductions to support his research. He took singing lessons, for example, from a New York voice coach who also teaches famous actors, and he acknowledges that the lessons were not cheap. He later joins a chorus to enjoy the twin benefits of using his new skills and learning in a social setting (which is even better for us than learning on our own).

People who don’t have the time or resources to learn new things under the tutelage of coaches in idyllic settings (he engages in “wild swimming,” for example, off the coast of Greece) may experience Beginners as a somewhat impractical guide to what aspirational Americans do when they have too much time on their hands. But we live in a time when virtually any skill can be acquired via YouTube; in fact, one 70-year-old woman Vanderbilt met in the Bahamas had taught herself to swim by watching videos online. As such, Beginners is a useful and engaging companion to any new pursuit, validation that even if you don’t turn into an Ironman or Grandmaster, no, you’re not wasting your time learning how to swim or play chess.

As a bonus, Vanderbilt offers aid and comfort to anyone who finds their memory isn’t what it used to be. Our brains are less efficient as we age, not merely because of biological degradation but because they contain so much stuff, he writes. “You’ve no doubt found, as you’ve gotten older, that you sometimes struggle to retrieve the name of a film or person. Of course you do! It’s because you’ve seen thousands of films and met thousands of people. Try implanting five decades of raw data into a kid and let’s see how they do,” he says. B+

BOOK NOTES

People on both sides of the political divide reverently quote him, so it’s easy to forget that Martin Luther King Jr. was a controversial figure in his day.

It’s even harder to fathom how controversial he was when you read some of what King actually wrote and said, which often reaches the heights of poetry.

For anyone who has only read about the civil rights leader we honor on Monday, and not actually read what he’s written, there’s a rich library of his words that has aged especially well, beginning with Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community? (Beacon Press, 256 pages).

Another good option for the novice King reader is A Testament of Hope, The Essential Writings and Speeches, edited by James M. Washington (HarperOne, 736 pages).

Meanwhile, adding to multiple substantive biographies about King, there’s a new book out this month that looks promising. Nine Days: The Race to Save Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life and Win the 1960 Election is something of a historical thriller (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 368 pages). It’s by Paul Kendrick and Steven Kendrick, a father-son team who have collaborated on two other historical books: Douglass and Lincoln: How a Revolutionary Black Leader and a Reluctant Liberator Struggled to End Slavery and Save the Union and Sarah’s Long Walk: The Free Blacks of Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America.

Also of note in the month we honor King:

One of King’s successors at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta is Raphael Warnock, who recently won one of the hotly contested U.S. Senate seats in Georgia.
It remains to be seen if Warnock has King’s rhetorical gifts, but he’s got a book, The Divided Mind of the Black Church, which was released in paperback last month (NYU Press, 278 pages). Promotional material says it’s an exploration of what the priority of the Black church should be: saving souls or transforming the social order.

Books

Author events

• DR. JARED ROSS HARDESTY Author of Black Lives, Native Lands, White Worlds: A History of Slavery in New England (2019) presents a virtual lecture, “Confronting Slavery in Early New England: History, Sources and Interpetation.” Thurs., Jan. 14, 6:30 p.m. Part of The Moffatt-Ladd House and Garden’s free public winter continuing education series. Registration is required. Email education.moffatt.ladd@gmail.com to receive the link to the Zoom event.

• REBECCA CARROLL Author presents Surviving the White Gaze. Virtual livestream hosted by The Music Hall in Portsmouth. Tues., Feb. 2, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $5. Call 436-2400 or visit themusichall.org.

• SUSAN CONLEY Author presents Landslide. Hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Online, via Zoom. Thurs., Feb. 11, 7 p.m. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• DIANE REHM Author presents When My Time Comes. Virtual livestream hosted by The Music Hall in Portsmouth. Tues., Feb. 23, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $5. Call 436-2400 or visit themusichall.org.

• THERESA CAPUTO the star of TLC’s Long Island Medium will present “Theresa Caputo: The Experience Live” at the Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St. Concord, ccanh.com) on Wed., April 7, 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at $39.75 (with option for a VIP Photo Op for an additional $49.95).

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

Language

• FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSES

Offering remotely by the Franco-American Centre. Six-week winter session runs Jan. 21 through Feb. 25, with classes held Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Spring session dates TBA. $225. Visit facnh.com/education or call 623-1093.

Special events

• EXETER LITFEST Literary festival will feature local authors, keynote speaker Victoria Arlen, book launches, a Saturday morning story hour for kids, and programs on various topics including publishing tips, mystery writing and homeschooling. Hosted virtually via Zoom by Exeter TV. Thurs., April 1, through Sat., April 3. Free and open to the public. Visit exeterlitfest.com.

Featured photo: Beginners, by Tom Vanderbilt

Exercised, by Daniel Lieberman(Pantheon, 464 pages)

Your resolution is to exercise. Hasn’t it always been? Harvard professor Daniel Lieberman, however, offers reasons to sit down and think about exercising before you actually do it.

Lieberman isn’t an athlete or an exercise scientist, but a professor of human evolutionary biology. In his words, “I study and teach how and why the human body looks and functions the way it does.” His Harvard lab is about skeletal biology and is well worth a visit just to see the image of a skeleton running there (projects.iq.harvard.edu/skeleton).

As such, Lieberman brings a fresh perspective to the business of exercise in his quest to understand what is normal, and what is abnormal, about contemporary human beings in motion. We all know what we’ve been told in recent years: that aerobic exercise can help stave off disease and lengthen lifespans, that too much sitting is deadly, that the slothful American lifestyle is an aberration of what the body is designed to do. Forget all that. We did not evolve to exercise, at least not in the way we think of exercise today.

Lieberman eviscerates some myths about exercise and confirms others as truths in his research of primitive societies like the Hadza tribe in Tanzania, the legendary Tamahumara long-distance runners of Mexico, and American extreme athletes, like those who participate in Ironman contests.

Along the way, he tackles the athletic compulsions (or lack thereof) of animals like gorillas and dogs, noting that unlike his dog, “I never see adults leap out of their cars … and sprint as fast as possible until they gasp for air.”

Studies of gorillas and chimpanzees — and also human beings in hunter-gatherer societies — show that they don’t go out of their way to exert themselves, much like many Americans today.

“For most of the time, our closest ape relatives are sluggards that live a sort of perpetual Sabbath,” Lieberman writes.

While demonstrably hard on the human skeleton, sitting still is “an ancient, fundamental strategy to allocate scarce energy sensibly” — and at times, long periods of sitting are good for us, as when we are able to sit quietly for a long time to focus on something important, like reading a book or playing chess. (The Germans have word for such periods of intense concentration: sitzfleisch, which crudely translates to “butt flesh,” Lieberman writes.)

In fact, there is evidence that humans might have evolved to be “especially averse” to exercise, he says, noting that even when we are sitting quietly our bodies are still at work, burning 70 or so calories an hour on internal processes such as digestion and moving blood around. Even people who are highly active burn more calories through basic body maintenance than through exercise, a man who weighs 180 pounds burning about 1,700 calories in 24 hours with no running, biking or squats.

That does not mean, however, that you can throw out the New Year’s resolution, at least not if you want to feel good, be healthy and live long.

Lieberman himself runs, albeit slowly, and admits to doing so even during research in societies that look on any uncoerced physical activity with suspicion. “Why would anyone run if they didn’t have to?” one of the Tarahumara runners asked him, incredulously. In fact, in many societies around the world, people would laugh themselves silly if confronted with the Spandexed American earnestly huffing on a city street, Peloton or treadmill. These people, while still enjoying plenty of leisure and sitting, move more than we do, whether just by walking to get to their destinations or chasing down goats on foot. In fact, most modern humans walk less than we used to, and when we walk we carry less stuff, Lieberman writes.

Having established himself as an expert on pretty much everything (even digressions into topics such as how different cultures sleep are engrossing), he goes on to weigh in on perennial questions such as can you really lose weight by walking more, is running bad for your knees, and, perhaps most importantly, how can we make ourselves exercise regularly? (Forget doing it for the endorphins; the runner’s high, Lieberman says, likely evolved to increase sensory awareness in our ancestors who ran as they hunted, and not everyone experiences it anyway.)

Federal guidelines recommend 150 minutes of moderate exercise each week, which amounts to 21 minutes a day. That’s one-sixth the amount of activity that people in non-industrial societies get.

Lieberman brings a keen wit to the subject and a seemingly limitless supply of contemporary analogies. (In memorable passages, he likens evolutionary trade-offs to the Jane Austen novel Mansfield Park and notes that most superheroes come by their powers indirectly, unlike Batman, who works out). He also draws from an extraordinary well of experiences, to include dogsledding through Greenland and participating in the man-versus-horse marathon in Arizona. This is a guy you want at the head of the table at your dream dinner party. Until that happens, consider him an erudite companion on the fascinating journey that Exercised provides. A

BOOK NOTES
If you don’t want to exercise but want to be healthier, happier or lose weight, there’s only one option: change your diet. As always, there’s a fresh crop of dieting books out this month to help with the post-holiday pounds. (Eventually, let’s hope, the post-pandemic ones, too.)

Here are a few worth of attention:
The Case for Keto, by Gary Taubes (Knopf, 304 pages) — The author of The Case Against Sugar and Why We Get Fat wants us to eat fewer carbs and more fats.
The How Not To Diet Cookbook, by Dr. Michael Greger (Flatiron, 256 pages) — Seriously, you had to know this was coming when Greger’s first book, How Not To Die, was released.
Fast This Way, by Dave Asprey (Harper Wave, 288 pages) — A bullet-proof guide to becoming the high-performing human you were meant to be, the publisher promises.
Anxiety-Free With Food, by Liana Werner-Gray (Hay House, 352 pages) — On relieving stress, depression and anxiety by using food as medicine, like Hippocrates advised.
Body Love, by Kelly LeVeque (Morrow, 384 pages) — Journal your way to a healthy lifestyle in 12 weeks by focusing on “the fab four” — protein, fat, fiber and greens.
Finally, just in case 2021 is not, in fact, better than 2020, there’s The Meateater Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival by Steven Rinella (Random House, 464 pages). If nothing else, you’ll want to read the introduction, titled “The Surprising Danger of S’Mores.”

Books

Author events

• K WOODMAN-MAYNARD Author presents graphic novel adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Online, via Zoom. Thurs., Jan. 7, 7 p.m. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• REBECCA CARROLL Author presents Surviving the White Gaze. Virtual livestream hosted by The Music Hall in Portsmouth. Tues., Feb. 2, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $5. Call 436-2400 or visit themusichall.org.

• DIANE REHM Author presents When My Time Comes. Virtual livestream hosted by The Music Hall in Portsmouth. Tues., Feb. 23, 7 p.m. Tickets cost $5. Call 436-2400 or visit themusichall.org.

• SUSAN CONLEY Author presents Landslide. Hosted by Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord. Online, via Zoom. Thurs., Feb. 11, 7 p.m. Registration required. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com or call 224-0562.

• THERESA CAPUTO the star of TLC’s Long Island Medium will present “Theresa Caputo: The Experience Live” at the Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St. Concord, ccanh.com) on Wed., April 7, 7:30 p.m. Tickets start at $39.75 (with option for a VIP Photo Op for an additional $49.95).

Book Clubs

• BOOKERY Online. Monthly. Third Thursday, 6 p.m. Bookstore based in Manchester. Visit bookerymht.com/online-book-club or call 836-6600.

• GIBSON’S BOOKSTORE Online, via Zoom. Monthly. First Monday, 5:30 p.m. Bookstore based in Concord. Visit gibsonsbookstore.com/gibsons-book-club-2020-2021 or call 224-0562.

• TO SHARE BREWING CO. 720 Union St., Manchester. Monthly. Second Thursday, 6 p.m. RSVP required. Visit tosharebrewing.com or call 836-6947.

Language

• FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSES

Offering remotely by the Franco-American Centre. Six-week winter session runs Jan. 21 through Feb. 25, with classes held Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Spring session dates TBA. $225. Visit facnh.com/education or call 623-1093.

Featured photo: Exercised, by Daniel Lieberman