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Table of Contents
Reviewer's Choice
Tokyo Tempos
Michael Pronko
Raked Gravel Press
9781942410348, $21.99 PB, $9.99 Kindle, 238pp
https://www.amazon.com/Tokyo-Tempos-Michael-Pronko/dp/1942410344
Tokyo Tempos captures life and culture in Tokyo like few others. Perhaps that's because educator Michael Pronko is no temporary resident or tourist, but an expat whose three decades of living in Tokyo allows him to capture the city's subtler undercurrents and nuances for his readers.
Pronko's documentation of daily life in his 'Tokyo Moments' series began in Motions and Moments and continued through two other books. Tokyo Tempos both enhances and expands the series with further reflections, offering invaluable observations about the impact of the pandemic years on relationship-building in general and "meishi" in particular: By the end of the pandemic, the diameters of my social circles hadn't budged. I met no one new. I know that because I didn't acquire any new meishi name cards. I didn't give or receive the small cards, about the size of three fingers and loaded with contact information, for about two years. The drought of new meishi made me miss meeting people, especially since there are so many people left to meet in Tokyo. Before the pandemic, a new meishi was clear evidence of entering into a new circle of exchange. I loved that ritual of moving from outside to inside, from not-knowing to knowing, from separate to connected. It's a way of leaping over differences and distances to enter another circle.
Pronko's observations of daily life rituals and Japanese culture offer invaluable reflections that will prove of special interest not just to prior readers of his books, but newcomers seeking accessible, inviting personal material that delves into the heart of Tokyo's rituals: On the last day of the year, my western Tokyo neighborhood fills with the hum of machines and the splash of water. The swish of brooms and the clink of laundry poles echo through the air... The last few days of the year, but especially on the last day, laundry covers the poles and not the usual laundry, but blankets, sofa covers, and futons. Everything washable gets washed. Every surface, inside and out, gets a wash, wipe, or sweep. Everyone is cleaning everything. Even the cleaning equipment gets cleaned -- gloves, mops, buckets, and rags. It's "Osoji," or "big cleaning," a ritual of energy and activity that brings the year to a close and leaves everything sparkling clean. It's a clean ending for a clean start.
These vignettes insert readers into the beating heart of Tokyo's culture, offering insights and knowledge that is nearly impossible to find in more general books about travel to Tokyo and understanding its special culture. This type of approach can only come from decades of experience -- which is why Tokyo Tempos reflects a compelling rhythm of daily life that readers will be hard-pressed to find elsewhere.
Tokyo Tempos is quite simply a blend of travelogue, history, memoir, and engrossing insights that libraries will find an especially attractive recommendation to patrons seeking a deeper view of Tokyo's atmosphere. Book clubs that look for riveting books packed with stories and insights will find Tokyo Tempos perfect for can't-put-it-down reading and thought-provoking group discussions alike.
The Writing/Publishing Shelf
Seven Secrets to the Perfect Personal Essay
Nancy Slonim Aronie
New World Library
www.newworldlibrary.com
9781608689309, $18.95 PB, $9.99 Kindle, 240pp
https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Secrets-Perfect-Personal-Essay/dp/1608689301
Aspiring writers committed to telling their stories via the personal essay form receive important guidelines to making the most of this format in Nancy Slonim Aronie's Seven Secrets to the Perfect Personal Essay. Her guide uses examples from her own work and those of others to review quality and diverse approaches to creating a personal essay that will easily resonate with writers. Some of these include basic writing guidelines, from how to create a 'can't-put-it-down' hook from the start to employing structure and themes in a manner that elevates the personal essay's production and format. Readers interested in developing top-notch writing skills in this genre should place Seven Secrets to the Perfect Personal Essay at the top of their reading lists.
The Cookbook Shelf
Soul Kitchen
Wagamama
Kyle Books
c/o Octopus Books
www.octopusbooksusa.com
9781804191453, $26.27 HC, $13.99 Kindle, 192pp
https://www.amazon.com/wagamama-Soul-Kitchen-Cooking-Recipes/dp/1804191450
Soul Kitchen: The Art of Cooking and Eating in 70 Recipes travels Asia, profiling cooks from all kinds of establishments who are serving up local color and 'soul' to their communities. Americans who associate 'soul food' with Black traditions in the U.S. may be surprised at the different usage here, but the cookbook's ability to represent and embrace diversity through dishes from restaurants, street food stalls, canteens, and more offers an inviting array of recipes and appealing color photos not to be found elsewhere, from a Gochujang Chicken Rice Bowl to Fridge-Raid Fishcakes with a tangy Asian-inspired Tartare. The colorful coverage makes for a winning collection!
The Political Science Shelf
Backyard Politics, second edition
Dr. Craig B. Wiener
Torchflame Books
c/oTop Reads Publishing LLC
www.torchflamebooks.com
9781611535976, $19.99 PB, $7.99 Kindle, 314pp
https://www.amazon.com/Backyard-Politics-Psychological-Understanding-Political/dp/1611535972
Backyard Politics: A Psychological Understanding of Today's Social and Political Divide appears in its second edition to update Dr. Craig B. Wiener's approach from parenting techniques to a broader spectrum of participants in modern democratic and social processes. In so doing, he creates a formula of new approaches to dialogues that hopefully will help heal and change a divided America.
If this feels like a lofty ambition for any author... it is. Ideologies and logic receive close inspection as Wiener tackles tough subjects ranging from problems of inequality and immigration to health care, racism and affirmative action, gender disparities and women's issues, and family struggle. Each of these topics is analyzed with an attention to identifying the pivot points that divide people, communities, and the nation as a whole.
Many surprising thoughts are delivered along the way, supported by studies and research: The American Dream is now more out of reach for struggling minority groups due to the explosion of single-parent families. However, instead of malicious racism causing the problem, it occurs in relation to "two-parent privileges" and the role that helping policies contributed to family breakup (Rowe, 2020). According to Thomas Sowell, and consistent with this view, even in the 1980s, two-parent Black households were "out-earning" two-parent White households (BasicEconomics, 2012).
Wiener's psychological probes embrace the reasons behind perceptions, reactions, choices, and behaviors that may initially seem irrational, but have their roots in various forms of family and social history. Understanding this history and these precedents is a key part of healing admonitions and understanding designed to not just rationalize behaviors, but survey new approaches to typical division points in all kinds of social and personal issues.
From definitions of fairness and control efforts to how to build and understand a new social order, Wiener's vast topics and insights will prove especially valuable to book clubs and readers interested in building foundations of personal and political change.
Libraries that choose Backyard Politics for its promise of enlightenment and action will find that its psychological insights are only one piece of solving the puzzle of a divided society. The other lies in observations that support positive directions and change on all sides.
The Theatre/Cinema Shelf
Because It's Funny!
Billy Van Zandt
Independently Published
www.vanzandtmilmore.com
9781734401752, $25.99 Hardcover, 240pp
9781734401769$19.99 Paperback, $9.99 eBook
https://www.amazon.com/Because-Its-Funny-Plays-Milmore/dp/1734401753
Because It's Funny! The Plays of Billy Van Zandt & Jane Milmore (from the author of Get in the Car, Jane) provides humor and theater enthusiasts with a zany, wild, rollicking ride through the process of writing and producing over twenty plays.
It may be hard not to arrive at this memoir without prior familiarity with the names of author Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore. Together, they hold nearly fifty years of experience as playwrights, actors, and producers. Anyone involved in the theater world will readily recognize them... but Because It's Funny!'s ability to reach beyond these special interests to attract general-interest audiences makes it a special acquisition.
The focus on the plays the duo wrote from 1979 to 2020 translates to a rich, decades-long observational memoir that pairs production snafus and creative experiences with fun observations: In Merrily We Dance and Sing, which is one of our show-within-a-show plays, actor Jeff Babey grabbed an unsuspecting Frank Andrews backstage and frantically screamed, "You're on!" Frank bolted onto the stage skipping in, in his Peter Pan hat and lederhosen, thinking he'd missed an entrance, entering a scene he had no place being in, yelling "Hooray!" at the top of his lungs, which is what he was supposed to do about seven minutes from then. Frank quickly saw what happened, froze, and skipped backward off the stage as if was trying to rewind the video.
Laughs abound, as important as serious portraits of the theater world and its participants. These give readers a backstage introduction to the changing milieu of writing, producing, and acting in a play. The lively tone and diversity of these experiences supercharges the memoir with fun in-depth observations which are compelling and thought-provoking all in one:
This play introduced us to Michael Kroll, another eventual staple of our company. He played Stan Kemrite, the FBI agent. A brilliant debut with us. Capturing Babu the terrorist, Stan explained that ours was a kinder and gentler country, before kneeing Babu in the crotch, handcuffing him, and violently dragging him away.
Michael has probably created the widest variety of roles for us throughout the years, playing everything from a silent movie villain, an effeminate wedding planner, a cigarette-hacking crusty old doctor, Richard Nixon, Elton John, and talk-show host Mike Douglas. (Who imitates Mike Douglas?) And every one is a home run.
Readers will not only learn about the techniques and basics of theater production, but will be entertained by its disparate participants and the manner in which they develop relationships on and off stage, handle critics and snafus, and enjoy their work. A lively sense of pleasure and fun permeates these reflections. This is why libraries seeking theater exposes which illustrate the processes, attractions, and enjoyment of this world from a long-time professional's vantage point will find Because It's Funny! a winner.
Few theater memoirs hold the ability to attract general-interest audiences as does Billy Van Zandt's engaging, vivid memoir.
The Psychology Shelf
Being with the Body in Depth Psychology
Barbara Holifield
www.BarbaraHolifield.com
Routledge
https://www.routledge.com
9781032286082, $160.00 Hardcover/$39.95 Paperback/$35.99 eBook
https://www.routledge.com/Being-with-the-Body-in-Depth-Psychology-Development-Trauma-and-Transformation-in-the-Unspoken-Realm/Holifield/p/book/9781032286082
Being with the Body in Depth Psychology: Development, Trauma, and Transformation in the Unspoken Realm blends Jungian psychology with Relational Psychoanalysis. It is highly recommended for college-level libraries seeking a blend of well-researched neuroscience, developmental theory, and psychoanalysis.
Barbara Holifield surveys mind/body connections and what happens when these connections are broken or dysfunctional. She considers the definition and nature of depth psychology, applying its principles to trauma experiences and therapeutic approaches while juxtaposing case history vignettes with bigger-picture perspectives on healing and recovery. Surveys of experiential, pre-verbal systems move beyond the usual choice of talking about the body to consider how body and mind perceive and absorb experiences both separately and together.
This somatic approach allows readers to draw important connections between body awareness development and working wounded and disassociated parts of the self to experience a fuller sense of self separate from body identity.
Readers who anticipate that Being with the Body in Depth Psychology will be a work of scholarly analytical study should be advised that Holifield's work ideally will serve as a dynamic, interactive model for transformation. It includes a toolkit of approaches, from meditative instruction to help identify the "vibratory aliveness of your body" to tips on integrating linguistic and nonverbal modifications into the therapeutic model to encourage connection and transformative realizations: Words can be spoken, then reworked and respoken, deepening, furthering, and elaborating on experience. In this way, language does not recapture what has just occurred but furthers it, carrying experience forward, elaborating affect, meaning, and aesthetic appreciation. A deeper understanding becomes possible.
Relational sharing allows one to unfold meanings that might not have been conscious otherwise. Cultural shapings can become more explicit (apparent). This is language at its ideal, but all too frequently, this is different from what unfolds. Words function to signify and categorize. The speed of language and our pace of life rarely allow the nuances of the actual lived moment to be brought into words.
Even in the psychotherapeutic encounter, where the intent is to make room and give time for lived experience to be unpacked, much is lost in the service of understanding and the quest for meaning.
Holifield's blend of insight, philosophy, psychotherapeutic process, and contemplative practices allows for flexibility. This encourages readers versed in either science or contemplative movement or meditation practices to adapt research-oriented mindsets to draw new conclusions and insights from the therapy process.
The depth psychotherapeutic process assembles so many seemingly disparate insights under one cover that readers may at first find the expansive applications and themes to be daunting. Holifield's ability to weave these elements into a powerful overview of clinical and analytical applications to further the goal of in-depth healing creates an opportunity for interactive moments between author, subject, and real-world applications that moves Being with the Body in Depth Psychology from the realms of scholarship into the clinician's office.
College-level students of psychology as well as practicing psychotherapists and clinicians interested in connecting the dots to solidify the bodily basis of experience in their clinical practices will find Being with the Body in Depth Psychology well-researched and footnoted. It's specific in its connections between theory and the therapeutic process, which is important for anyone working with trauma victims, who are interested in a more integrative approach than most singular focuses offer.
Libraries seeking a volume that melds practical, real-world healing techniques with scientific inquiry and results will find Being with the Body in Depth Psychology a fine addition, highly recommendable to practicing clinicians working in all types of psychological settings.
The Fantasy/SciFi Shelf
Baen Books
www.baen.com
New books from Baen provide science fiction and fantasy fans with intriguing premises and involving writing.
https://www.amazon.com/Men-Bretton-1-Dream-Home/dp/1982193743
Richard Fox's Men of Bretton: Hold the Planet for Hegemony - Or Die Trying (9781982193744, $28.00) is a Dream of Home military sci-fi read that packs staccato action with planet-wide issues. The 11th Bretton Infantry has been dropped into a combat zone on Dharien with orders to forge a path to Tabuk and keep the city under the Hegemony... but for some members of the effort, the fight's more personal than that. Mason Tellec is both charged with the mission and with protecting his young brother Noah, who is also a part of it. Can a soldier afford to have family issues affecting his work, especially when the only survivor of a Flag ambush becomes part of the equation? An excellent battle-drive story emerges to delight military sci-fi audiences.
https://www.amazon.com/Graveyard-Demons-Saga-Forgotten-Warrior/dp/1982193735
Larry Correia's Graveyard of Demons (9781982193737, $30.00) adds to the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior series with a new fantasy scenario revolving around battle, rebellion, and one Ashok Vadal, who discovers that everything he's learned about his life and destiny is a lie when the Capitol teeters on the edge of collapse, calling his long-held beliefs into question. From caste system operations and issues of control to political manipulators who harbor their own disparate visions of how events should evolve, Vadal, once a ruler and now a fugitive, is in a dangerous position made all the more tenuous by his personal quest for revenge. Can a personal ambition rescue the world? Read this and find out. Fantasy and social and psychological examination are nicely entwined into the military and personal adventure for maximum impact.
Both "Men of Bretton" and "Graveyard of Demons" are excellent choices for discriminating libraries and fans of military sci-fi and fantasy.
Baen Books
www.baen.com
Two new arrivals from Baen Books present intriguing collections that stand out from the crowd.
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Train-Outta-Kepler-283c-David-ebook/dp/B0D63GKZMV
David Boop edits Last Train Outta Kepler-283c (9781982193768, $18.00), an anthology of macabre and intriguing tales of the final frontier by such Baen notable writers as Sharon Lee, D.J. Butler, and more. Prior fans of the series begun in Gunfight on Europa Station will learn that this series is a concluding presentation that features the same blend of Western themes that are developed in various sci-fi worlds, from the Liaden Universe to the Four Horsemen. Readers not hold prior familiarity with these scenarios or Boop's previous series contributions in order to appreciate the whimsy, eeriness, and engaging juxtapositions of these stories, which are highly recommended, original reads.
https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Proxima-Orions-Travis-Taylor/dp/1982193751
Crisis at Proxima by Travis S. Taylor and Les Johnson (9781982193751, $28.00) reveals a first contact experience gone awry as the inhabitants of Proxima Centauri find them selves connected to Earth in unexpected ways when a contagion ravaging their population can't be controlled. An extinction-level struggle ensues which forces the scientists of two very different worlds to cooperate, even though the evil gods depicted in Proxima myth may challenge even the technologically-savvy earthlings. "This crew is among the best that humanity has to offer with regard to the task ahead of us." But, is this good enough? Fast-paced action and scientific and social revelations make for a thoroughly engrossing read that will appeal to a wide audience.
Both "Last Train Outta Kepler-283c" and "Crisis at Proxima" are especially and unreservedly recommended picks for personal reading lists and community library Science Fiction collections.
James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief
Diane C. Donovan, Editor
Midwest Book Review
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