tell me what books you read
oh boy well um i haven't been doing a whole lot of reading for enjoyment lately i read uh one book a friend recommended to me i can't even remember the guy's name it was a science fiction Dean
Cole or something like that and it was so frightening and it had so much violence in it i just could hardly stand it yeah i didn't think it was so great she thought it was riveting you know but i couldn't deal with that but um
um i try to avoid the
mostly i read i'm a marriage and family counselor and mostly i read things to do with raising kids and now i have two little kids or codependency or you know fifty thousand things like John Bradshaw's books on uh The Family and
uh-huh
um-hum
Homecoming and Inner Child and so i read usually that kind of stuff if and right now i'm reading um Judith Viorst's book called Necessary Losses where she talks about different losses that we've had in our lives that we have to get past if we're going to mature and
um-hum
so in my in my spare time with a two and a half and a three and a half year old i i read yes that's really changed my reading habits because i used to read so much especially when i was in school
that does cut into your reading time a lot
yeah
you know but gosh it's uh it's getting pathetic now if i get through a magazine i've been
well my my kids are up and out of the house now so you know i'll uh encourage you that you do get uh a little more time to yourself later on i won't say lots
yeah later you're probably looking for your kids so you can talk to them when they're out running around with friends yeah what do you read
yeah
oh uh well i read for a living uh i'm an editor
you do oh oh how interesting what kind of books
and so i i'm at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and therefore i read uh psychology sociology anthropology political science philosophy linguistics history uh
um
oh my goodness
yeah and you name it i've read some of it
yeah well that sounds like a fascinating job
it really is it it's a great place to be and the uh it's nice to work with people uh who
yeah
are not required to use your services and so therefore are grateful and not arguing you with you about them if they don't want an editor they don't come
yeah
that's true that's true well you probably i i seem to remember that uh little byline on a lot of things i've read um is is is that um do they have a mail
hum
kind of campaign that they send to professionals in the social no
no we don't uh normally we don't publish uh things under our own imprint uh
hum that sounds so familiar
we have had books that are written here that are then published by all sorts of different uh commercial and academic publishers and university presses
um-hum
so uh i end up sometimes reading the things that are written here all the way through sometimes just a few chapters because that's as far as they get
yeah
but i also get of course lots of references to neat stuff to read about
yeah
so i'm uh i was just thinking when they told me the topic i should just i should read the uh titles of the five books that are sitting on my desk right now that i'm in the middle of
yeah
i'm reading uh Within the Plantation Household which is a history uh sort of a sociological history of southern women black and white living on plantations
oh that sounds interesting yeah
uh a book called Poisons of the Past which is about ergotisms that uh fungus that grows on rye
oh
it causes the uh uh Saint Anthony's Fire Disease where people fell into fits and
i thought that was going to be some
oh
oh my goodness
there is a a theory at least that a lot of people who were accused of witchcraft were actually under the influence of ergot
huh
and a book called Job Cues Gender Cues which explains
uh how certain professions and vocations get uh flip flopped from one gender predominance to the other like uh nursing
um-hum nursing or
started out all men and then in the nineteenth century began to have women and now it's practically all women
yeah secretaries i bet that used to be mostly men who were secretaries of any type for business
and that uh
that's right and the thing that changed that was the manual typewriter
yeah
oh
but then it became you see just sort of a clerical task whereas when you wrote it out in long hand you were a
yeah
then you were important
yes you were a confidential assistant to the person
yeah yeah like the scribes who did the old documents you know for churches and
right
and stuff yeah that's interesting
and then i've got a book called Fashions in Science which is a sociology that explains uh why certain theories get to be popular in uh sociology and
uh how difficult it is to swim against the tide if you have a different idea that isn't vatted by your peers
um-hum
and then i have one novel that's called First Light that's about uh archeology
hum
the British novel so it's it's really quite interesting i haven't got too far into it yet
gosh really
so are you reading these in the form of just like printed manuscripts that have not been published
uh those are all books that are out uh published and bound now but they're just things that
huh
uh pertain to various things i'm working on or were uh mentioned prominently and attracted my curiosity so i got them out of the library and decided i'd read some more in them
yeah
my goodness well that's fascinating gosh
so i read a lot of history and uh a few novels an occasional mystery stories just for fun
um-hum yeah yeah i never have gotten into any of the romantic novels or any of that kind of stuff my husband reads a lot of the um well he did before we had kids the Star Trek and all those kind of sci-fi kinds of things you know
um-hum
oh yeah yeah
you really he's got a quite a collection of those but uh
my stuff revolves uh revolves revolves around uh one hundred one thousand let's see i've got one called One Thousands Practical Parenting Tips which teaches you to put elastic instead of shoelaces in your kid's shoes hey i've done that to every pair my three year old has
oh hey that's a nifty idea
great
you know really and uh
oh i think the the boom to parents and the the shoelace department was those little Velcro tabs i think that's inc redibly
oh yeah yeah but there's a surprising number that are still around that aren't that don't have those so that's an alternate means of dealing with but um i'm trying to think of what else i've got uh
um-hum
since i'm um a therapist and all i've done recently a lot of research into some of the twelve step groups so i've got all the different alcoholics what they call the blue the blue book the big book
yeah
and all the OA literature and all the CODA literature so i'm trying to get familiarized more familiarized with that because i refer clients and different groups and uh
um-hum
well let's see i'm trying to think of the
what do you think is the most promising or practical book uh of that kind yo u've read recently
um oh i definitely i have a a love affair with John Bradshaw i just have found everything i've read of his to be fabulous
hum
um he started out with one called The Family which does the family systems and people's roles in the family and then he did uh Healing Healing the Shame that Binds You
about how shame can just be so paralyzing and people isolate and withdraw and then the third one that he came out with is now called Homecoming uh and uh there's a subtitle to it i never can remember what it is it's something like um A Journey
um-hum
In Your Inner Child or something like that
yeah i knew his literary agent in Houston when she was just uh convincing him to write all this down he was teaching
oh he's just great and now he's had the the first the first one and the third one put into a ten session uh PBS series
yeah i saw i saw one of those episodes on PBS uh from time to time out here we have four different PBS channels that we can get on the cable
yeah
oh
and they'll have all ten of those shown back to back in the middle of the night for people can video tape them
i know yeah so people can just tape them i guess you know but i definitely have gotten a lot out of his lately he's just probably been one of the most there's an author that's in um
yeah
that's in uh Arizona who used to be in Dallas it seems like we have a lot of these that have been in Texas called PM Melody who does a lot of writing on codependency and she's got some fabulous workbooks out and a whole series of tapes and uh
um-hum
hm
a workbook called Breaking Free and just some real uh helpful practical things for codependency so that's been another one that i've thought was real helpful but
um-hum
other than that uh my reading centers on Paddington Bear and Winnie the Pooh and Doctor Seuss
oh yes oh
but i really have enjoyed exploring children's literature because there's so much more uh new things out that you know i i'd pull out the classics once in a while for my kids but there's such cute things out for kids
oh there's some absolutely wonderful illustrated children's books
oh i know and i just go to the library because i just they're expensive i mean it and they go through them so fast you know
yeah
um-hum
so i just i really have been going to the library and getting my ten books out and they just love to sit and read and now finally the littlest one is old enough to to sit you know and watch the pictures instead of grabbing it and trying to rip the pages out
exactly right uh well
so that has been fun to do that you know go through the children's literature and uh
i read the Publisher's Weekly uh which lists all the upcoming books forthcoming books and uh
uh-huh
there are so many that look like they would just be absolutely wonderful but i was tickled to see that some publisher is uh reprinting those the James Thurber books for children
oh wonderful
the Wonderful O and The Thirteen Clocks that have been out of print for about oh i think about twenty years
gosh really well i'm going to have to look for those yeah
well i had those for my kids and they really did enjoy them
oh
yeah yeah
oh but they were old copies then i didn't buy them when my kids were little and so they probably were out of print all of already when my kids were small but
yeah yeah
um i was really happy to see that yeah i guess it's in honor of his hundredth
