Staff Reviews: Books, Films, Music, and More

Circulation Supervisor Cándida Miniño recommends This Is Your Brain on Food by Uma Naidoo.

In This Is Your Brain on Food, Dr. Uma Naidoo explains how food is a powerful tool in managing mental health issues such as anxiety, depression, and even ADHD.

In this book, the author informs how different nutrients affect our mood and cognition. She discusses the roles of various food groups, from omega-3 fatty acids to gut-friendly probiotics, and does so while sharing her own experiences and case studies from her practice.

Naidoo offers strategies for incorporating brain-boosting foods into our regime, giving general guidelines that let us add provisions to our meals without having the strictness of a diet.

If you prefer meal plans, she curated recipes you can implement in your daily life.

My favorite parts in the book are the cheat sheets for each chapter, that tell you the foods to embrace and to avoid depending on the issue you want to improve.

This book is a reminder that our relationship with food can profoundly impact our minds, and it encourages us to take control of our health—one meal at a time.

Find it in print and eaudiobook here.

Director of Philanthropy Carter Hedberg recommends Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Philip Gefter.

“What a dump!” Martha exclaims in her best Bette Davis imitation, kicking off the boozy journey of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.

Thus begins Edward Albee’s masterpiece. I’ve always loved the play, which I saw at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, starring Sir Patrick Stewart and Mercedes Rhuel. At least once a year, I watch the film adaptation, starring Elizabeth Taylor as Martha and Richard Burton as George.

So, imagine my excitement when the book, Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was released.

By 1966, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were not only towering Hollywood stars but also one of the most famous celebrity couples in the world. Their real-life romance captured the public’s imagination, and their fiery relationship added to the depth of their portrayals in the film. The film became a critical and commercial success and garnered thirteen Academy Award nominations and five wins, including Taylor’s gutsy performance which won her a second Oscar.

Gefter’s book delves into the off-screen and on-screen interplay between Taylor and Burton, exploring the ways they helped shape the film. But the book goes beyond the film and Taylor and Burton. It also gives insight into Edward Albee, the brilliant playwright behind Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.

Albee’s revolutionary hit play, first staged in 1962, was a shocking portrayal of a tumultuous marriage filled with cocktails, contradictions, mind games, and love.

Cocktails with George and Martha offers a fascinating look into the dynamics of George and Martha, one of the most iconic fictional couples in American theater. It not only pays homage to Albee’s masterpiece but also provides an in-depth perspective on how the play became a film, the explosive, real-life marriage of its stars, and how first-time director Mike Nichols pulled it all together into a groundbreaking film.

According to author Gefter, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? “is not just about one marriage. It’s about marriage.” For fans of the play, the film … or marriage, this is a delicious must-read. To steal another quote from Bette Davis, this time from All About Eve, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.” Nothing could be truer than a night with George and Martha.

Find it print in our collection here.

Children’s Librarian Judy Zimmer recommends When we Cease to Understand the World by Labatut Benjamin.

I found this audio book – historical fiction translated from Spanish – while browsing Libby, not at all sure what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised. It’s fast paced, fascinating and I didn’t want to stop listening!

Labatut Bejamin blends fact and fiction seamlessly.

It tells the story of four Nobel Prize winning scientists and mathematicians whose discoveries have had profound effects on humanity. Some for the good and some that have caused pure misery. These four scientists are people whose names I’d never heard of before:

 Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrodinger. These geniuses paid a personal price, even losing their sanity in their pursuit to understand the world.

Find it in our Collection here.

Collections Manager Aly Wepplo recommends Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer. 

In August, I performed in Laughingstock Theater’s production Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare. For that job, I memorized a script of about 100 pages – no small feat! And I remembered that memorization is an amazing thing. It is both a game and a challenge. And it is the topic of the book Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. 

In one year, author Joshua Foer went from covering the U.S. Memory Championship as a journalist to winning the event. His book details how he studied with the world’s most accomplished memorizers and learned their strategies to remember lists of phone numbers, digits of pi, and lines of verse.

In the process, Foer learned that memory is a muscle. It can be trained and improved. And it works best with information that can be visualized.

So, for example, it might seem impossible to remember the order of a deck of cards, but it gets a little easier when each card is attached to an outlandish image – like a moonwalking Einstein wearing four spades as shoes, the king of hearts on his face, and three diamonds on his driving gloves. 

“Wait!” you object, “That still sounds incredibly complicated!” And maybe it is. But it’s an effective tool for connecting long lists of things we want to remember. And it’s a fun peek into how memory champions use their brains. 

Know of any other great books about memorization? Share them with us! Recommend a title for our collection here. 

Find Moonwalking with Einstein in our Collection here.