Quick Lit: What I’ve Been Reading Lately

Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Attia, MD and Bill Gifford

This book fits neatly into a category I’ve read a lot in the last few years: intentional living for better health. Author Peter Attia addresses healthspan — the quality of life we’ll experience in our last decade(s) — and how we can influence it by our choices now, and what he calls “medicine 3.0” — a preventive approach to health (rather than dealing with disease only after it’s diagnosed, which is what’s typical at present).

As I listened to this book, I thought of the half dozen vibrant women at my gym who are in their seventies (and one who is 85!). Several of them swim before coming to class then head to pickle ball or dance class other days of the week. They regularly engage their minds through travel, art classes, gardening, birdwatching, and volunteer work. Wow, they inspire me! I want to be just like them twenty years from now.

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

I’ve read and enjoyed several novels by Geraldine Brooks and had no idea she started as a journalist and also wrote nonfiction. Memorial Days is her latest nonfiction title, a tribute to her husband (and fellow journalist and nonfiction author), Tony Horwitz, who died suddenly on Memorial Day in 2019. The book is told in two time frames: the hours and days and months after Tony’s death in 2019 and a few weeks in February 2023 when Brooks takes a solitary retreat to finally mourn her husband. She journeys to Tasmania in her native Australia where she allows herself to “wait a long time with [her] sorrow.” This is a beautiful and heartfelt remembrance and an honest look at grieving.

Night Watch: A Novel by Janye Anne Phillips

This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel told in multiple voices takes place in two time frames: at the end of the Civil War and ten years later at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia. The story opens as twelve-year-old ConaLee and her mother, who hasn’t spoken in over a year, are taken to the asylum by a con man who calls himself Papa and claims to be family. ConaLee has never met her true father, who never returned from the war. Meanwhile, we meet a man who loses his memory after a head injury in battle and later works at the asylum as the Night Watch. The stories of these four characters draw together as the story unfolds.

I found this book to be beautifully written, fascinating, brutal, and redeeming all at the same time. The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum was a real place known for its humane treatment of its patients. (Today it is a National Historic Landmark). In some ways this book reminded me of The Known World (also a Pulitzer Prize winner), about the far-reaching evils of slavery. Similarly, Night Watch shows the deep and long-lasting impact of the Civil War.

What have you read lately?