December: Month of Throat Lumps

It’s been an interesting week in my personal Blog-O-Sphere. The zenith was receiving an e-mail from a stranger who stumbled upon my blog a few months ago, and who decided, after reading my piece about sadness, that my blog was “a keeper.” As if that were not gift enough, this stranger admitted to having read my entire blog and continues to read it! A reader! An enthusiastic reader! That made my year. Thank you, stranger. And bless you.

OK, today I want to talk about gifts. But first: I hate Christmas. As Jews of the worst order, my family has, for generations, bought into the most treacle-y trappings of Christmas, like rats making quick work of someone else’s high-holiday meal. We exchange gifts that none of us need and pick fights for reasons stratospherically beyond all understanding.

But since I don’t want to be too revealing about my family dramas, nor do I wish to be a total curmudgeon, I’ve decided to write about some gift ideas that I believe will bring authentic joy to your and your loved ones' lives, all books of course.

Always the first to hitch my star to someone else’s wagon (preferably a celebrity's), I have created The Liz List in the manner of Oprahs O List: in her case, a beautifully staged and photographed array of her (read: her shoppers’) favourite things prominently featured in her glossy, multi-kajillion-dollar-generating monthly magazine. (Ha ha, Oprah, I have no deadlines to meet, I can publish whenever I want, and I have no overhead!)

Not to toot my own horn, but I really do think The Liz List is superior to the O List because I have actually read the books I am promoting; i.e. I am not putting forth some covert marketing campaign on behalf of publishers who have sent me free stuff (although I would certainly agree to flog their wares in exchange for free books. In fact, I’ll add that to my list of New Year’s resolutions: I will hook for books!)

Without further ado . . .

The Liz List




Every woman needs this hospitality-primer-cum-vital-life-lessons book; also any man who wants to date and relate to a real woman (which is the opposite of a Real Woman). Someone probably said it in a review somewhere already, but I believe Amy Sedaris is the Emily Post for gals like me and my friends and anyone else as funny, intelligent and funny as we are.

A book that provides recipes for cakes as relevant as this . . .



. . . and this . . .


. . . while also including an equally-relevant section on how to care for your vagina (in ways I never imagined existed, making me wonder if I am a hygiene horror show by comparison) . . .



. . . is alright in my books!


When popcorn is listed as an appetizer on a Menu for One, I feel that Sedaris gets me. I could make a five-course meal out of popcorn. Ms. Sedaris’s book also includes a plethora of helpful sidebar tips for all hospitality occasions, such as what not to say to a grieving friend:

• I know exactly what you are going through, I mean, I didn’t lose my husband to a boating accident, but I can imagine
• Give it 3 weeks, you shouldn’t grieve more than that
• What was he drinking?

Or, the ignore-at-your-peril guest-list rule all hosts should consider, such as avoiding these guest combinations:

• Astrologer and Astronomer
• Psychologist and Psychiatrist
• Director and out-of-work actor
• Serial killer and drunken teenager

Or, what not to do when you're the guest: “As far as the bathroom etiquette goes: number 1, no number 2.” (Oh crap! I guess I do write about ass! I told a blog detractor that I didn't. I clearly had no idea I was about to, and now I have. OK, Detractor, don't read my blog.)

Liz List Item #2


In A General Theory of Love, three neuroscientists -- Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon -- prove, through a bunch of scientific double-blind tests, that the root cause of western culture’s epidemic malaise is no less than brain damage. Thanks to our penchant for prioritizing our neocortex (where abstract thought lives), while casting aspersions on our limbic brains (where emotional well-being develops), we are sending our mental health to hell in a hand basket at lighting speed. Citing western parenting practices, such as this favourite: Ferberization (named after the so-called parenting genius, Someone Ferber, who claimed that letting fragile, dependent babies wail themselves to sleep is essential for establishing who’s boss), the neuroscientists figuratively shake their collective limbic brains at just how wrong we keep getting it. Ferberization, argue the scientists, actually alters the physiology of a baby’s brain, practically guaranteeing the little dictator will grow up to become an insecure needy adult, slouching towards his or her life along a super-short spectrum between depression and sociopathy. Nice work, Ferber. Parents, stop the insanity!

I wonder why we need neuroscientists to tell us something our bodies already instinctively and biologically know. But I guess our neocortical obsession has alienated us from our gut (or limbic) sense to such a degree that we do need neuroscientists to sound the warning bell, and then to speak in a language our over-smartened brains can understand. That said, damned if these neuroscientists aren’t literate to boot! They make their most compelling arguments with poetry, insisting that our brains respond more favourably to metaphor than to scientific and academic double speak.

Case in point: “Like the art it is responsible for inspiring, the limbic brain can move in ways beyond logic that have only the most inexact translations in a language the neocortex can comprehend (nice). . . And so people must strain to force a strong feeling into the straightjacket of verbal expression . . . (then this to bring the point home) Frost wrote that a poem ‘begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a love sickness. It is never a thought to begin with.’”

What I find poetic is the revelation that we literally and physiologically regulate and modify each others' limbic functions through proximity – through relating, through connection. If you have been in my life for a long time, I will have helped build some of your neural pathways, and you will have helped build some of mine, entwining our thoughts across the ether. That’s why losing a loved one can feel like losing your mind. So when your friends tell you to buck up after a break up, tell them you are busy reconstituting a big chunk of your brain that disappeared when the bastard up and left, and when that's done you'll still have your work cut out for you remapping your new brain in order to do this little thing you like to call surviving!

If your family system did not exhibit healthy relating, your brain may have been damaged (that's my excuse). Fortunately, you can repair this damage through new healthy relating with other people, like loving partners, kids and good therapists (NOT Freudian therapists!) And all it takes is two of life’s most precious resources – time and proximity. Virtual connection in the form of e-mails and faxes don’t count. Neither do the baubles we buy ourselves to staunch the bleeding twins of loneliness and pain. No amount of clothes, cars, jewels, or any other relating replacements can create the healthy neural pathways that lead to stable, healthy and happy humans. To become a human of well-being requires the close and consistent contact of other loving humans. Plus time.

I say, whatever it takes. If you love your children, or want to be a good parent to your unborn child, if you love your partner and want a healthy relationship for longer than an afternoon of shopping, or if you want to know why you don't like a parent or another relative, and/or if you just want to know why you are a fuck up and have been suffering so senselessly all your life, buy this book. You owe it to yourself and everyone else in your family and friendship circle. You are worth it.

OK, that’s enough for today. More from The Liz List throughout the week. (Self revelation is exhausting.) The book featured at the top of this post will be up for discussion next.

No, wait, one more thing, if I may: I do want something this year for Jewmas. Please, should the spirit move you, I'd love it if you left me a nice comment when you like a post (any nasty comments will be immediately returned for a refund).