Oh Crap! It’s Parkinson’s: A Rebel’s Guide to Taking Back Control of Your Life

by Sara Whittingham

I didn’t pick up this book for fun. I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in December 2025.

I wanted to learn about Parkinson’s, but I also needed something to give me hope, and the books my sister and my partner picked up at the library sounded a bit too worst-case-scenario for my current frame of mind. But at a support group for folks with early onset Parkinson’s disease (like me), someone mentioned this book, and whatever they said about it made me want to pick it up.

I’m glad I did.

Oh Crap! It’s Parkinson’s makes a compelling case for holding onto our dreams instead of giving up. It’s a message I badly needed. After my diagnosis I was wallowing in apathy. I couldn’t stop wondering how much time I have left to enjoy the outdoors, traveling, and working on my projects. How much time before I become someone who needs to be taken care of?

It turns out I have a lot of influence on the answer to that question. Parkinson’s is a disease we can fight.

Exercise is the only intervention shown to slow Parkinson’s itself. Everything else—medication, deep brain stimulation, physical therapy, speech therapy, nutrition, mindfulness, and community—are tools that help you exercise more effectively.

p. 213

We have a choice in how our Parkinson’s progresses, and we don’t know what we can accomplish after diagnosis until we try.

If you have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, I think this book should be among the first things you read.

Tripwire

by Lee Child

In which we learn that 24-year-old Jack Reacher lusted after his mentor’s 14-year-old daughter. 15 years later she still looks like a little girl and they realize they’ve been in love with each other the whole time and finally get together.

Ick.

The mystery was better than the last two Reacher stories, at least.

Killing Floor

by Lee Child

A pulpy murder mystery that doesn’t ask too much of the reader except to keep turning pages for a day or two. If you need more, keep an eye out for the occasional phrase that sounds out of place in a story full of very American characters, set in the American south, written by a British author.

I apologize in advance if this becomes a Jack Reacher blog for a while.

The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess

by Andrei Codrescu

I bought this book at the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, which I visited with my best friend. I finally started reading it almost a decade later, while spending New Years at a remote cabin with that same friend, who it turns out I’m madly in love with.

I started reading it after taking a break from a book that was sucking the joy out of reading. By page three of The Posthuman Dada Guide I remembered what I love about reading and put down the other book for good. It is clever and exuberant and silly and might even have an important lesson in there, although I’m not sure I’m smart or dumb enough to grasp it.

Don’t skip the promotional blurbs.

The Last Man

by Mary Shelley

It is tiresome.

I stopped reading after 177 pages, in the middle of chapter 12, after a lot of flowery exposition but nothing at all interesting or remotely like the plot of a dystopian science fiction novel had happened.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

by Matthew Desmond

[D]o do we believe that the right to a decent home is part of what it means to be an American?

p. 300

Evicted was published in 2016, but it doesn’t feel like much has changed since then. It relates the real-world cycle of poverty through the lens of urban housing.

I’m familiar with all of this, having volunteered with HOME Line and the Volunteer Lawyers Network for many years, and through the work I do at the Suffolk LIT Lab. But Evicted still hits hard.

The struggle faced by impoverished folks just trying to keep a roof over their heads is frustrating, heartbreaking, and unnecessary. We could fix this. It might even cost less than the status quo.

Definitely worth a read. Just don’t expect a happy ending.

[T]he presence of children in the household almost tripled attendance odds of receiving an eviction judgment.

p. 332

Down & Delirious in Mexico City: the Aztec Metropolis in the Twenty-First Century

by Daniel Hernandez

I finished Down & Delirious in Mexico City as our plane began its descent into Mexico City, eager for my own taste of the modern culture I’d been reading about.

After spending a week in Mexico City, I didn’t recognize much of what I read in this book, except when we visited the El Chopo market on Saturday morning. So I guess I would not recommend Down & Delirious as an introduction to Mexico City culture. But it’s not the author’s fault. A whole lot has happened since it was published in 2011 (the stories are mostly from 2007–8). But it is definitely an interesting snapshot of a time and place from Hernandez’s point of view.

And I would recommend visiting Mexico City. We had a great trip and are already planning the next one!