Jordan Mattox

1. A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety Donald Hall

Hall is a poet first and prose stylist second, but I honestly I love both forms of his writing equally. Hall’s writing in this volume is considerably darker than the previous collection that I read (Essays After Eighty), but there are also moments of bright transcendence and literary gossip that make it worth the price of admission. The vulnerability in this collection about his bodily functions and needs are startling and touching in turn. I hope we could get a third collection as he approaches centenarian status. 

2. Hotel Du Lac: A Novel Anita Brookner

This is my first Brookner novel, and I am both annoyed that I am just now discovering her writing, but also excited that I have such an extensive bibliography to work through now. Brookner is a writer’s writer; I would constantly catch myself losing track of the narrative because I would get lost in the beautifully intricate syntax and diction. The story is about a reclusive writer who absconds to a Hotel in the mountains of Europe to escape relationship drama in London and meets a strange cast of characters, one of which offers a life changing proposition.  

3. An American Sickness : How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back Elisabeth Rosenthal

This may be one of the most disturbing books I have ever read. Rosenthal, a Harvard trained physician and a former NY Times reporter, documents in excruciating and horrifying detail how patients are sacrificed for profits by almost every stakeholder in the healthcare industry. From patent ploys to facility fees to five hundred dollar screws, pricing is not only not regulated, it is used to bankrupt poor Americans across our country. One of the most disturbing things I learned from the book was that the passing of the ACA forced insurance companies to use a larger percentage of insurers premiums on patient care in response to insurance companies’ pattern of spending less and less on patient care and more and more administrative costs (read executive salaries). Insurance companies then began to greenlight more and more expensive treatments in order to raise everyone’s premiums in order to make the pie bigger even though their percentage is smaller. If it sounds a bit convoluted, it’s because it is and that’s the way they want it to be: If we can’t understand it, then it makes it that much harder to push back and advocate for change.  

4. The Origins of You: How Breaking Family Patterns Can Liberate the Way We Live and Love Vienna Pharaon 

This book shows how family dynamics and patterns continue into our adult lives and create dysfunction in our adult relationships. She covers a few common wounds and how those manifest in maladaptive behaviors. The truth is that we all have wounds and if we leave unaddressed they will continue to make your life difficult. Nothing replaces working things through with a licensed therapist of course, but this book could be a way a first step in at least identifying where you need support.