Monthly Archives: February 2018

“I was unable to decide what it was that I found so irritating about her goodness.”

Posted on February 22, 2018 by Kate Stover

Wilmet, the main character in Barbara Pym’s novel A Glass of Blessings, after spending a frustrating afternoon with do-gooder Mary, observes that wicked people were often much more fun to be with. I believe that if Wilmet were a real … Continue reading →

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“Students who have experienced trauma and stress are not a small subpopulation of students.”

Posted on February 15, 2018 by Kate Stover

This book, like last week’s book, discusses “Adverse Childhood Experiences,” which is a set of 10 questions that assess the level of trauma kids experience.  These questions focus on exposure to mental illness, addiction, abandonment, hunger, physical abuse or danger, … Continue reading →

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“Professor Andrew Skull of Princeton has said attributing depression to low serotonin is ‘deeply misleading and unscientific.’”

Posted on February 8, 2018 by Kate Stover

Every once in a while, a book touches a nerve. This one certainly did when a British newspaper published excerpts from Lost Connections in an article titled “Is everything you think you know about depression wrong?” A neuroscientist – who … Continue reading →

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“Social psychologists have found that we are overconfident, sometimes to the point of delusion, about our ability to infer what other people think . . .”

Posted on February 1, 2018 by Kate Stover

It’s easy to recognize “bad” writing, but hard to identify the cause of bad writing. Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker argues that the problem starts when writers make incorrect assumptions about their readers’ knowledge and vocabulary. Writers who are experts, … Continue reading →

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