More Than Four Sides

Category: Books & Reading

  • Gender non-conformity

    The first FL2W book this month has been fascinating after I read Joy Ladin’s book Through the Door of Life earlier in the summer. That book traced the adult, individual perspective of experiencing gender dysphoria, and the author’s journey from suffering in a male body, to coming alive in a woman’s body and living openly as a…

  • Cheese…mmmmm!

    “Cheese is milk that gets around.”  The Whole Fromage, pg 49. I do love cheese, but not as much, I think, as a young woman of my acquaintance who is the daughter of a friend of mine.  The first time I really got to know her was at a showing of a film she had…

  • This Is Paradise – Island Culture

    Geography influences people.  No question. If you live in a place with harsh winters, you know the value of a good pair of boots, and bundling up in layers. But if you grow up in a temperate clime, you may never experience the pressure of external forces on your everyday choices, and may develop a…

  • Death Row

    My first year as a physician, I served as an intern in the hospital where I now work and teach, as an attending physician. One of my least favorite rotations during that intern year was the four weeks i spent in the Emergency Department, the ED. Despite the fact that my training closely tracked the…

  • Through the Door of Life

    Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey between Genders by Joy Ladin My rating: 5 of 5 stars Totally blown away by this book! In my professional live, working with HIV-infected individuals, it is not uncommon for me to encounter transgender individuals, but this book is written from the perspective of someone well-educated, literate,…

  • Peeking through the door

    If you’re “friends” with me on goodreads, you’ll know that I’m tearing through a book that I learned about through the podcast “On Being”. The book is Joy Ladin’s “Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders”. To start with the podcast, which aired June 20, and the program was titled “Gender and…

  • Allowing a community to support you

    This month, the online book club From Left to Write read Those We Love Most, and this triggered a very personal memory for me: The Nature vs Nurture question often comes to mind as I observe at how different my kids are (all three – the biologic, and the adopted), but occasionally, the idea applies…

  • Sister-strife

    I have one sister.  Only one sister. She was born when I was six years old, and, unlike my friends now, who encourage their first-born children to hold their newborn siblings within hours or days of her birth, my first memory of my sister was that I was not allowed to touch her, let alone…

  • What a ride!

    So, as promised, the second children’s book that we downloaded to review was: “Speeding Down the Spiral: An Artful Adventure” by Deborah Goodman Davis and illustrated by Sophy Naess. Verdict: we all loved it!! It’s 33 pages long, with some pages containing some complex and extended text, but our 5yo was engaged and excited about the pictures and…

  • Not the lesson on nature or biology I was expecting…

    Sometimes the cover of a book is deceptive.  And, I think this may be one reason why selecting e-books can be so challenging.  The cover of this book appealed to me, and the title suggested to me that I and my kids might learn something.  Sadly, I was disappointed.  Their response?  They liked it well…