Cognative Behavioural Therapy CBT Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Cognative Behavioral Therapy CBT - Essay Example What is CBT? There are a few sorts of intellectual conduct treatment acclaimed by the National Association of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapists, for example, ‘dialectic conduct treatment, reasonable living and sound conduct treatment, or discerning emotive conduct therapy’ (Dryden 2002, p. 18). The embodiment of these methodologies is to cause a patient to know about triggers of his dependence. It is applicable to assist patients with developing new techniques for managing focusing on circumstances and adapting to addictions, consciously. During the procedure of an utilitarian investigation, specialists causes the someone who is addicted people to characterize their inward contemplations and thoughts that happen within them during the procedure of medications/liquor utilization or after it. There is another alternative for specialists to build up a conduct model applicable to the dependent people. Instructors ought to have the option to recognize unsafe circumstances when backslide may happen. For this situation it is pertinent to create aptitudes that may assist a patient with overcoming this hazard. With this respect, it is conceivable to make bunch meetings and show customers ability components by methods for â€Å"roleplaying and genuine practice practices that will empower them to apply these aptitudes to meet their own needs† (Marlatt 2007, p. 32). Customers ought to be guaranteed in accepting useful input from advisors. An enduring conduct change may happen when self-adequacy desires are adjusted. CBT is effective for customers who are effectively engaged with treatment process and are eager to be answerable for their future maltreatment anticipation. For this situation, during CBT a customer gets sound practices rather than maladaptive propensities: â€Å"As the individual experiences a procedure of deconditioning, intellectual rebuilding, and abilities securing, the person in question can start to acknowledge more prominent obligatio n regarding changing the conduct. This is simply the pith of the control or self-administration approach: one can figure out how to escape from the grip of the endless loop of dependence, paying little heed to how the propensity design was initially acquired† (Rasmussen 2000, p. 116). It is significant for advisors to rehash required areas of manual before every meeting and feature fundamental focuses, which must be secured during an instructional course. It is significant for a customer to get notification from advisor a characteristic discourse and not simply tuning in to manual refering to. During every meeting, an instructor ought to illuminate the customer about the most significant issues for his day by day life. Now, client’s data and models from his life ought to be utilized by advisors as illustrative material. In this way, CBT is viable in the event that pertinent measures are created by a specialist. So as to build up an important treatment technique, it is i mportant to direct in excess of 20 reported controlled preliminary tests, if to allude to information of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (The Official Website of the Institute). As a rule, it is likewise proficient to join CBT with bunch bolster meetings and different sorts of help procedures. It is likewise critical to build up an adaptable way to deal with CBT treatment improvement. An adaptable methodology suggests an individual improvement of CBT for each patient. The primary preferred position for CBT as a treatment for patients with addictions is its brief timeframe execution and a customized treatment. Presently, CBT is generally utilized for patients with no insane issue, or the individuals who experience the ill effects of bipolar issue. A move to subjective

Don’t Worry, Be Happy Essay

â€Å"It will before long pass whatever it is. Don’t stress, be cheerful. † These are the epic expressions of Bobby McFerrin from the tune: Don’t stress, be upbeat. In today’s way of life our general public flourishes off of each other’s cynicism. We are in a steady winding of humankind because of the reality we don’t look to the better side of the real world however to the appalling substance of our cynical lives. Our ways of life rotate the torment and misfortune we experience, we have to take up the or if nothing else handle the ideas that lie in the tunes of Bobby McFerrin’s hit single. The importance, history and significance to today’s society will be dissected. Don’t stress, be glad is a melody discharged by Bobby McFerrin related to the film Cocktail in 1988. The melody is a universal feel great song of devotion for audience members all around. It centers around the accentuation of looking past your difficulties and staying positive. Regardless of whether it be materialistic or passionate, one can't leave themselves alone cut down in light of the fact that as a general public we are all in a manner or another associated and experience the toppling domino impact causing your companions likewise to come smashing down. As indicated by an examination directed by the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Texas Medical Branch, 96 sets of school flat mates during 2 evaluation meetings. The flat mates of discouraged objective understudies turned out to be increasingly discouraged themselves through the span of the investigation. Corresponding to the melody when you stress your face will glare and that will cut everyone down. Likewise McFerrin even proposals to enable the audience to look for joy, representing that there is in every case some expectation and the audience need just to connect and look for it to accomplish it. All in all the tune is advising the audience to advance the constructive instead of the pessimistic in one’s life, an idea that the individuals of today need.

Avoiding the Passive Voice in Spanish

Evading the Passive Voice in Spanish One of the most well-known slip-ups made by starting Spanish understudies who have English as a first language is to abuse detached action word structures. Sentences with uninvolved action words are basic in English, yet in Spanish they arent utilized particularly in ordinary discourse. Key Takeaways: Spanish Passive Voice Albeit Spanish has a uninvolved voice, it isnt utilized as much in Spanish for what it's worth in English.One option in contrast to the inactive voice is to transform it into the dynamic voice. Either unequivocally express the subject or utilize an action word that permits the subject to be inferred instead of stated.Another regular option is to utilize reflexive action words. What Is the Passive Voice? The latent voice includes a sentence development where the entertainer of the activity isnt expressed, and in which the activity is shown by a type of to be (ser in Spanish) trailed by a past participle, and in which the subject of the sentence is the one followed up on. In the event that that isnt clear, take a gander at a straightforward model in English: Katrina was captured. For this situation, it isnt determined who played out the capture, and the individual captured is the subject of the sentence. A similar sentence could be communicated in Spanish utilizing the uninvolved voice: Katrina fue arrestada. Be that as it may, not every single English sentence utilizing the uninvolved voice can be converted into Spanish a similar way. Take, for instance, Jose was sent a bundle. Placing that sentence in an inactive structure in Spanish doesnt work. Josã © fue enviado un paquete just doesnt bode well in Spanish; the audience may think from the outset that Jose was sent some place. Additionally, Spanish has many action words that basically arent utilized in the uninvolved structure. Furthermore, still others arent utilized inactively in discourse, despite the fact that you may see them in journalistic composition or in things deciphered from English. At the end of the day, on the off chance that you need to decipher an English sentence utilizing a uninvolved action word to Spanish, youre generally best off thinking of an alternate way. Options in contrast to the Passive Voice How, at that point, should such sentences be communicated in Spanish? There are two regular ways: reevaluating the sentence in the dynamic voice and utilizing a reflexive action word. Reworking in the inactive voice: Probably the least demanding approach to decipher most latent sentences in Spanish is to transform them to the dynamic voice. As it were, make the subject of the detached sentence the object of an action word. One purpose behind utilizing a latent voice is to abstain from saying who is playing out the activity. Luckily, in Spanish, action words can remain solitary without a subject, so you dont fundamentally need to make sense of who is playing out the activity to change the sentence. A few models: Latent English: Roberto was arrested.Active Spanish: Arrestaron a Roberto. (They captured Roberto.)Passive English: The book was purchased by Ken.Active Spanish: Ken comprã ³ el libro. (Ken purchased the book.)Passive English: The movies was shut down at 9.Active Spanish: Cerrã ³ la taquilla a las nueve. Or on the other hand, cerraron la taquilla a las nueve. (He/she shut the movies at 9, or they shut the movies at 9.) Utilizing reflexive verbs: The second basic manner by which you can stay away from the inactive voice in Spanish is to utilize a reflexive action word. A reflexive action word is one in which the action word follows up regarding the matter. A model in English: I saw myself in the mirror. (Me vi en el espejo.) In Spanish, where the setting doesnt show in any case, such sentences are regularly comprehended similarly as are aloof sentences in English. Furthermore, similar to aloof structures, such sentences dont plainly show who is doing the activity. A few models: Aloof English: Apples (are) sold here.Reflexive Spanish: Aquà ­ se venden las manzanas. (Actually, apples sell themselves here.)Passive English: The movies was shut down at 9.Reflexive Spanish: Se cerrã ³ la taquilla a las nueve. (Truly, the movies shut itself at 9.)Passive English: A hack isnt treated with antibiotics.Reflexive Spanish: La tos no se trata con antibiã ³ticos. (Truly, the hack doesnt treat itself with anti-microbials.) A portion of the example sentences in this exercise could be justifiably meant Spanish in the uninvolved structure. Be that as it may, local Spanish speakers dont typically talk that way, so the interpretations on this page would normally stable increasingly common. Clearly, you wouldnt utilize the exacting interpretations above in making an interpretation of such Spanish sentences to English! In any case, such sentence developments are exceptionally normal in Spanish, so you shouldnt avoid utilizing them.

Movie: The Last Supper Essay -- Last Supper Film Movie Movies Essays

Film: The Last Supper      The Last Supper, by Dan Rosen, apparently sets out to take on profound subjects in a vein of wry amusingness. Yet, what it says is that nonconformists, in light of their conviction, reserve the privilege to pass capital punishments on rivals. The story was diverting now and again and there was some satire in the film, yet it didn't generally go anyplace. The most well known entertainer in the film was Mark Harmon, and they appeared him for around one moment, before he got slaughtered.      The film happens in Ames, Iowa. The film is around five liberal graduate understudies living respectively, (three guys and two females) that appreciate welcoming distinctive visitor over each Sunday for supper. The understudies enjoy their feeling of prevalence by welcoming those that they see as being less illuminated. They appreciate having various kinds of conversations managing all various kinds of subjects. Their first visitor that we see, winds up being a trucker who gives one of the five understudies a lift home since his vehicle broke down. They welcome the trucker in to eat, on the grounds that they had an additional seat at the table and their initially welcomed visitor couldn't make it for supper. The trucker winds up being an enemy of Semite and he is additionally an ex-marine. Right away after the trucker takes a seat at the table to eat he begins calling attention to the five understudies that he abhors Jews and that they generally attempt to deal down anything that they purchase. Each of the five of the understudies are staggered by the comments that the trucker is making, particularly one of the understudies that is Jewish. They all get into a warmed contention and the trucker runs wild; what's more, he gets the Jewish understudy and puts a blade to his throat. They are all stunned by this and they quickly endeavor to quiet the trucker down. He discharges the Jewish understudy and afterward breaks an arm of another understudy who was attempting to free the Jewish understudy. The Jewish understudy gets a butcher's blade and betrays the trucker, which in the long run murders the trucker. At this point the film gets a bit. They all start to consider about how to manage the body. They settle on covering the body in the back yard. They said it would cause a great deal of issues on the off chance that they reached the police. They all concurred right now that murdering the trucker was just useful for society. After they had covered the trucker they all plunked down and the... ...marks drink and they all kick the bucket. Nicola Machiavelli had a fascinating hypothesis about his conviction with regards to having power, Using any and all means. That is actually what these liberal understudies did with the end goal for them to have satisfaction. I believe that in the public arena most of us attempt to follow the Machiavellian hypothesis on attempting to do anything and everything conceivable with the goal for ourselves to endure. Machiavelli trusted that, by helping the Prince rule all the more viably, he may assist Italy with accomplishing the significance he sought after. Machiavelli accepted that he didn't should be selected pioneer to run things in Italy in those days. These understudy are the equivalent, they accepted that through slaughtering off these couple of individuals that they thought were a risk to society, that it was going to have any kind of effect in our legislature. Perhaps it really is great that Machiavelli wasn't the genuine pioneer of Italy, in such a case that these five liberal understudies were pioneers of this nation we would have only mayhem. I imagine that this film most likely would have made more cash as a b ook and not a film. Sources Cited Nicola Machiavelli data was situated on the Internet at http://rhf.bradley.edu/~liberty/mach.html.

Riot Roundup The Best Books We Read In December 2018

Riot Roundup The Best Books We Read In December 2018 Wondering which were the best books our contributors read in the last month of 2018? If so, lucky day to you, because we asked and Rioters told us what they read and loved in December. We have food memoirs, short essays, poetic YA, literary fiction, a hug to your soul and so much more! Theres old, and new, and not even published yet. And if you want to share your favorite read from December pop into our comments and tell usâ€"were always here to talk about more books! The Adults by Caroline Hulse The awkwardness of two ex-spouses spending the holidays (of all things!) with their daughter (and her snarky imaginary rabbit friend), and respective new partners is so palpable in this book that readers will have a hard time keeping a straight face. This compelling debut provides just the right amount of comic relief in its portrayal of tense family gatherings, capping off with a side of a whodunit mystery when one of them gets injured, which unspools as more of their issues surface. Hulse managed to craft terribly flawed characters who are, in fact, so likable and relatable in their issues that it’s hard to look away from the holes they keep digging themselves into. The irony of the title will not be lost on readers. â€"Kamrun Nesa After the Winter by Guadalupe Nettel, translated by Rosalind Harvey I really loved the characters in After the Winterâ€"they are complicated and sometimes incredibly unlikable, but also richly drawn and fascinating, even when it’s difficult to be in their minds. The story follows Cecilia as she tries to find a place for herself in Paris, and Claudio as he broods over his life in New York City. We know their paths are going to converge somehow, and watching it happen is thoroughly absorbing. Nettel’s evocation of Paris is particularly memorable. â€"Rebecca Hussey The Art of Escaping by Erin Callahan This book reminded me why I love the YA genre so much. It has explorations about who you are, pain, the realities of growing up, and a spectrum of parents. “Girl Scout,” aka Mattie, gets into escapology during a summer when her best friend has gone to a specialized school and the guidance counselor has hinted that Mattie needs extracurriculars to pad her college applications. She decides to bang on the door of Miyu, the daughter of a famous escapologist, and ask for training. Miyu eventually agrees, on the condition that Mattie runs errands for her, does the training without question, and performs. On stage. Unfortunately, the day that Mattie does a death-defying escape, a high school jock named Will spots her at the show. Just as she’s worried that he’ll out her on social media, before she can even tell her best friend Stella, he responds with a secret of his own. And that starts a strange friendship, as well as making Mattie an interesting college candidate. The book is ver y open about how growing up is hard, and how we have to own our mistakes. â€"Priya Sridhar Becoming by Michelle Obama By this point I’m sure Becoming has already flooded your timelines and dashboards. I mean, the memoir sold more copies in 2018 than any other book in the U.S and it’s well deserved. Becoming is everything I hoped it would be and more. Not only do we get a glimpse of Ms. Obama’s life inside the White House, but majority of the books focuses on her life before becoming First Lady. What I loved about this book is that she doesn’t shy away from anything: she told the world about the doubts she had with her career, her troubles with getting pregnant, troubles in her marriage, and how she reacted to the “bullies” talking about her appearance. She even took a few jabs at Donald Trump. Her story moved me, especially as a young, black woman living in America. Not to mention that the writing is breathtaking. Becoming made me fall in love with Michelle Obama all over again. â€"Yaasmeen Piper The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty Michael W. Twitty is a food historian who went on a journey to learn about the food of his enslaved ancestors in the southern U.S., deemed his “Southern Discomfort” project. In this book, he explores the history of southern cuisine, particularly the roles slavery, African roots, and Native American culture played in its development. Food is more than just sustenance; it’s personal and political history, it’s ancestry, it’s inherited trauma and grief. Twitty’s exploration of his own family history and the history of the food we eat will forever change your perspective on soul food. â€"Susie Dumond Cringeworthy: A Theory of Awkwardness by Melissa Dahl This book is a gift for anyone who’s ever found themselves saying, “Ugh, why am I so awkward?” which is to say me and all of my friends. Dahl examines awkwardness and cringe as social and psychological concepts. In the name of research, she put herself into a number of potentially embarrassing situations, such as auditioning for Mortified (a comedy show in which people read from their middle school diaries) and attending a weekend training event called “Unlearning Racism” (which teaches participants how to have those important, if uncomfortable conversations about race and privilege). Cringeworthy is a fun and #relevant read, but I also learned a lot from Dahl’s analysis. She talks about the “irreconcilable gap” between how we see ourselves and how others see us, explains how awkwardness can often be a sign that we’ve reached our “growing edge,” and discusses how empathy can either be a force that leads to contempt or compassion. In the end, Cringeworthy makes t he case that we should feel empoweredâ€"rather than paralyzedâ€"by our awkwardness, an insight I was grateful to hear. â€"Emily Polson The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray (Berkley, Feb. 19, 2019) I wasn’t sure if I would like this book when I started because it’s told from multiple viewpoints; each section has a different narratorâ€"but it turns out that I don’t think there’s any other way to tell this story. I finished this in two days because I just kept wanting to read more. When Althea and Proctor Butler, prominent members of a community, are arrested, Althea’s sisters Viola and Lillian are shocked. The community is furious, and the family is disgraced. The two sisters pair up to take care of Althea and Proctor’s daughters, and the story of what happened slowly unfolds from each person’s point of view. Past, present, and future keep bumping up against each other as each person tries to navigate the current events and what it means to be family, forgive, forget, and rebuild. There are so many layers to this gorgeous story, and I kept wanting even more about each character, each time the POV switched. I haven’t read a book like this in a long time. â€"Jaime Herndon Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas This is a short book that packs a punch. In a series of short essays, Vargas, an activist and journalist who came to the U.S. from the Philippines as a child, delves into the everyday struggles, fears, triumphs, injustices, and ordinary specifics of living as undocumented person in the U.S. Though the essays range widely, covering both personal experience and larger political movements and happenings, my favorites were the essays where he simply talks about what it feels like to be an undocumented person. What it’s like trying to get a job or a driver’s license, to get on a fight, report a story as a journalist, or drive to a border town. Vargas’s writing is clear, eloquent, and full of anger and heart. This is a must-read in today’s America. â€"Laura Sackton Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry Family Matters is somehow both piercingly specific (as a story of a Parsi family living in Mumbai and straddling different financial categories) and universally relatable (for its themes of duty, aging, and the complexities of family dynamics). It’s beautifully written, and moving without any unearned sentimentality. â€"Christine Ro Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir by Kai Cheng Thom It’s hard to prepare yourself for the experience that is Fierce Femmes, but I knew this going in. After all, the title is epic, and the pastel cover is littered with high heels, mermaid tails, daggers, and even swarms of bees. It just screams, “THIS IS UNLIKE ANYTHING ELSE YOU WILL EVER READ.” And it was. Not your typical coming-of-age story, the narrator is a young Asian trans girl who also happens to be a pathological liar with a taste for blood and violence. The plot, which follows her journey to find both a true home and a true family, is filled with flourishes of magical realism that somehow seem real. And the lyricism of the language had me transfixed. I’m not making any sense. But that’s okay. It’s something that must be read to be understood. â€"Steph Auteri Less by Andrew Sean Greer I’d picked this book up so many times in bookshops and almost bought it, so I was glad when my book club chose it and gave me an excuse to take the plunge. It doesn’t sound like much on paperâ€"minor novelist gets his heart broken, decides to travel far away to avoid the person who broke itâ€"and in the hands of a lesser writer, it could have been insufferable. But Greer is not a lesser writer. Greer’s character is thoroughly flawed but somehow endearing, and the author’s observations on human nature, love, the literary world, and the joys and challenges of travel are conveyed in wonderful but unpretentious prose. Highly recommend! â€"Claire Handscombe Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through The Science And Culture Of Pregnancy by Angela Garbes I wish this book had existed during my pregnancy, but even though I’m a mom with a one-year-old, I found this so interesting and learned so much. It’s a mix of pop science and memoir. Each chapter follows a specific aspect of pregnancy and the first yearâ€"miscarriage, placentas, labor, breastfeeding, etc.â€"and Garbes tells her personal story of these aspects and gives researched, scientific details about what’s actually going on. You know, all that stuff nobody bothers to tell pregnant parents. I plan to throw this at all expecting parents in the future. But even if you’re not an expecting parent or even ever plan to be, there are lots of super interesting bodily facts in this book that if you like health pop science, you’ll find fascinating. â€"Margaret Kingsbury Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney On New Year’s Eve in 1984, Lillian Boxfish takes a walk through New York City, heading to a party. Along the way, she meets all kinds of people, treating them with grace, curiosity, and kindness. Passing landmarks of her 85 years of life, she muses about how she came to be where she is. She reminisces about her time as the highest-paid advertising woman, and the marriage and motherhood and divorce that derailed her career. She remembers her breakdown and the walks through gardens she was permitted while she recovered. She’s a pistol. When I picked this up for the Read Harder challenge, I was planning on just cruising through to meet a challenge. But this book is so good. I can’t stop thinking about it, and how I want to be Lillian Boxfish when I grow up. â€"Ashley Holstrom Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng I adored Ng’s first book, Everything I Never Told You, and was really excited for this one to come out. Yet, I let it sit on my bookshelf for over a year. I finally picked it up this month and was not disappointed. A searing character driven story of family, identity, and motherhood, Little Fires Everywhere had me glued to the page. The omniscient narrator explores the little mysteries of who these characters really are and where they come from while we guess who really set those little fires everywhere. This one definitely made my top ten reads of the year. â€"Beth O’Brien The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya, translated by Asa Yoneda I loved this collection of quirky and wonderful stories by Yukiko Motoya and translated by Asa Yoneda. Winner of the Akutagawa Prize and the Kenzaburo Oe Prize, Motoya is a magicianâ€"she takes mundane, daily life and just twists it into strange and fantastic tales. In these stories, a newlywed notices that her husband’s features are sneakily sliding around his face to match hers, umbrellas are more than they seem, women are challenging their boyfriends to duels, and you might want to reconsider dating the girl next door. I’d recommend this collection to fans of Hiromi Kawakami and Carmen Maria Machado. â€"Pierce Alquist New Erotica for Feminists: Satirical Fantasies of Love, Lust, and Equal Pay by Caitlin Kunkel, Brooke Preston, Fiona Taylor and Carrie Wittmer I have been pushing this book on people like I wrote the thing! Based on a viral McSweeney’s piece of the same name, its a collection of quick one to two page satirical musings on what turns us feminists onâ€"you know, stuff like equal pay, respect, autonomy over our bodies. It is chock full ogems: one bit about Tom Hardy delivering a fridge full of free La Croix wearing a t-shirt that says WILD FEMINIST, another about meeting a guy on Tinder whose invents a serum to make RBG immortal. My favorite though? Ed Sheeran releases a new single called Im in Love with Your Body of Work, about Agatha Christie. It sells nine million copies (more than there are people on the earth). So much yes. â€"Vanessa Diaz The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday, July 16, 2019) Get ready for Whitehead to break your heart again with this slim but powerful novel about two boys who are sent to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. Whitehead once again deftly lays open a dark chapter in American history for all to see, and we are better for it. Now I know what you’re thinking: “But, Liberty, I still haven’t recovered from The Underground Railroad!” Me either! And that’s a good thing! It shows you what an amazing writer Whitehead is, to be able to put words together that keep you feeling feels long after you’ve turned the last page. I promise this one will do that very thing too. And you still have seven months to prepare. â€"Liberty Hardy Not My Father’s Son by Alan Cumming Alan Cumming expertly played King James on Doctor Who a few weeks ago, leading me to rewatch my beloved Tin Man, to binge his new show Instinct, and finally to where these things always lead me: looking up audiobooks. I came across Not My Father’s Son on Scribd and listened to the whole book in one sitting. The book alternates between Cumming’s childhood experiences with violence and abuse and his present-day involvement filming the show Who Do You Think You Are? with the hope of solving the family mystery of his maternal grandfather’s disappearance. Cumming’s narration is beautiful and honest. I was particularly moved by his remembrance of a moment he spent communing with his grandmother’s spirit after her passing. â€"Dana Lee Our Year of Maybe by Rachel Lynn Solomon (Simon Pulse, January 15, 2019) I’ve admittedly been a bit of a reading slump lately and this snapped me out of it with the force of a hurricane. Sophie and Peter are neighbors and best friends, so when Peter needs a kidney transplant, Sophie doesn’t even hesitate to volunteer. Secretly, she hopes that this will only bring them closer together and just *maybe* he’ll see her as more than a friend. People, I SOBBED. Friends-to-lovers romances are my absolute favorite, throw in Peter’s growing attraction to a cute boy in a band, the fact that Sophie is a dancer, and Solomon’s beautiful writing…it all makes for an amazing sophomore release. Any book that makes snot stream down my face deserves all the stars. â€"Kate Krug The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo I listened to this book in a single morning. I don’t typically read on audiobook, as I find myself too easily distracted, but hearing the author’s words exactly as she intended them was a magical experience. And this book is phenomenal! I don’t know when I’ve rooted so hard for a protagonist (okay, probably the last book I read). I will be making an effort to incorporate more audiobooks and more poetry to my 2019 reading, starting with Ibi Zobois  Pride,  also read by Acevedo. â€"Annika Barranti Klein The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith I’m likely one of the last people in the world to read this book, especially after the Todd Haynes adaptation Carol was released in 2015. But you know, better late than never. If you’ve somehow been living under a rock and have no idea what this novel is about, The Price of Salt is a semi-autobiographical novel set in the 1950s about a young woman who falls in love with an elegant but troubled older woman. Highsmith is a gifted writer who I admire most for her descriptive language that gives you an entryway into the psyche of her characters. This novel does an amazing job, too, of exploring gender and the ways in which many men incorrectly assume ownership over women (looking at you, Richard). I feel like this is an issue most women are acutely aware of in their everyday lives, but Highsmith illustrates the problem perfectly. â€"Emily Martin The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre It’s a nonfiction book that unfolds like a thriller. The book tells the story of one of the most important spies of the Cold War, Oleg Gordievsky. He rose through the ranks of the Soviet Union’s fearsome security service, the KGB, to become its most senior spy in London. Only he was a double agent who recruited by MI6, the British secret service. The book tells one of the greatest Cold War espionage stories in nail-biting pace, giving you a fly on the wall view of how it all unfolded. â€"Kareem Shaheen So Lucky by Nicola Griffith Perhaps unbelievably, this was my first Nicola Griffith book. It certainly won’t be my last. This short, autobiographical novel was not quite what I expected. I thought it was going to be a lot more speculative (as I had it in my mind Griffith was mainly an SF writer) than it actually was. Its actually mostly a realist, visceral tale of a womans first year after being diagnosed with MS, specifically focused as a character study of the protagonist Mara. I loved how full of anger she wasâ€"at having MS, at the casually ableist world she abruptly collides with, at violence against people with disabilities and/or womenâ€"and how Griffith obviously wasnt concerned with making her likable. Her relationships with the women in her life felt very real to me, both her (ex-)wife she has just got divorced from but is still close with (how lesbian!) and her old friend who shes had sexual chemistry with for years. So Lucky is unlike any other book I’ve ever read. â€"Casey Stepaniuk There’s Something About Sweetie by Sandhya Menon (Simon Pulse, May 14, 2019) I will read anything Menon writes, since she’s consistently brought delightful girls fighting for themselves into my life. If you’ve already met Dimple and Twinkle and love Menon’s previous books, this is worth your pre-buy dollars. This time around we get to know Sweetie Nair, a track star who finds herself secretly dating Ashish Patelâ€"yes, Rishi’s younger brother from When Dimple Met Rishi! It’s only a secret from Sweetie’s parents, though, since her mother forbade them dating because she thinks Sweetie needs to be protected until she’s no longer fat. Sweetie knows there is nothing wrong with her body but doesn’t know how to challenge her mother or make her realize it. Until now, when she ventures into her first rebellion by secretly dating Ashish. But with his own baggage will this young love even have a chance? I love having girls I root for, great friendships, and getting to see bilingual families and their customs and traditions. Anytime your soul needs a hug, pick up a Sandhya Menon novel. â€"Jamie Canavés