Here are 100 books that Whalesong fans have personally recommended if you like
Whalesong.
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I love any book that carries me away into a different world, allows me to feel new possibilities, and makes me think. That is what I call magic. This creative magic has filled all aspects of my life. In addition to writing, I am a theatre artist, a mentor, an advocate for women and girls, and a creativity facilitator. In other words, I believe in the creative powers of people to make a more just and enriched world. My goal is always to inspire others to find their own voice, and to use it to make a difference. That’s what guides my reading, and my book recommendations. Enjoy!
This might seem like a strange book to include in a list that has a touch of magic, but in many ways this book sparked my first novel. I am a firm believer that women can (and should) do whatever they want. I also accept that there are differences between men and women based on things like brain structure and biology. These differences are not limitations, but rather things to celebrate.
As I read, I began to ask questions. What if women have more access to their brain’s abilities than men? What if our connection with creative power were seen as more important than physical strength? My characters became my answers. That, in itself, is magic—because magic is simply answering the question “what if,” with “anything is possible.”
Since Dr. Brizendine wrote The Female Brain ten years ago, the response has been overwhelming. This New York Times bestseller has been translated into more than thirty languages, has sold nearly a million copies between editions, and has most recently inspired a romantic comedy starring Whitney Cummings and Sofia Vergara. And its profound scientific understanding of the nature and experience of the female brain continues to guide women as they pass through life stages, to help men better understand the girls and women in their lives, and to illuminate the delicate emotional machinery of a love relationship.
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I use the knowledge I’ve gained as an executive coach for 14 years and with a master’s degree in organizational communication to help organizations and individuals more effectively communicate with and engage others in the workplace and in their personal lives. I actively practice what I preach and constantly look for new information to help myself and others become better leaders, managers, and people.
This book is filled with great ideas about how to avoid distraction, how to avoid doing too much so our cognitive abilities are at a maximum, how to use mindfulness to more easily tap into your emotional states, and how to set goals that are more likely to be accomplished. There are so many useful tidbits in this book. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to be more productive and efficient.
A researcher and consultant burrows deep inside the heads of one modern two-career couple to examine how each partner processes the workday-revealing how a more nuanced understanding of the brain can allow us to better organize, prioritize, recall, and sort our daily lives.
Emily and Paul are the parents of two young children, and professionals with different careers. Emily is the newly promoted vice president of marketing at a large corporation; Paul works from home or from clients' offices as an independent IT consultant. Their days are filled with a bewildering blizzard of emails, phone calls, more emails, meetings, projects,…
I have always been fascinated by how the human mind adapts, both individually and through history. Julian Jaynes, who taught me while pursuing my PhD in anthropology from Princeton University, provided me with a theoretical framework to explore how the personal and cultural configure each other. Jaynes inspired me to publish on psychotherapeutics, the history of Japanese psychology, linguistics, education, nationalism, the origin of religion, the Bible, ancient Egypt, popular culture, and changing definitions of self, time, and space. My interests have taken me to China and Japan, where I lived for many years. I taught at the University of Arizona and currently work as a licensed mental health counselor.
Julian Jaynes solved the mystery of hypnosis by linking it to what he called the “general bicameral paradigm.” By taking a tour through cognitive psychology, anthropology, ethnology, and neuroscience, this book contextualizes hypnosis from the perspective of interpersonal communication and the role of innate rhythms.
It also shows how hypnosis operates using metaphor, another important topic theorized by Jaynes.
Hypnosis has recently experienced a surge of popularity in the scientific community and the general public and is currently being used to deal with a wide range of disorders. IN this elegantly written book, Dr. Peter Brown draws on the latest developments in cognitive psychology, anthropology, ethnology, and neuroscience to offer a new explanation for how hypnosis works and how it can be applied.
Brown argues that the ability to hypnotized and be hypnotized is closely related to brain functions that are uniquely human-especially to our ability to communicate with others. He begins by looking at the way communication…
The Everlasting Life of Charlie Wall
by
Paul Wilborn,
It’s 1985, and Ronald Armstrong, known in the magic mushroom trade as “Trip,” takes a “sober” job as a driver for a retired Tampa mobster. His boss, Charlie Wall, has survived four attempts on his life, the last one in 1955. When Charlie falls into depression, Trip rebuilds his boss’…
I am passionate about aging in America. I was honored to be in health care for over 40 years; I was a leader in home care and hospital systems and was there at the birth of the assisted living movement, now so respected. I specialized in Alzheimer’s as it is the least understood common disease of seniors, one that evokes misery if not handled properly. I started the first Alzheimer’s training for homecare aides in the 90’s. In positions such as Senior Vice President of Northbridge Companies and President of Northbridge Advisory Services, I became an advocate for dementia education, advanced care, and programs for the financially challenged.
In my research on Alzheimer’s, I was amazed at how many ways there are to modify your risk of having Alzheimer’s or reduce the severity of the symptoms. It became clear that lifestyle changes were key to controlling our own health regarding keeping our brain healthy and our body in sync with it.
I wanted to take my knowledge of food beyond just the familiar recommendations of following a Mediterranean diet and eating less meat. I found this book did indeed bring an understanding of not just long-term effects but also how to eat for more immediate relief of depression, poor sleeping habits, lack of energy, and so forth.
As I continued researching the role diet plays, I found this book by a respected Harvard-trained doctor who combines her nutrition research with her experience as a professional chef with her degree in Psychiatry. This combination allows her to inform and…
Eat for your mental health and learn the fascinating science behind nutrition with this "must-read" guide from an expert psychiatrist (Amy Myers, MD).
Did you know that blueberries can help you cope with the aftereffects of trauma? That salami can cause depression, or that boosting Vitamin D intake can help treat anxiety? When it comes to diet, most people's concerns involve weight loss, fitness, cardiac health, and longevity. But what we eat affects more than our bodies; it also affects our brains. And recent studies have shown that diet can have a profound impact on mental health conditions ranging from…
I'm an herbalist dedicated to teaching people practical approaches to herbalism and creativity. I do this on my Substack, in clinical intakes with my herbal clients (I work mostly with artists), and in workshops and classes. My life and herbal practice revolve around food. I’ve cooked professionally for over 15 years, worked on organic farms, and grow food at home for myself and pollinators in my region. The best bet we have at caring for ourselves and our communities is through the food we grow, buy, prepare, and eat. I like to say most people are already doing herbalism, they just don’t know it's happening in their kitchens at breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day.
Dr. Annie Fenn is a board-certified ob-gyn and chef who focused her work on degenerative brain disease after her mother’s dementia diagnosis.
I worked as part of the food styling team on this book in Idaho and Wyoming cooking and eating from Annie’s garden and local farmer’s markets. Her Italian-American heritage shines throughout her book, organized by foods with neuroprotective properties, most of them plants. Each of the 100 recipes are brain healthy, flavorful, and deeply satiating.
The book is educational and hopeful: she sites study after study that found the number one dementia-reducing behavior is a brain-healthy dietary pattern. As an herbalist and someone who recently lost a loved one to Alzheimer’s, I know compliance is key.
We are all more likely to eat a brain health diet if it’s flavorful, satiating, and adaptable to our social lives and familial traditions. Annie is…
A physician and chef identifies the top ten brain-smart ingredients and shows that eating to maintain brain health is easy, accessible, delicious, and necessary for everyone. The foods we choose to eat (or not) sit at the core of the Alzheimer's epidemic. In The Brain Health Kitchen, readers will learn exactly how making the right choices about the foods we select and cook, and how we eat them, can keep our brains younger, sharper, more vibrant, and much less prone to dementia. Scientific studies show that there are ten foods with powerful neuroprotective properties. None should come as a surprise-leafy…
I am an author, science journalist, and storyteller. I worked for the PBS science series NOVA for many years, producing documentaries, podcasts, digital video series, and interactive games on everything from asteroids to human origins to art restoration. But I am particularly fascinated by strange brains, which is why I wrote my first book, The Memory Thief. I am currently at work on a second book about a different neurological disorder.
Neuroscientist György Buzsáki believes that focusing on human mental constructs (imagination, attention, instinct) gets in the way of seeing things from the brain’s perspective. Rather than being a blank slate waiting for experiences to etch new pictures onto it, the brain comes equipped with a huge reserve of built-in patterns, each one created by connected groups of neurons. In his view, memory formation is a game of matching those patterns with meaningful experiences so that your brain can better predict the future and the consequences of your actions. I walked away from this book with my brain very much changed.
Gyoergy Buzsaki's The Brain from Inside Out examines why the outside-in framework for understanding brain function have become stagnate and points to new directions for understanding neural function. Building upon the success of Rhythms of the Brain, Professor Buzsaki presents the brain as a foretelling device that interacts with its environment through action and the examination of action's consequence. Instead of a brain that represents the world, consider that it is initially filled with nonsense patterns, all of which are gibberish until grounded by action-based interactions. By matching these nonsense "words" to the outcomes of action, they acquire meaning.
Delve into this internationally best-selling series, now complete! A fast paced laugh-out-loud mix of Urban Fantasy and Mystery.
I can tell when you’re lying. Every. Single. Time. I’m Jinx, a PI hired to find a missing university student, I hope to find her propped up at a bar–yet my gut…
I’m a law professor who has been teaching and writing in the area of intellectual property for 20 years. As my career went along, I came to realize how important it is to not just mechanically apply the legal rules but to think about why they are there. Intellectual property law—a 7 trillion-dollar legal regime governing one-third of the U.S. economy—continually guesses as to how the minds of artists and audiences work. The more I read about neuroscientific advances, the more I realized that these guesses are often wrong and need to be updated for a new technological age.
This book does a great job of describing what is possible and what is not when it comes to neuroscience. Poldrack, a professor of psychology at Stanford, makes sure we don’t lose the forest for the trees, boiling down the basics of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a way that anyone can understand. He is particularly strong on describing about how this technology might be used outside of university laboratories, discussing potential applications in law, advertising, and treatment of mental illness.
A revealing insider's account of the power-and limitations-of functional MRI
The ability to read minds has long been a fascination of science fiction, but revolutionary new brain-imaging methods are bringing it closer to scientific reality. The New Mind Readers provides a compelling look at the origins, development, and future of these extraordinary tools, revealing how they are increasingly being used to decode our thoughts and experiences-and how this raises sometimes troubling questions about their application in domains such as marketing, politics, and the law.
Russell Poldrack takes readers on a journey of scientific discovery, telling the stories of the visionaries…
I have worked on the brain in Oxford since 1970, and my job also required me to teach students, not just in lectures but also in tutorials. This taught me how to communicate clearly.
In my own scientific work, I was amongst the first to use functional brain imaging to visualize the
human brain at work. I have written seven books and edited an eighth. My particular specialisation is decision making and the brain areas (such as the prefrontal cortex) that support it. I have just published a monograph of nearly 500 pages on the prefrontal cortex, aimed at other scientists in the field. I am a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Ramachandran is famous for studying some of the disorders that can be produced for the brain. One such is phantom limb pain. Some people who have had an arm amputated continue to feel that arm, and even to have pain in it. Ramachandran devised an ingenious experiment to try to abolish that feeling. This and other clever ideas are described in this book. Readers will quickly appreciate that science is like the humanities in requiring creativity.
Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran is internationally renowned for uncovering answers to the deep and quirky questions of human nature that few scientists have dared to address. His bold insights about the brain are matched only by the stunning simplicity of his experiments -- using such low-tech tools as cotton swabs, glasses of water and dime-store mirrors. In Phantoms in the Brain, Dr. Ramachandran recounts how his work with patients who have bizarre neurological disorders has shed new light on the deep architecture of the brain, and what these findings tell us about who we are, how we construct our body image,…
I have created art from an early age. Years later, my studies in civil engineering allowed me to combine my love for the arts with my belief in an orderly world. Meanwhile, reading and writing have always been my favorite pursuits. While collaborating as an editor with other authors, assisting them in their writing endeavors, in 2014, I wrote and published my first book. Sharing my writing on Instagram gave birth to the idea of my first poetry book, something like, published in 2018. Since then, two more poetry collections have been published: A TriAngle in 2019 and something like in reverse in 2020.
While reading this book, I have been trying to figure out what I am:
a thinker or a feeler. Melody Godfred chooses a fascinating way to write this book. So on the left page, she writes for a thinker (a left-brained person), and on the right page, she writes for a feeler (a right-brained person).
I will have to count the number of pages representing me as I go through the pages to find out which hemisphere of my brain is dominant, the left or the right.
Readers have called her work "life changing," "pandemic medicine," and "part of my daily ritual." Oprah Magazine and the Today Show have featured her work for its timely, uplifting wisdom. Now, Self Love Philosopher Melody Godfred shares her first poetry book, Self Love Poetry: For Thinkers & Feelers, a collection of 200 thought-provoking and heart-opening self love poems.
In Self Love Poetry, Godfred explores concepts like authenticity, surrender, resilience, gratitude, believing in yourself, and of course, love, through 100 pairs of poems, each dedicated to a central theme. On the left side of the book are "thinker" poems that light…
The authoritative but accessible history of the birth of modern American intelligence in World War II that treats not just one but all of the various disciplines: spies, codebreakers, saboteurs.
Told in a relatable style that focuses on actual people, it was a New Yorker "Best of 2022" selection and…
David Millett is a digital artist. He is an accomplished author, filmmaker, and producer of paper and eBooks. He loves writing, painting, filmmaking, composing, and performing music.
This book is a joyous exploration of the mind and its thrilling complexities. It will excite anyone interested in cutting-edge science and technology and the vast philosophical, personal, and ethical implications of finally quantifying what consciousness is. How does our brain generate conscious thoughts? And why does so much of our knowledge remain unconscious? Thanks to clever psychological and brain-imaging experiments, scientists are closer to cracking this mystery than ever before.
From the acclaimed author of Reading in the Brain and How We Learn, a breathtaking look at the new science that can track consciousness deep in the brain
How does our brain generate a conscious thought? And why does so much of our knowledge remain unconscious? Thanks to clever psychological and brain-imaging experiments, scientists are closer to cracking this mystery than ever before.
In this lively book, Stanislas Dehaene describes the pioneering work his lab and the labs of other cognitive neuroscientists worldwide have accomplished in defining, testing, and explaining the brain events behind…
