“There are many things to which I related...”
—Dr. Susan A. Treloar - University of Queensland, Australia
- Click to buy from:
-
-
-
Jan 2010
Gretchen Rubin is a friend and now a bestselling author -- her book about the year she spent road-testing ways to be happier (and researching every theory, philosophy and prescription for happiness) will make you look closely at your own life and how happy you are -- or aren't. I look forward to reading a chapter each night and you will, too.
- Category:
Dec 2009
A friend recommended "Shadow of the Wind" last summer and I've recommended it widely ever since....This quote stayed with me especially:
"Remember me....even if it's only in a corner and secretly. Don't let me go."
- Category:
30th
New Mary Karr fan
Memorable Karr quotes from her acid, crystalline memoir, "Lit":
"A great poem could flood me with certainty that there was something good in the world. Or somebody out there knew who I was even if we'd never met -- or never would meet."
"Whatever you want emotionally, you have to start giving away."
"Maybe all any of us wants is to feel singled out for some long, sweet, quenching draft of love, some open-throated guzzling of it...."
- Category:
Nov 2009
30th
The Leonard Lopate Show
I was on the Leonard Lopate Show today. Listen to the audio here or on WNYC's Website.
- Category:
- Audio
29th
The Lesley Stahl Interview
"Enchanting, fascinating....It's a wonderful book."
-Lesley Stahl
Lesley Stahl interview Abigail Pogrebin for Wowowow
- Category:
- Reviews & Praise
21st
Missing Mad Men
I’m having “Mad Men” withdrawal. I’m not proud of it, but it’s true.
I miss the gimlets, deviled eggs, Buicks, and Baked Alaskas.
I miss Joan’s bustle, Betty’s updo, how Don squints when he smokes.
I’m a mother and wife, with plenty of work I should be doing (and that should be interesting me), but I honestly feel a hole in my life and I know what it is: “Mad Men” is over for the season.
It’s the show’s languid atmosphere I miss, an elegance and restraint I lack in my own life. Despite the sexism, racism, and emotional constipation of the era, I miss its landscape of goose neck lamps and girdles. “Mad Men”’s New York pace is more controlled, everyone’s movements more deliberate: it represents exactly the opposite of the velocity and chaos of my days. At Sterling Cooper’s advertising agency, there’s no frenzy, no clutter. In the Draper home, there’s no visible disarray. Sure, we witness plenty of tension and dysfunction, but there’s a stillness I covet. Betty Draper doesn’t do anything hurriedly, she even loads the washing machine gracefully; you never see her manically juggling playdates, errands, or exercise classes; she’s not tapping at, or shouting into, an iPhone. She simply drags on a cigarette at the kitchen table while her children eat a “balanced” meal, sips a glass of wine, glides into a party in pearls, naps off her jet lag without a wrinkle in her skirt after a flight to Rome.
Her husband, Don, is also as smooth as it gets: he never seems to rush or rant, he is cool to the point of cold. I wouldn’t want him for a husband but I’ll miss that coolness now that he’s off the air. Don’s calm may be – okay, is – deceptive, but I should achieve that veneer of composure every once in a while.
Somehow all this reserve and detachment has been escapist for me during this year’s episodes. I guess I could use some repression in my life. I’m up to my ears in candor, confession, memoir. There’s so much nakedness today, so much vomiting of one’s own “truth,” (I’m as guilty as the next person), that I’ve found myself actually welcoming the contained, bottled-up inhibitions of “Mad Men.”
No, I don’t want to go back to the days where women in the office were expected to get coffee, noon martinis were de rigueur, and children were commanded to “Go play.” But I’ve taken some strange comfort in the way things used to be – or at least the way they’re depicted in “Mad Men:” the parsimony of emotion, the tidiness of the office, the dependability of supper on the table. I know it’s facile mythology; but that’s Hollywood, and I bought in. For another dose of ersatz tranquility, I guess I’ll have to wait for season four.
- Category:
"A great job of getting past the clichés of twinship and letting us see the real inner turmoil that can occur as twins each try to work out their journey to becoming a unique individual"
-Holly Scheuer
- Category:
- Reviews & Praise
2nd
BookPage Review
"This is more than journalism; it's a search for personal clarity."
-Pete Croatto
Link: The Hidden Lives of Twins
In the introduction to One and the Same, journalist Abigail Pogrebin admits that writing a book about identical twins was something she was loath to do, equating it to “volunteering to do a public striptease. Because being a twin goes to the core of who I am and I was wary of examining that.”
Thankfully, Pogrebin avoids a literary bump’n'grind, instead merging interviews, research and memoir into a fascinating look at the lifelong dynamics of twins. Along the way, she freely admits that she and her twin sister Robin, a reporter for the New York Times, have drifted apart. That revelation gives the book an interesting slant: while interviewing other twins, doctors and her friends and family, Pogrebin gauges her own relationship with Robin. This is more than journalism; it’s a search for personal clarity.
At the same time, Pogrebin is a good reporter on two fronts. First, she is able to get her twin sources to share personal, sometimes heartbreaking, information about a special relationship: There’s a closeness that we have—even if it isn’t spoken—that my husband can’t duplicate,” one tells Pogrebin. Second, she examines myriad issues, both medical and social, without confusing the reader or deflating the personal tone. Pogrebin’s first-person narrative, coupled with her thirst for knowledge, makes for an immensely satisfying, enlightening read on what too many people dismiss as a genetic gimmick.
- Category:
- Reviews & Praise
Oct 2009
29th
Blog Symbiosis
I have never been a natural blogger, but now I've been led by the hand by a generous expert-blogger who is a twin and mother of twins. She was kind enough to mention my book today, and she encouraged me to be a guest blogger. (My guest missive follows below.) Her site, called Half of a Duo, Raising a Duo, is classy and smart, well worth reading regularly: http://micrimas.blogspot.com/ (I'm grateful to her for the nudge.)
Since my book about twins came out October 20th, I’ve been asked the same two questions over and over: How does being a twin affect my parenting, and what would I advise parents of twins, based on my two years of research, numerous interviews with adult twins, and my own twin experience?
My first answer is: spend separate time with each child. It may seem obvious, but so many parents of twins don’t do it because they see how happy their twins are together, because they don’t want to intrude on their effortless bond, or because it’s just plain easier to take two at a time. But listening to my sister Robin tell me that she’s not even sure to this day that our parents truly know us apart and that she has struggled with a sense of distinction in the world made me very clear that individual time can make the individual. I am now hyper-aware of spending separate time with my two children, who are 12 and 10 years old. I make sure to wander into each of their rooms at odd times, and just flop on the bed and see what they have to say, or to take just one of them out for a meal. I know how the rough-and-tumble of life often gets in the way of independent outings: we’re all rushing to the same activities or taking the same trips together. There isn’t always that open-ended time to just chat or take a walk with no particular destination in mind.
My sister admits in my book that one of the reasons she didn’t have a third child was because she missed separate memories with our parents and didn’t want to risk having too little time for too many kids. It should be said that we had a wonderful, colorful childhood, and I think Robin wouldn’t trade it. But the absence of undivided time resulted in a muddying of Robin’s sense of self, and now that I’ve spoken to so many experts, I understand how common and problematic that can be.
The other advice I’d offer is to resist comparisons. They’re so tempting, but so destructive. Believe me, siblings will inevitably measure themselves ceaselessly, without a parent’s prodding. So many of the twins I spoke to said they were aware of who was favored, or what their convenient labels were – “the athletic one,” “the brainy one.” All those tags did in the end was make them feel boxed in.
One of the major themes that came to me in the process of writing this book is that twins are also muffled by everyone’s investment in their perfection. Yes, twinship is a kind of utopian intimacy, but it isn’t always idyllic, and there has to be room for chinks and conflicts. Psychologist Joan Friedman talked about the pressure on twins to be constantly equal and constantly unambivalent about being twins, whereas that same expectation isn’t there for non-twin siblings. Sometimes one twin won’t get invited to the party and parents have to restrain themselves to try to “make it right” and get the other twin included. Life isn’t always fair, and twinship shouldn’t confer an unrealistic sense of the world. Robin and I were ill-prepared for imbalances and we sometimes didn’t know how to handle them when they happened.
So that’s my guidance from a front-row seat on twinship: Spend separate time. Don’t label. Don’t compare. And let the relationship be a real one – with all its bumps and disparities.
Being a twin emboldened me, supported me and protected me. But I understand now that it’s also more complex than some want to believe, and parents should be the first to let the complexities breathe. Your twins will be better adults for the honesty.
- Category:
29th
Half of a Duo, Raising a Duo
"Greater insight..."
-Twin and parent of twins: Half of a Duo, Raising a Duo
Abigail Pogrebin has written a great book, and as an identical twin, raising fraternal twins, I’d love to present it to my readers, especially those parenting multiples. Abby Pogrebin’s book about twins and singularity—takes you on her quest to learn more about twin identity. It’s called ONE AND THE SAME. As an identical twin parenting fraternal twins, I’ve given a glimpse in this blog about twin identity but I think Abby’s book, which is her quest to gain wisdom about multiples and identity, and can give greater insight. She went to great lengths to interview twins and talk about their search for identity. I know one thing as a twin myself: It is nearly impossible for twins to maintain full separation as they truly are one and the same, created inutero with a bond that is almost psychic in nature. However, all being strive to be individualistic. With multiples, this is much harder since the nature of their births creates an impression on family, friends, associates, even the multiples themselves, that they are part of a unit and should be by default one and the same.
- Category:
- Reviews & Praise
Page 5 of 9 pages « First < 3 4 5 6 7 > Last »
