REM Runner’s Summer Reading

I love summer. Lightening bugs, late sunsets, weddings, and trips to the beach! Here’s what is in my beach bag this summer:

ISLAND PRACTICE 
Cobblestone Rash, Underground Tom, and Other Adventures of a Nantucket Doctor 
by Pam Belluck

A spirited true story of a colorful, contrarian doctor on Nantucket, a world-famous yet strikingly offbeat corner of America. Dr. Timothy Lepore often holds the life of the island in his hand.

Book Summary: If you need an appendectomy, he can do it with a stone scalpel he carved himself. If you have a condition nobody can diagnose—“creeping eruption” perhaps—he can identify what it is, and treat it. A baby with toe-tourniquet syndrome, a human leg that’s washed ashore, a horse with Lyme disease, a narcoleptic falling face-first in the street, a hermit living underground—hardly anything is off-limits for Dr. Timothy J. Lepore… Read more & Purchase Here.

REM Runner’s pre-read comments: if I can’t be on Nantucket Island all summer, I’d like to read about it! What better way than through the unique world of local doctor, Dr. Lepore!? Bonus: this book features narcolepsy!!

DREAMING YOURSELF AWAKE
Lucid Dreaming and Tibetan Dream Yoga for Insight and Transformation
by B. Alan Wallace

Description: Some of the greatest of life’s adventures can happen while you’re sound asleep. That’s the promise of lucid dreaming, which is the ability to alter your own dream reality any way you like simply by being aware of the fact that you’re dreaming while you’re in the midst of a dream… More here.

REM Runner’s pre-read comments: I wrote an article for the latest Narcolepsy Network Newsletter about Yoga & Narcolepsy. I’m exploring the practice of Yoga Nidra (sleep/dream yoga).

BORN TO RUN
A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
by: Christopher McDougall

Full of incredible characters, amazing athletic achievements, cutting-edge science, and, most of all, pure inspiration, Born to Run is an epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt? In search of an answer, Christopher McDougall sets off to find a tribe of the world’s greatest distance runners and learn their secrets, and in the process shows us that everything we thought we knew about running is wrong. Read more. 

REM Runner’s pre-read comments: Actually, I already read this one, but I may begin re-reading it soon. It’s a quick read and so inspiring for all runners, walkers, & exercise hopefuls! This book inspired me during my Mt Washington Road Race training.

THE POETRY OF YOGA
Edited by: HawaH

The Poetry of Yoga is a modern day collection of poetry compiled and edited by artist, poet, and yogi HawaH. This first volume is distilled from over 1,500 pages of poetry, submitted from 16 countries. This ground breaking book is an important platform for a new body of work serving to expand the literary tradition of yoga to include the cultural perspective of the 21st century. Read more and purchase here.

REM Runner’s pre-read comments: a Tranquil Space yoga instructor read a passage from this during my last yoga class before Mt Washington Road Race. It rang so true with my spirit, tears streamed down my face. I can’t wait to read the whole book!

Please stay cool and well-hydrated this summer, friends!  For me, the extreme humidity makes my cataplexy a bit worse,  so I know I will have to work with this in the Washington DC summertime. I plan to have a lot of fun this summer regardless. Simple pleasures: watermelon, sundresses, baseball games, flip flops and a few great books! 

2 Comments

  1. Gail Pean on June 25, 2012 at 1:28 pm

    Wonderful recommendations Julie! May I add one ? Prides Crossing by Peggy Franck in honor of the anniversary of Title IX. It is the life story of Eleonora Sears the first female athlete to master 19 sports and first woman to play on a mans Polo team, tennis champion, squash champion, swimming champion, hiker and so much more. A wonderful historical non-fiction which reads like a novel.

    • julie on July 3, 2012 at 5:02 pm

      Sounds like an inspiring book! Thank you for this recommendation, Gail. I look forward to reading this too! I’m half way through Island Practice and LOVING it. Big smiles, The REM Reader

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