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by Quinn Bradlee (Contributor: Jeff Himmelman)
ISBN: 1586481894
Binding/Media: Hardcover - 240 pages
Condition: New
Comments: Sold with pride. New, unread copy.
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Customer Reviews
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Opening a window
Rating  (3)
Date: 2010-04-08
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
Fast read; I scooped it up in an evening. Clear writing, to the point, funny, thoughtful and thought-provoking. I liked how the authors allowed important players in Mr. Bradlee's life to speak in their own voices in full passages, such as Mr. Bradlee's doctor.
Mr. Bradlee was pretty forthright about how his parents' resources and connections did garner him benefits that others might not enjoy. He was also candid about how sometimes it really sucked to have learning disabilities.
Some standout excerpts:
On his love of surfing: "I'm not a pro surfer or anything close to it, but that's not the point. The best surfer is the one that's having the most fun."
"Poetry by sixteen-year-old kids sucks by definition."
On what it's like to feel isolated: "Sometimes I'll see a leaf being driven over by cars, and it'll slowly get to the other side of the road. That's how I feel from time to time."
This is a good contribution to the collection of books by individuals whose brains work differently than most.
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A Different Life
Rating  (4)
Date: 2009-12-01
0 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
A different perspective on life when seen through the eyes of someone with learning disabilities. Very good!
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Good Read
Rating (4)
Date: 2009-08-16
0 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
This was a fascinating book that gave me insight into the thinking process of the learning disabled.
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Candor
Rating (3)
Date: 2009-07-09
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Memoirs from authors in their twenties attract readers less from the disclosure of wisdom acquired over decades than from telling a story about something extraordinary and worth reading about in a life at its beginning. Quinn Bradlee's memoir, A Different Life, tells the story of the first twenty six or so years of his life. The child of Washington Post luminaries Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn, the extraordinary story he tells here is a sweet tale of being supported by loving parents as he struggled with learning disabilities and medical problems. After years of illnesses, Quinn was diagnosed at age fourteen with something that's estimated to impact one in 2,000 people: Velo-Cardio-Facial Syndrome. This genetic syndrome is manifested through multiple physical ailments and learning disabilities. Quinn's candor in A Different Life led me to wince at times and laugh at others as he tells his story in his own unique way, and without a trace of embarrassment. Any parent of a child with learning disabilities or physical ailments will resonate with what Quinn describes on many of these pages. Through his parents, Quinn has had doors open to him that would be closed to others, and he has used that advantage well in this case as a chance for a young man with learning disabilities to talk about his life and call attention to genetic syndromes that we might not have heard about before reading this book.
Rating: Three-star (Recommended)
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A life of differences
Rating (3)
Date: 2009-07-08
2 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
Quinn Bradlee is the son of former "Washington Post" editor Ben Bradlee and his wife, reporter Sally Quinn. Quinn was born with a heart defect and had a number of health issues throughout his life. When he was 14, he was finally diagnosed with VCFS (velo-cardio-facial syndrome) a genetic abnormality which is the second most often occurring disability (Down's Syndrome is number one.) One consequence of the syndrome is having a learning disability. I read this book since I am married to a man with a severe learning disability (dyslexia), the mother of a son with a mild learning disability (dysgraphia) and taught students with learning disabilities in public schools for a number of years. I wished to compare Quinn's experiences with my observations. Quinn's prose seems brash, yet I know this partially relative to having a learning disability and might partially be due to his recognition of his parents' celebrity. At times I cringed, recognizing "traps" Quinn found himself in during his schooling. Thankfully, Quinn and his parents found a school and teachers who concentrated on Quinn's strengths. If only we could do this for all students - special needs or not.
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by Sybil Lockhart
ISBN: 1416541551
Binding/Media: Hardcover - 320 pages
Condition: Used: Like New
Comments: Sold with pride. Previously unread copy with publisher's mark on the bottom.
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Customer Reviews
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Thought-provoking comparison
Rating (3)
Date: 2010-01-22
The most intriguing piece of this book is the normally more spiritual/familial tale of family is told through the eyes of a biologist, and that is what will make this book stand out above the rest. Here is the tale of a woman who finds herself at an interesting and almost heart-breaking time in her life: caring for an aging mother as well as a brand-new life.
There is plenty of emotion, as is needed and expected for this type of work, but there is also a fascinating look of... biology. What is going on with these two figures in Lockhart's life?
It's a fascinating book, though I wonder if different people would soon grow bored of the angst and the biology respectively. And sometimes I felt the balance of the two swung off.
Still, it's a beautiful story.
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touching look at being sandwiched between your parents and your children
Rating (4)
Date: 2010-01-05
It's hard being sandwiched between caring for your aging parents and growing your family. It's harder when your aging parents have a degenerative condition like Alzheimer's. What makes this story different is the author: a PhD in neurobiology, she knows exactly what's happening as her mother's brain deteriorates and her children's brains grow and adapt.
This memoir is an approachable mix of the very human emotions that she experiences in witnessing her mother's deterioration and the growth of her children, as well as an understandable explanation of the neurobiology that drives both the deterioration and the growth. The author is open about her fears and frustrations. She makes the transition from professor to stay-at-home mother, and discusses all of the factors that came into that decision. She discusses the impact of her mother's deteriorating condition on her husband and their family. She obviously tries to do the best she can to ensure that her mother gets the care she needs, but she's also honest about when she is less-than-angelic in dealing with her situation. It's admirable that she is willing to confess to this, to allow us to see that even someone who understands what is happening is still overwhelmed by the reality of the situation and the emotions that it entails.
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Just my opinion, moms deserve to keep their dignity
Rating  (1)
Date: 2009-08-10
0 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
the book is well-written, it does not compare to Ved Mehta, but we are dealing with a scientific writer as she so often reminds us with her intricate ramblings about the brain and its synapses.
But what is lacking is the dignity that should have been granted to mother, both in life and in death, it is sadly missing, at least what I came out with was mom was not there for my kids, mom did not cook for me, my husband is envious of my time off, mom is too dependent on me, and so on. Many of us are part of the sandwich generation and have cared our parents, our in-laws, some of us have done this for over 20 years, while educating our children, and no friends that I know of expected their mom or dad to pay for things, or babysit, or lend money. The important thing in life is twofold, privacy and dignity. Let us keep our mom and dad's lives private and dignified, in both life and death. There are other ways to deal with dementia, than to publish the degeneration of a person in a book.
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Unique and interesting perspective on Alzheimer's
Rating  (5)
Date: 2009-05-09
This is the sad and poignant story of a mother with Alzheimer's told from the unique perspective of the daughter who happens to be a neurobiologist. You might expect someone with Sybil Lockhart's knowledge to be above the emotional drama, but no one is immune to the range of extreme emotions you feel when a loved one - especially your mother - is the patient. On top of that, Lockhart is raising a family of her own. She is the poster girl for the Sandwich Generation. This book is filled with raw emotion, candid observations, and insightful commentary about her mother's decline. There is a certain amount of scientific detail about Alzheimer's and what is happening to the mother's brain. This may not be appealing to all readers, but it is interesting to learn something about the science behind the dementia. Anyone who is dealing with a close relative or friend with Alzheimer's will appreciate this book. You see that even the most informed caregivers deal with a high level of frustration and angst. It affects every aspect of their own lives, impacting their relationships with their spouses and children. As our population lives longer, and Alzheimer's becomes a more common diagnosis, this is something more and more of us will have to deal with. This book won't make it any easier, but it offers fascinating insight into the disease. Lockhart's journey is one many of us are taking, and it is in some ways comforting, in some ways inspiring, and in some ways so painfully sad. This is not a light read, but it is a compelling one. We can all learn a great deal from it.
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well-written & touching, but the science isn't interwoven with the emotions
Rating (4)
Date: 2009-05-02
Amazon's book blurb sounded so good: "Sybil Lockhart, a Berkeley neurobiologist, became a 'mother in the middle' when she was pregnant with her second daughter and her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. What makes Sybil's story different, and so powerful, is that she understood the neurological processes, by turns exciting and devastating, that were taking place in the brains of those she loved. Interweaving her scientific expertise with her own complicated emotions, she writes with elegant simplicity and breathtaking honesty about biology's inevitable, powerful effects on the people around her."
And actually, the memoir was pretty good too. Lockhart's writing is not bad and it does indeed have a simple and honest character. I thought her descriptions of her emotions were earnest, real, and touching - even when (especially when) they were raw and less than pleasant. I loved the way she described her feelings of anger at her mother for not being there for her, even though she knew intellectually that her mother deserved compassion and support too. She did a great job writing the conflicting emotions.
However, I was disappointed by the science. Or rather, by the lack of integration of science into her story. I got the feeling reading her memoir that Sybil Lockhart was a scientist by trade, not by nature. As a result, while her scientific knowledge is solid and she explains the concepts well, the science is not really interwoven with her emotions. The sections about the biology seem distinctly separated from the others. I had really been hoping for a biologist's perspective, but I felt like I got instead a woman's perspective, with paragraphs of biology info inserted occasionally, like an afterthought. Again, I really liked her perspective; I just wished that the science was more closely tied to it.
The other thing that bothered me about the book was that amidst all the honesty about her mother and daughter, there was a subtle issue that she didn't treat honestly or acknowledge, but it emerges loudly from between-the-lines: her relationship with her husband, and their inability to respect or communicate with each other. They are constantly resenting each other, belittling each other's motives and hobbies, bullying each other, and refusing to even talk about it out loud. She's only happy and loving with him when he's doing exactly what she wants. Even in the end, when she half-heartedly admits that her relationship needs some work, she still won't communicate with him, and instead reads his "looks" as some sign that the love is still there. In a novel, I would've loved this - it shows her personality and the way she really feels about things in a subtle way. In a memoir, I just felt embarrassed and uncomfortable.
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