HOW TO BUILD A BETTER BRAIN

Keep Sharp by Sanjay Gupta, Simon & Schuster, $37. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s Emmy Award-winning chief medical correspondent and a best-selling author, begins this book on how to build a better brain at any age with a family story.

He was 13 when his grandfather suffered a stroke. He spent a lot of time at the hospital and was “that annoying kid who asked the doctors a lot of questions”. Watching as those doctors were able to return his grandfather to good health, he was hooked.

He explains memory loss in simple terms. While conducting research for this book and writing it, he tried everything he recommends and says his brain has never been sharper.

Hope lies in what is, on the face of it, a scary piece of information – that cognitive decline can begin years, if not decades before symptoms emerge. Because one can, therefore, start taking steps towards a sharper brain before the need shows up.  

He underscores what many of us refer to as information overload. If your brain remembered every single thing it noticed, its memory system would be overwhelmed to the point you’d find basic functioning difficult... It’s a beautiful paradox: In order to remember, we have to forget to some degree.

He busts several prevalent myths. Among them: Dementia is an inevitable consequence to old age, that we use only ten per cent of our brains or that male and female brans differ in ways that dictate learning abilities and intelligence.

At the same time, he reveals that women are able to hide symptoms of Alzheimer’s better because of superior verbal skills. 

He suggests a number of cognitively stimulating activities ranging from learning to speak a foreign language to learning to cook or paint, computer coding or salsa dancing. Anything, really, that gets you out there acquiring new knowledge.

He quotes Canadian researcher Ellen Bialystok who found that “bilingualism can protect adults’ brains, even as Alzheimer’s is beginning to affect cognitive function”.

Good news for all desis, most of whom speak at least one other language apart from English!

And that meditation through yoga, breathing exercises, and repetitive prayer, etc., can help the brain develop stronger memories.

He lists foods that are good for the brain, including a mention of the benefits of good old haldi (turmeric).

 There’s lots to learn and process.

I just wish the good doctor hadn’t felt the need to “sell” his book. Think of this as a master class on how to build a better brain, which opens the door to whatever you want to get out of life – including being a better father, mother, daughter or son.

Or, if you’re hoping to gain insights into preventing the cognitive decline or dementia that affects someone in your family, this book is for you.

Sanjay Gupta’s work speaks for itself. And the book has remained on the bestseller list for weeks.

THE JURY’S OUT

The Judge’s List by John Grisham, Doubleday, $39. Jeri Crosby’s father was murdered twenty years ago, and the case remains unsolved.

But Jeri has a suspect: a man who is brilliant, patient, and always one step ahead of law enforcement.

He knows the law. He’s a judge in Florida.

Jeri is obsessed with bringing the judge to justice, and along the way she discovers there are other victims.

The judge is a serial killer, a vengeful, stone-cold individual with a list of people to kill, all of whom have wronged him in some way.

So far so good. It’s your usual Grisham offering packed with well-researched legal wranglings and tidbits and statistics about real-life serial killers in the United States.

But the problem is with the characterization of the judge.

He knows forensics, police procedure, the law – he is a judge and that is to be expected.

But he’s also almost superhuman in his other abilities: he’s able to write software and hack computers, including those that belong to the FBI and the Florida justice system.

And he is able to do this undetected. The FBI doesn’t know it has been hacked. For years.

He is able to buy property and move money around – in total anonymity. In this day and age?

At every single crime scene, he leaves no fingerprints or DNA evidence, even though his murders are gruesome, complicated and bloody.

He even maintains a secret office –  “the vault” – in a commercial plaza without anyone ever knowing about it.

In fact, Grisham’s book is reliant on the judge being a Superman.

And that’s the problem, the weakest link in the storyline.

Would John Grisham have written this book a decade ago, I wonder.

SMOULDERING SECRETS

A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins, Doubleday Canada, $35. A young man’s gruesome murder triggers questions about three women with separate connections to him.

Three women who are simmering with resentment and burning to right the wrongs done to them.

How long can secrets smoulder before they explode into flame?

Paula Hawkins has become synonymous with the psychological thriller genre ever since the international success of The Girl On The Train.

They say perpetrators often follow a pattern. Well, so do some authors, it turns out. Expect the same level of twists and turns-a-minute, with a liberal sprinkling of red herrings. She did it! No, but how? It must have been her! Wait, this means it was obviously her! 

At one point one woman describes a book:

It was there somewhere, though not at all easy to find in this novel, whose story jumped about, the point of view occasionally switching from victim to perpetrator, the timeline jumping about all over the place. Very confusing, and if you asked Irene, irritating.

She describes it as “utter drivel”.

Which leaves one wondering if it’s an inside joke – Hawkins thumbing her nose at the kinds of books she writes, or at the very least, the genre she owns.

But fine details differentiate drivel from another wannabe bestseller.

Irene notices the bookshelves in Theo’s home. That’s what real people do, isn’t it? Notice things like bookshelves?

SWING INTO SPRING!

Bloom & Thrive by Brigit Anna McNeill, Pop Press, $19.99. Unlock your power. Your flower power, that is. The natural world has your back – discover how you can unlock its nurturing powers with herbs and flowers.

Brigit Anna McNeill extends an invitation to “see again the beauty of the wild. To reconnect with plants that once were our medicines and to notice the weeds and the tiny flowers growing so strongly and yet so tenderly in the hedgerows, gardens, forests, and riversides, from the cracks in the concrete, beside the roads; growing, blooming and thriving, offering remedy and recovery.”

There it is again, that word, hedgerows. I know it from all the Enid Blytons I consumed as a child, and it instantly transports me to unsullied English countryside.

She includes the all-important safety note about checking with your physician before introducing any new substances to your routine. With that out of the way, we’re off on a magical journey of discovery!

There are useful tips on buying herbs, growing your own and also sourcing from the wild. And recipes for making teas, elixirs and syrups, vinegars, tinctures, balms and salves.

My favourite chapter is entitled For a Happy Home where I find remedies that incorporate familiar flowers – roses, chamomile, calendula, lavender, St. John’s Wort... I can’t wait for my garden to awaken from its winter sleep to explore it again with this handy little guide.

A MUCH-LOVED CLASSIC

Theatre Shoes by Noel Streatfeild, Puffin Books, $16.99. The good folks at Puffin Books are proving that they live by their tagline – Stories that last a lifetime – by republishing all-time classics in children’s books. Among them, books by the much-loved Noel Streatfeild. Theatre Shoes, like her other books, is the story of children who’ve lost their parents and rely on their imagination (very active imaginations!) and the love and kindness of extended family and strangers to achieve their full potential.

It did not, Sorrel decided, matter very much if bits of your life became peculiar as long as there was something somewhere that stayed itself.

In her mother’s childhood room, Sorrel discovers books her mother loved, that she loves, too, like Little Women and Little Lord Fauntleroy. What a particularly beautiful way to connect with a mother you barely knew. And what an insight into books that have been perennial favourites.

Fans of Ballet Shoes will be delighted to discover that the Fossil sisters make an appearance, too. Now all grown-up and successful in their respective careers, Pauline, Posy and Petrova take a keen interest in the lives of the Forbes siblings.

Rediscover the series, or, if you missed them on their first outing, discover them with the little ones in your family!

BRAMPTON LIBRARY TEEN REVIEW

By MANVEEN GARCHA

Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda, Harper Collins, $31.50. This story starts in the year 1985 in an impoverished village in India. Kavita is giving birth to another daughter. Jasu, her husband, had killed their previous baby as he believed there was no other option as they are extremely poor. Traumatized from the loss of her previous baby girl, Kavita brings the child to a local orphanage to give her a chance. She names her baby Usha, which gets miscommunicated into the name Asha.

Somer and Krishan Thakkar, a biracial couple are trying for a baby in America. Somer cannot conceive and Krishan suggests that they adopt a baby from India. They adopt Asha.

Back in India, Kavita and Jasu give birth to a baby boy, Vijay, and move to Mumbai where they face many hardships.

In the US, Asha decides to major in journalism. This provides her with the opportunity to live in India for a year, in which she plans to look for her biological family. She does not succeed in achieving her goal, and the story ends with the realization that the family you’re born into may not be as important as the family one makes. I think that’s a beautiful message because a lot of people who may be adopted feel like they are not enough or loved because of the circumstances.  

 • Manveen Garcha is a youth volunteer at Brampton Library.