California State University Dominguez Hills’ R+J (2023)

It was always my intent to incorporate theatre and film reviews to Read House Review. While I could go back and begin with my very first film experiences as a child – which are already covered in my original teaching philosophy – or my first theatre experience with UCSB’s She Stoops To Conquer, I decided

Nicole LePera’s How To Do The Work

Instead of listening to the body – after all, symptoms are it’s way of communicating with us – we seek to silence it. How To Do The Work seemed to me like New-Age Hippy psychology. I have spent the last few years really critically reviewing contemporary psychology trends, so I expected a lot of this

Karma Lekshe Tsomo’s Buddhist Feminisms and Femininities

Language is powerful and can express more than mere concepts. My Buddhist studies were limited to one course back in the early 2000’s, but I never looked at religion the same since. It completely changed my POV of Catholicism and Christianity. And, it also surprisingly shifted my thoughts on feminism. It totally gave me this

Lindsay C. Gibson’s Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents

The ability to feel mixed emotions is a sign of maturity. I’m sure that I’ve read Lindsay Gibson’s Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents twice now. Many of the trauma books explain very similar concepts. Gibson is particularly good at providing facts and details. Due to current personal reasons, I am finding it challenging to

Hotel (2001)

Wikipedia states this is a “British-Italian comedy” and a “horror-thriller” which I find as an amusing attempt at stating that it’s a genre defying film. Written and directed by Mike Figgs, Hotel (2001) does not have the cult following that it deserves. I found myself intrigued and repelled by this film enough to let it

Carol Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Robert Sternberg, the present-day guru of intelligence, writes that the major factor in whether people achieve expertise “is not some fixed prior ability, but purposeful engagement.” This is a widely known theory of mind and psychology within the education circuit in Southern California and probably other areas of the world. It made sense for me

Carol Mitchell’s Breaking Through “Bitch”

Both executive men and women have told me that if women do not find that perfect balance of sex stereotypic behavior (femininity) and professional leadership behavior, they are judged more harshly. A part of me expected this book to wow me, but I didn’t quite get that impression from Carol Mitchell’s Breaking Through Bitch. The

The State of Affairs

“But when we reduce the conversation to simply passing judgment, we are left with no conversation at all.” One of the most controversial books in the last two decades, Ether Perel’s The State of Affairs quickly joined Mating in Captivity on my bookshelf. Her first book primarily addressed sexuality in the twenty-first century. The State

Collective Trauma, Collective Healing

Jack Saul’s Collective Trauma and Collective Healing aims to give health professionals – and anyone really – an insight into how to create community based assistance programs after traumatic events. Since I work in the English education field, it’s a little outside of my area of specialization. Yet, I read this on the sheer respect

Bessel Van Der Kolk’s The Body Keeps The Score

I have to say that I really liked this book. For those who have experienced some serious trauma, this one’s for you, your journey to self-healing if you don’t know where to start. It focuses on trauma and the responses the body has naturally. Bessel Van Der Kolk uses some real examples such as various