Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye.

Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke

Why I have it: Spotted during last year’s Nonfiction November.

Summary: We’re living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, and social media – the smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7. As such we’ve become vulnerable to compulsive over-consumption. Lembke explores how finding contentment and connectedness means keeping dopamine in check.

I’m thinking: Yes.

The Phantom of Fifth Avenue by Meryl Gordon

Why I have it: Was a suggestion for Literary Wives Club (it didn’t meet the criteria, but looked interesting).

Summary: Born in 1906, Huguette Clark grew up in her family’s 121-room Beaux Arts mansion in New York and was one of the leading celebrities of her day. At twenty-two, with a personal fortune of $50 million, she married William MacDonald Gower. Two years later the couple divorced, and after a series of failed romances, Huguette began to withdraw from society, spending her days in a vast apartment, eating crackers and watching The Flintstones with only servants for company. What happened to Huguette that turned a vivacious young socialite into a recluse?

I’m thinking: Yes.

Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta

Why I have it: Referred to a book I read (just can’t remember which one…).

Summary: Yunkaporta looks at global systems from an Indigenous perspective, asking how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation. How does this affect us? How can we do things differently?

I’m thinking: Maybe.

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