Though the book is marketed as a hybrid memoir and Crampton’s story serves as an anchor, her experiences make up a fairly small proportion of A Body Made of Glass. The book ranges comprehensively not only through the history of hypochondria, but also through hypochondria’s appearances in books and culture, from early modern literature to Woody Allen films to Jane Austen’s Mrs. Bennet (and Austen’s own mother). I found myself bringing up the book to nearly everyone I spoke to during the time I was reading it, both because I found it fascinating and because it contained some element I felt would appeal to each person’s specific interests.

Amid a debate on how to track and treat loneliness as a health problem and as a social phenomenon, Athena Dixon’s new memoir in essays, The Loneliness Files, feels particularly timely.

Greg Marshall was nearly thirty when he found out he’d had cerebral palsy for his entire life. Told as a child that he had “tight tendons”—one of several phrases he would repeat when questioned about the way he moved—in Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It, Marshall explores the winding road to becoming aware of his diagnosis.