I have close friends who have struggled with eating disorders and even though there is a lot of good information available on the internet, I was feeling like I needed something comprehensive and basic to educate me. It’s really hard to be ignorant and supportive at the same time. This book is the perfect beginner’s guide to the complex world of eating disorder recovery. The book is divided into small, readable sections answering basic questions about eating disorders. Here’s a sampling of some of those […]
Medical Mysteries FTW
It took me a while to really get into Susannah Cahalan’s autobiography, Brain on Fire, simply because I was listening to it as an audiobook when I started The Martian, also on audiobook. And while Cahalan’s mystery disease certainly fascinated me, it’s hard to compete with an astronaut stuck on Mars — even if he’s fictional. But once I devoted my full attention to her medical woes, she hooked me. “We are, in the end, a sum of our parts, and when the body fails, all the virtues we hold […]
Neurological Coin Flips
Like Still Alice before it, Inside the O’Briens, tackles a neurological disorder; rather than Alzheimer’s we get Huntington’s. Prior to Dr.”Thirteen” on House I had never heard of Huntington’s; Genova does an excellent job explaining both the genetic factors of Huntington’s as well as the physical and mental effects of the disease. Joe O’Brien is a Catholic, family man who works for Boston P.D. He begins to notice some disorganized thoughts & uncontrollable movements, he chalks it up to stress until his wife gets concerned […]
Afraid of Vaccination Since 1901
Conversations that occur in my household… CaitlinD: You know, this book on smallpox isn’t as good as I wanted it to be. Mr. D: Um you’re surprised? CaitlinD: Smallpox should be interesting!!! So yeah, I love history and non-fiction which is probably a bit strange; but my one requirement is that it doesn’t read quite so text-booky. The majority focus of Pox is on the vaccination process the government rolled out during the turn of the century when variola minor was becoming a problem everywhere […]
Shaking of the Sheets (and other euphemisms for sex)
Mary Roach is an author who has been on my radar for a while. I knew about her books, and her particular brand of letting-the-reader-in-on-the-joke writing about non-fiction which I learned when I dove into Packing for Mars earlier this year. So when Audible had a sale of Mary Roach’s books, I looked to see what I wanted to listen to next in her oeuvre (knowing that I already have a library request in for Stiff which is all about the life of cadavers). Bonk: […]
I bet Lisa Genova’s a lot of fun at parties
While Genova’s Still Alice stars Alzheimer’s disease, Inside the O’Briens gives the reader an intimate view of what Huntington’s Disease does to a body — and a family. It’s a sad book — while Huntington’s affects only a fraction of the number of people affected by Alzheimer’s, it’s still a wretched disease and one that’s not particularly well-known or understood. I’ve heard of it, but I also watch a lot of medical dramas. Huntington’s is also 1000% fatal, usually within about 10 years of diagnosis. “As they lurch […]
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