Many Canadians like myself remember Silken Laumann’s amazing perseverance after a severe leg injury, to win a bronze medal only 10 weeks later at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Even without the gold, she was one of the hero stories of the game, and certainly an important one for Canada. One day, I happened across an interview to hear her talking about her memoir, Unsinkable. She sounded quite passionate and open about her life, so I looked forward to reading it. After a long wait […]
Curiosity is a shit starter.
I don’t read as many “self-help” books as I probably should. I like to learn. Scratch that, I LOVE to learn, and in many ways books traditionally shelved in the “self-help” department are meant to help us do just that. So why stay away? Because of the other types of books that inhabit those shelves. The ones that are all touchy feely or tell you to “let go and let God”. (Yes, thank you, I’m aware of that, now what?) When I decided to do […]
An abusive boyfriend that lives inside your mind
A friend lent this book about eating disorders to me so I could better understand certain aspects of her struggle with food and body image. While 100 Questions & Answers About Eating Disorders was a great generalized introduction, Life Without Ed got into the nitty-gritty of trying to escape the grasp of this mental illness. Although this is one woman’s story and it’s not going to represent every ED sufferer’s experience, I’ve been told that most would identify with at least some of Schaefer’s experience. […]
Real life medical horror story.
So, like you know how the first four seasons of House were super awesome and stuff? This book is sort of like that, except instead of seeing it from House’s perspective while he’s being an asshole, we see it from the patient’s, and we are intimately connected with her as she slowly and surely comes unraveled totally and completely. She has no control over her actions, she loses all sense of herself and connection with her friends and family and co-workers, and the doctors have […]
I preferred the movie!
Here are ten things you need to know about The Silver Linings Playbook: 1) It’s not exactly like the movie, but it’s not far off either. 2) You will see the faces of Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence super-imposed on the main characters of Pat and Tiffany if you’ve seen the movie first. It just can’t be stopped. 3) The mental illness portrayed in the book is far more expressive and understandable than how the film related it – at times to a frustrating degree. […]
So Much to Recommend It, But It Didn’t Live Up: Guests on Earth
Lee Smith’s Guests on Earth had so much to recommend it. I love books about my home state, North Carolina; it promised Zelda Fitzgerald as a main character, and was centered at the Highland Hospital, a mental institution which burned to the ground in 1948, claiming the lives of nine women; one of them the world-famous Zelda herself. That sounded interesting to me, so I dove in with high hopes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as great as I’d hoped, but it wasn’t as awful as it could […]
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