Where is your nonfiction section please.
Novelist Matt Haig's two short but powerful books cover his struggles and coping methods for mental illness -- namely depression, in Reasons to Stay Alive, and anxiety in Notes on a Nervous Planet. They both read blog-like -- sometimes confessional, sometimes lists, here focusing on a brighter side and elsewhere acknowledging the depths these illnesses... Continue Reading →
Book review: To the Lake, by Kapka Kassabova (Amazon) When I lay in bed, I could hear the splash of waves on the shore as if they were outside the door. I dreamt of the lake rising in the night and engulfing the town, like an old prophecy. Bulgarian-born, Scottish-based author Kapka Kassabova became an... Continue Reading →
Book review: Hidden Valley Road, by Robert Kolker (Amazon / Book Depository) The symptoms muffle nothing and amplify everything. They're deafening, overpowering for the subject and frightening for those who love them -- impossible for anyone close to them to process intellectually. For a family, schizophrenia is, primarily, a felt experience, as if the foundation... Continue Reading →
If new nonfiction this year was a little lackluster, I did feel more enthusiastic about the backlist titles I read throughout the year. It was one of these that was my absolute favorite and the best book I read this year: Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe, by Kapka Kassabova - Kassabova returned... Continue Reading →
2019 hasn't shown itself out quite yet but I'm already looking forward to what new nonfiction 2020 has in store. Here are some upcoming new releases from the new decade that I have my eye on. F*ck Your Diet: And Other Things My Thighs Tell Me, by Chloé Hilliard (January 7) --Hilliard was cursed with... Continue Reading →
Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things, by Randy Frost & Gail Steketee (Amazon / Book Depository) Chances are you know someone with a hoarding problem. Recent studies of hoarding put the prevalence rate at somewhere between 2 and 5 percent of the population. That means that six million to fifteen million Americans suffer... Continue Reading →
Book review: The State of Affairs, by Esther Perel (Amazon / Book Depository) Almost everywhere people marry, monogamy is the official norm and infidelity the clandestine one. So what are we to make of this time-honored taboo—universally forbidden yet universally practiced? Reading the overhyped and even troubling Three Women, I found myself most interested in... Continue Reading →
Book review: In the Dream House, by Carmen Maria Machado (Amazon / Book Depository) Author Carmen Maria Machado writes a groundbreaking, stylistic account of an emotionally and mentally abusive lesbian relationship, and underscores the message that domestic abuse in LGBTQ+ relationships are neither the subject of adequate scholarship nor open discussion, nor even, to some... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Great Pretender, by Susannah Cahalan (Amazon / Book Depository) The Great Pretender, Susannah Cahalan's first book since Brain on Fire, her 2012 memoir of a rare, difficult-to-diagnose autoimmune disorder, investigates an infamous and groundbreaking 1973 study carried out by psychiatrist David Rosenhan. Rosenhan sent a group of eight healthy "pseudopatients" into mental institutions... Continue Reading →
Book review: Bright-Sided, by Barbara Ehrenreich (Amazon / Book Depository) An acquaintance told me about a friend of hers experiencing a breast cancer recurrence. That's harrowing anytime, but was coupled with shock since the friend was quite young. My acquaintance told me that her friend was in a relationship with a man she'd been "obsessed"... Continue Reading →
Nonfiction November, that time of year to celebrate stories filled with facts and footnotes, truth being stranger than fiction, and very, very long subtitles begins today! This week, a look at your year in nonfiction: Week 1: (Oct. 28 to Nov. 1) – Your Year in Nonfiction (Julie @ Julz Reads): Take a look back at your year of... Continue Reading →
Book review: Talking to Strangers, by Malcolm Gladwell (Amazon / Book Depository) We think we can easily see into the hearts of others based on the flimsiest of clues. We jump at the chance to judge strangers. We would never do that to ourselves, of course. We are nuanced and complex and enigmatic. But the... Continue Reading →
