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4.12 AVERAGE
4.12 AVERAGE
This just might be the scariest book I have ever read. It is brilliantly told and fascinating as much as completely terrifying.
It did bother me that Susannah is clearly from a wealthy family, and she had very good health insurance which is absolutely not the case for everyone. To her merit, she addresses this near the end of the book and acknowledges that she was one of the lucky ones.
It did bother me that Susannah is clearly from a wealthy family, and she had very good health insurance which is absolutely not the case for everyone. To her merit, she addresses this near the end of the book and acknowledges that she was one of the lucky ones.
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
I personally never feel very comfortable rating memoirs, because truly who am I to put a rating on someone’s written depiction of their life?!
With this disclaimer being said though, gosh this book was so insightful! As a person who has never heard of this memoir prior to being recommended it by my aunt, I’m very thankful that I picked it up. Learning about the author’s “month of madness,” aka going through many psychotic episodes/symptoms, being misdiagnosed with other mental health conditions, and being given an insight into how the author’s perception of herself before, during, and after her autoimmune disease diagnosis was very much an empathy inducing and educational reading experience for me. I would highly suggest reading this book if you can stomach the content that is embedded within it!
With this disclaimer being said though, gosh this book was so insightful! As a person who has never heard of this memoir prior to being recommended it by my aunt, I’m very thankful that I picked it up. Learning about the author’s “month of madness,” aka going through many psychotic episodes/symptoms, being misdiagnosed with other mental health conditions, and being given an insight into how the author’s perception of herself before, during, and after her autoimmune disease diagnosis was very much an empathy inducing and educational reading experience for me. I would highly suggest reading this book if you can stomach the content that is embedded within it!
An interesting and fast paced read that felt like a real life episode of House. However, it didn't impact or engage me as much as I was expecting or have enough science for my tastes. I wasn't as on the edge of my seat in the way I thought I'd be or as connected/concerned Susannah. Maybe this was due to the writing, which I found to be somewhat lackluster or maybe I'm just dead inside...either are valid options. :)
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
hopeful
informative
tense
fast-paced
Horrifying and fascinating all together. I ended the book relieved and happy about the author's outcome from her sudden and terrifying condition. Her research was impeccable and the fact that she wrote the book at all is quite amazing and has obviously helped others. I did find her writing style to be difficult at times - some of her self-reflection felt forced, and although she works hard to come at this story as a journalist, it's much too personal in some ways to make that approach entirely effective. I hope she continues to write and to put her excellent investigative and research skills to good use.
emotional
informative
fast-paced
I couldn't put this book down. It was such an interesting and scary read. Highly recommend!
Aggressively not for me, but glad others are having a good time with it! Beyond the surface reasons for disinterest (I rarely read non-fiction, I hate hospital stories/scenes, I’m mildly hypochondriatic so a book full of rapidly increasing and inexplicavle symptoms isn’t appealing in the slightest), it was tough to pinpoint why this failed so hard to click with me.
As a reporter, she’s a good, concise writer and the timeline of her descent into madness is well documented and appropriately harrowing, and yet I couldn’t help but be bored at best and almost annoyedly uninterested at worst. Something about the redundant nature of her story (though true and unimaginably horrific to live through) made for repetitive and momentum-less reading. Hearing about her symptoms was uncomfortable and disturbing, but knowing she wrote this book in the narrative future drained any dramatic tension from the premise. It’s a horrible realization about myself, but I think I enjoy these types of mental break stories more when they’re enveloped in a fictional, character-driven structure: e.g. Walter White entering a fugue state because his mind can’t reckon with his misdeeds, or Carrie Coon throwing a brick through a window in The Leftovers because of layers of buried trauma and resentment. Those types of psychologically rich moments resonate with me because they present relatable mysteries in and of themselves - I can theoretically understand the reasoning, but they’re remote enough on the map of recognizable behavior and there’s a natural propulsion to reach a conclusion or resolution within the wider plot arc.
Whereas here, the main dramatic tension is just in waiting to find out which Dr House-y, obscure disease is the physiological cause for her crazy symptoms. I understand the whole time that they’ll figure it out and that she’ll recover, and I know the “explanation” will be medical and not character-related, and I know it’ll retroactively explain everything but not in any foreseeable, the-clues-were-all-there way. So I don’t know! I will say, it got slightly more interesting once the illness was uncovered and the book moved from suspense-less mystery into a rehash of Psych 107 (I liked Psych 107), but even then there wasn’t much revelation my professor didn’t leave us with in 2014. Again - she’s a good writer, and the star-alignment of someone surviving this ultra-rare disease AND being a talented enough journalist to document it well is something worth celebrating in theory - just not something capable of entertaining me in practice.
As a reporter, she’s a good, concise writer and the timeline of her descent into madness is well documented and appropriately harrowing, and yet I couldn’t help but be bored at best and almost annoyedly uninterested at worst. Something about the redundant nature of her story (though true and unimaginably horrific to live through) made for repetitive and momentum-less reading. Hearing about her symptoms was uncomfortable and disturbing, but knowing she wrote this book in the narrative future drained any dramatic tension from the premise. It’s a horrible realization about myself, but I think I enjoy these types of mental break stories more when they’re enveloped in a fictional, character-driven structure: e.g. Walter White entering a fugue state because his mind can’t reckon with his misdeeds, or Carrie Coon throwing a brick through a window in The Leftovers because of layers of buried trauma and resentment. Those types of psychologically rich moments resonate with me because they present relatable mysteries in and of themselves - I can theoretically understand the reasoning, but they’re remote enough on the map of recognizable behavior and there’s a natural propulsion to reach a conclusion or resolution within the wider plot arc.
Whereas here, the main dramatic tension is just in waiting to find out which Dr House-y, obscure disease is the physiological cause for her crazy symptoms. I understand the whole time that they’ll figure it out and that she’ll recover, and I know the “explanation” will be medical and not character-related, and I know it’ll retroactively explain everything but not in any foreseeable, the-clues-were-all-there way. So I don’t know! I will say, it got slightly more interesting once the illness was uncovered and the book moved from suspense-less mystery into a rehash of Psych 107 (I liked Psych 107), but even then there wasn’t much revelation my professor didn’t leave us with in 2014. Again - she’s a good writer, and the star-alignment of someone surviving this ultra-rare disease AND being a talented enough journalist to document it well is something worth celebrating in theory - just not something capable of entertaining me in practice.
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
a one in a million story about a medical mystery in the right place at the right time. i appreciated the author’s constant reminder that most are not lucky enough to be listened to and taken seriously, let alone diagnosed and treated. some parts in here felt like they were teetering the “mental illness isn’t real” line but i’m giving them a pass since it was the early 2010s