lory_enterenchanted's reviews
413 reviews

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense

3.5

After the emotional roller coaster of this book I felt a bit manipulated at the end -- it seemed the whole thing had been a setup so that the author could write about a live donor liver transplant, and the characters and their relationships had been formed for that purpose. Until that point, I was very involved, and learned a lot.

Readers who are squeamish about details of medical conditions and operations should be warned, it's not for the fainthearted in that regard.

Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones

emotional lighthearted mysterious

2.5

Diana Wynne Jones has no bad books, but this is not one of her best. There's nothing unpleasant about it, but it feels like a sketch that didn't get sufficiently filled out. The "enchanted glass" idea in particular is intriguing but then undeveloped. We never really find out what the glass does, apparently it's tremendously powerful but just as this is suggested the book ends. Another half of the book could have been in order! The scene of mayhem at an English country fair is amusing too, but could have been even more so (Wodehouse style).

My Antonia by Willa Cather

emotional informative reflective sad

5.0

Beautiful book -- suggested it to one of my English students and then I had to reread it myself.

Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon
Did not finish book. Stopped at 0%.

This was very interesting and I'd like to finish, but it was just too long for me at the moment. I need more than 3 weeks, or else a good dose of uninterrupted time.

Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro

dark emotional hopeful reflective

3.0

My first fiction by Dani Shapiro - I've read all of her memoirs. I wasn't so blown away by this as I'd hope.  I find it fading from my memory almost at once.

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense

4.0

I raced through this very long novel! Though loaded with characters and incidents, and taking place over many decades, I thought the author avoided the pitfalls of such books, keeping me always engaged and generally clear about what was going on, even as we jumped about in time and place. The hammering of repeated tragedies was tough, and the climax a bit over the top.  Yet having such a broad canvas and time span allowed characters to change and develop over time and for them to feel real to me. The medical mystery was fascinating, and so were the many scenes of surgery, medical intervention and healing. I think I liked that aspect the most.

Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life by Dani Shapiro

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective

3.0

I've now read all of Dani Shapiro's memoirs. Three of them are like this, structured as mini-essays around a theme: marriage, spirituality, and here, writing. Not an instruction manual, rather vignettes about one writer's life. I found it pleasant to read but left with no particularly striking insights.

The one thing I do pick up from Shapiro is that it's okay to write about the same thing more than once. She covers the same incidents and themes over and over again.

The Sweet Spot by Amy Poeppel

emotional funny lighthearted

4.0

I enjoyed this story of people working through difficult relationships. There were lots of laughs, with silly situations and some incredible coincidences, and the characters were exaggerated for humor but also felt real and relatable. Even the most un-likeable character got a shot at redemption in the end. I'd read something else by Poeppel!

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum

adventurous dark

2.5

After the delights of Ozma of Oz, I was surprised to find how dark and gloomy this was! A terrifying earthquake leads to encounters with heartless vegetable people, invisible bears, and wooden gargoyles. Even Dorothy's pet cat narrowly escapes committing murder.

And most of this would seemingly have been unnecessary if Dorothy had only remembered earlier to signal Ozma to use the Magic Belt!  I won't even talk about the inconsistencies ...

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker

challenging dark emotional informative sad

3.75

Whitaker's approach is heavy on anecdotes, but he tells a plausible and extremely disturbing story that he insists will be upheld by an honest look at the scientific evidence. You might be skeptical, but if there's even a chance that psychoactive drugs are doing the kind of harm being described, especially for children, there should be an immediate pullback on their prescription. Sadly, I think that is unlikely to happen, and mental illness will continue to skyrocket.

I am most intrigued by the kind of care he describes being carried out in Finland -- where health care workers actually LISTEN to patients and involve the family in therapy. But in most places people would rather throw pills at people than develop this kind of intensive, but effective care model.

In the 1970s "[Yrjö] Alanen believed that the hallucinations and paranoid utterances of schizophrenic patients, when carefully parsed, told meaningful stories. Hospital psychiatrists, nurses, and staff needed to listen to the patients." Ch. 16

"The patient would be encouraged to construct a new 'self-narrative' for going forward, the patient imagining a future where he or she was integrated into society, rather than isolated from it. 'With the biological conception of psychosis, you can't see the past achievements' or the future possibilities, [Jukka] Aaltonen said."

Current treatment in Tornio, western Lapland
"'open meetings,' where every participant freely shared his or her thoughts, would provide psychotic patients with a very different experience from conventional psychotherapy"

"'Psychosis does not live in the head. It lives in the in-between of family members, and the in-between of people,' [Tapio] Salo explained. 'It is in the relationship, and the one who is psychotic makes the bad condition visible. He or she 'wears the symptoms' and has the burden to carry them.'"

Job of the staff is to "promote an 'open dialogue' in which everybody's thoughts can become known, with the family members (and friends) viewed as coworkers."

"...Most patients want to tell their story, and when they speak of hallucinations and paranoid thoughts, the therapists simply listen and reflect upon what they've heard. 'I think [psychotic symptoms] are very interesting,' Kurtti said. 'What's the difference between voices and thoughts? We are having a conversation.'"

"'It's about restoring social connections,' Salo said. 'The "in-between" starts working again, with family and with friends.'"

Open-dialogue therapy

Only two or three cases now appear each year, a 90 percent drop since early 1980s

"All strong souls first go to hell before they do the healing of the world they came here for. If we are lucky, we return to help those still trapped below." Clarissa Pinkola Estés, from the poem Abre La Puerta in Theatre of the Imagination