4 comments about In the Jaws of the Black Dogs: A Memoir of Depression.

1. Average Reader Review: Number of Reviews: 1

   1. In the Jaws of the Black Dogs By: Waleska from Alberta As a psychology major, I was fascinated by this account of one man's life-long struggle with depression. While I do not necessarily think his experience is representative of depressives in general, I appreciated the way in which May displayed them, with all the vulnerability and courage that entails. I also found relief in the fact that he did not offer a quick fix, as so many psychology authors attempt to do. If you are interested in more literature dealing with mental disorders, I strong recommend a short story by Charlotte Gilman, called The Yellow Wallpaper.




2. I wasn't impressed with this book. There were definitely a few comments that really struck home, but they were few and far between.



3. It's obvious from reading the first few pages that Mays is an extraordinary writing talent. This is not just another story from someone who suffers depression. It is so eloquently written that I had problems understanding what some of the words meant. His story is told in such vivid detail, with amazing use of the English language. A wonderful book, and very helpful to readers struggling with their own black dogs.



4. I related to so many areas of John Bentley's life. As I read this book I was touched and inspired, and reminded that I am not alone in my perpetual existential crisis. A more refreshing look at depression has not come along in many years. A truly beautiful book that could save lives!

2 comments about Deaf Peddler: Confessions of an Inside Man.

1. For anyone interested in Deaf culture--or, for that matter, anyone who has encountered peddlers selling those ABC cards in airports--this book is an excellent choice. Buck gives a perspective most of us would not otherwise have the opportunity to hear. He discusses his reasons for choosing this way of life, and also describes in detail what his days were like. I highly recommend the book.



2. Deaf Peddler-Confessions of an Inside Man
   By Dennis S. Buck

   When I read this story I couldn't help to think of the old movie "Rebel without a cause", for that is what on the surface appears to be. Although I could never understand his motivation or choice. Yet as a Deaf person I could understand the pressure and rejection he felt from the hearing society. Of the one steady job he did have, he wasn't given the opportunity for training like his peers. When he did work with someone who understood his Sign Language they corrected him and although he had the education he was still held back. Maybe this was his reason to take to the street out of frustration thereby acting out the hearing worlds perception of Deaf people.
   But in the end the wayward son comes home to the Deaf Community and realizes that Deaf people are not single entities like hearing people. That Deaf people are not whole who live outside of our community. When Deaf people strive, we strive for all Deaf people.
   This is not the best book I have ever read, nor is it the worst but I am glad he came home and that his book is now added to Deaf Culture Literature, and for that reason I give this book 5 stars.

5 comments about Life Is an Adventure.

1. This book is a good read for Non-disabled and disabled folks alike.
   If you want to be uplifted and inspired read this book. Her premise: Life is what you make it, so make it a full life.
   It is the deeply personal, biographical story of a woman who knows how to live life well.
   It is also a practical manual on the changes (physical, emotional and mental) one goes through during the transformation from able bodied to dis-abled. And it is a resource full of up to date medical information and contact numbers.
   I enjoyed reading this book and highly recommend it.



2. As a Professor in a School of Nursing Terry has had a unique perspective to describe the disease condition that she confronted at mid-life. Knowing Terry as a cabin mate and fellow nurse on the medical ship HOPE, before she experienced Multiple Sclerosis, I am aware, to a small degree, how difficult the adjustments she faced must have been. Her capacities to experience life were extremely strong, physically, mentally, emotionally and to have some of these forces challenged must have called for courage that I'm sure she was unaware she had. I marvel at the way she has managed her life to realize what she did to fulfill her need to care for herself properly, to give to her community--large and small--what she had to offer professionally, and to travel to know and understand the world as deeply and fully and she had dreamed. I feel so privileged to know Terry and of her "Life of Adventure". The book is a wonderfully practical guide of how to deal with this disablng disease. As a nurse teacher I would highly recommend this book as a resource for nurse students as a way to understand better the special challenges of patients with chronic disease conditions.



3. Teresa is an amazing and courageous woman. Her book is
   uplifting and inspirational. Her life before and after
   her diagnosis of MS was well written and I found I had to
   finish reading it even though I had already started a
   John Grisham novel. She has lived her life well and
   fully. I recommend Life is an Adventure to anyone--
   whether disabled or not.



4. I read this book in one sitting and I really enjoyed it. I was impressed with the author's honesty and really appreciated her candor in reactions to each new development in her disease.

   While she did not always have positive reactions at every stage, she focused on what she "could do" rather than staying in the "land of what she couldn't do." She was never a "Pollyanna" and I found that very refreshing.

   I could relate to her anger with people that ignored her and/or her needs in various circumstances, as well as her inventiveness (i.e. peeong on the lawn) was not only entertaining, it made me think about how I have handled what life has thrown at me, how I handled that in the past, how I handle it now, and how I will handle it in the future.

   The author comes across as a person that is in charge of her life, and I admire that quality.

   I would recommend this book not only to people living with a chronic illness, but to anyone interested in living life to it's fullest.

   A READER WITH LUPUS




5. I just finished reading this book and found I could not put it down.It is one of the most enlightening, well written, important books on living with a disability that I've ever read.The author's descriptions are so precise I really feel as if I'm there or following behind her. I can almost smell the food as she describes it or see the cobblestones on the uneven surface as she tries to manuver.
   I feel this book is so important in seeing the world through the eyes of a disabled person that Iam requiring it for all of my staff.I thank the author for sharing her life with me. She is a most remarkable person.

5 comments about Mockingbird Years: A Life In And Out Of Therapy.

1. a hyper-intellectual author with a flair for exquisite writing, writing a mostly dull memoir, with its most interesting part being her whopping idealization/idolization of her semi-famous therapist Leslie Farber (he symbolically = her parents), who seemed to have primarily his own best interests at heart as he performed her therapy. She seemed to start to dabble with this thought by the end of the book, but didn't really run with it at all. Although I found the book readable (primarily because I was interested in reading about the behind-the-scenes Farber), I found her life dull primarily because I felt she wasn't really accessing her deeper emotional issues, and was mostly just skimming across the emotional surface, and distracting the reader from that fact by her gorgeous, poetic writing...

   aside: that both her parents (and her brother) went to swarthmore came as a surprise to me, but shouldn't have. I went to swarthmore too, and found it a highly emotionally uninspiring and dead place, with most of its residents and the institution itself troubled but masked behind a veneer of intellectual brilliance.




2. there's a lot here i liked.... but i have a complaint about this book... and perhaps it will be viewed as very superficial, yet nontheless it had an effect on me (and a few other readers i've spoken with)... it's the cover.... i'm really bothered by the glamorization of smoking on the cover. okay, so it's in the story... but still, book covers are ads, and when smoking is glamourized in other ads, it is viewed as irresponsible. i think that's the case here as well.



3. I am a therapist and work at an inpatient psychiatric facility. I often read first person accounts of therapy or life with mental illness, etc. I found this book refreshingly free of jargon and diagnosis. It also provided an interesting perspective on the changes that have occurred in mental health treatment since the 1960s. The author's depiction of herself at the brink of adulthood so closely describes many persons that I see today. The fact that she has walked so far away from the life she led then is encouragement both for today's 'patients' and for all the therapists who seek to help them. It was hard for me to put the book down; I read it in 2 days.



4. While the writing is certainly readable, it isn't without frustration. There were times I wanted to shake the author out of her deulded state. I do think there comes a point in your life when you have to accept the things that have happened and move on. Parents are not perfect. Find me a person who thinks their parents made all the correct child rearing decisions. That person is lying. While the author does not blame all her troubles on her family, these are the moments that scream the loudest. It's okay to pout about your parents and how they raised you, but to write a book about it after the age of nineteen suggests a deeper problem.



5. I bought this book because I thought it would be fascinating. I enjoy reading memoirs by patients who are able to analyze their past treatment with knowledge and hindsight. This book looked like it would be just that.However, I was disappointed.
   
   The beginning was so promising and intriguing. I read majority of the book in one sitting. Once the story turned to the idolization of Dr. Farber, though, I lost my interest. She was so personal and candid, and then became a little too "intellectual" for my taste. Emily Fox Gordon is best when she is describing and reviving the past in beautiful language and immense detail.
   
   But all this beauty and detail are lost when she starts to discuss how she got married and matured. It seemed as though the book began to rush at this point. She barely discusses her husband, which I thought was strange considering the last therapist she sees is because of her difficulties with him and their marriage. She becomes preachy and overly intellectual, constantly analyzing the work of Buber and Farber. She attempts to cash in on her education, becoming clinical and defensive in the end (her consistent preoccupation with her lack of education throughout the book seems to have forced her hand into writing this ending). And then the book ends, so abruptly, just like her life in therapy.
   
   I recommend the book because Emily Fox Gordon is a master of language and imagery. Regardless of the content of her opinions or memories, she was able to make me see her life unfold vividly. Her greatness lies in the *personal,* as she stated herself.

5 comments about Hannah's Gift: Lessons from a Life Fully Lived.

1. Hannah's Gift is the story of a remarkable little girl and her fight with cancer.
   
   From the moment she was diagnosed, to the moment of her death, Hannah treats her disease and her fight for life in a unique, touching way.
   
   Despite being only three years old, she appears to understand the cancer fully and is not scared of death, instead, she asks her Grandmother - 'Grandma, when I die, promise you wont forget me?'
   
   Hannah lived her life fully and with no self-pity. I found Hannah's Gift to be less of a record of a families loss, but more a celebration of Hannah's life. Hannah truly brings to life the phrase - 'Only the good die young.'



2. I loved this book and it really helped me. Some think that Hannah was preceived as the "perfect" child, and I can relate to that. We just lost our Granddaughter on her 2nd. birthday, she had Cystic Fibrous, but died, not from CF, but during a "simple" 15-20 min. procedure in surgery. Two months after her passing I read Hannah's gift. I took care of our little Bethany, while our daughter worked, and they live within walking distance right next to us. We were together every day, so I saw all the same signs. These children ARE so special. They have so much love, they are almost perfect, with very small "wrongs". Like Hannah's mom, I got that feeling, that they know, their time on earth is short,just by the way their eyes will sometimes look at you. They know you love them so much as they love you, but they won't be here to share that love. Yes, Hannah's Gift was a touching story



3. Oh boy, this was beyond tear-jerker for me. This was such an emotional story. I read this book in one day, while my husband was away. I was glad he wasn't here to tease me about sobbing all the way through this book. Maria Housden is a such a strong woman, what a horrible ordeal she and her family went through losing Hannah.



4. I got a great price for this book and it arrived with in 2 weeks from the date of purchase. I was a little dissappointed when i opened the package because the cover and binding was damaged. It looked like they had tried to bend the book. Besides that the book was okay. You get what you pay for.



5. I bought this book a few years ago, and I often still think about Hannah and her story. It was so touching, and I cried through most of it. This is a book that I felt compelled to pass to a friend. I almost wish that I hadn't, so I could read it again.

2 comments about Lightning at the Gate.

1. Jeanne Achterberg breaks the mold of illness memoirs and healing tracts with her searing honesty, wit, fresh prose style, insight, and sheer spiritual brazenness. What a joy to read, a powerful investigation of the sorrowful, tough, often elevating experiences of this wounded healer going deeper to try to heal herself, and the personal losses and gains that occur along the way. Bless her for being so nakedly honest in sharing the hard truths about her marriage and personal life in a way that doesn't make the reader feel like a voyeur but like a dear friend who needs to know about the intertwined tentacles of her life as she lives it, and as she tries to extend and expand it both by turning within and by reaching out. Actherberg helps us understand that illness can be a metaphor; it all depends on what metaphor we construct, what truths it holds, and what we do about it.



2. A respected authority on the use of guided imagery to heal, Dr. Jeanne Achterberg writes an engaging story about her harrowing and year-long journey through physical pain and spiritual darkness into wellness.
   
   She uses her suspected diagnosis for ocular melanoma - a rare and potentially deadly cancer of the internal layer of the eye - as the literal and symbolic theme to anchor a story that is part thriller, memoir, medical mystery, self-help resource and alternative medicine advocacy.
   
   In about 50 short, distinct chapters, Achterberg guides the reader through the impact of this catastrophic disease on relationships in her "orbit" - self, others, the alternative healing community, as well as with the mainstream medical profession.
   
   Achterberg, as reflects her background, credits shamanic and prayerful influences with healing her eye. Unfortunately, since her diagnosis was never medically confirmed, it's not possible to establish that cause-effect relationship.
   
   This lack of perspective reduces her compelling story to a largely anecdotal account. The promise of alternative healing to transform people's lives has not been realized on a broad scale due to the lack of cross collaboration between the alternative and scientific communities. Achterberg was uniquely positioned to bridge the alternative/mainstream divide. Instead, a story of triumph uncomfortably comes across as an "us vs. them" contest
   
   However, Lightning At the Gate is the only book out there that talks about ocular melanoma from a personal perspective. For many diagnosed with this cancer, that's the only story that really matters. For more information about this rare cancer, please check out the See A Cure Foundation website found at seeacure.com

2 comments about The Deepest Wound : How a Journey to El Salvador Led to Healing from Mother-Daughter Incest.

1. This incredible journey of what happens when "Mother" is the abuser and father disconnects setting a tiny soul adrift is the most powerful I've ever read. This book is a must read for: Anyone who doubts the depth of destruction that can be caused by those entrusted with the gift of a child; survivors who need to recognize emerging symptoms and understand that they can confront their pain and follow Linda's new paradigm to healing; friends and family who contemplate approaching or accompanying a survivor on their journey to healing; therapists and doctors that seek to enter the dangerouis minefield surrounding survivors; and, watchers, for whom this book may instill the courage to intercede on behalf of a child.
   It takes courage to read this book. Those that do will never take a shallow view of childhood abuse again.
   At the close of this book, readers will recognize the author as a remarkably courageous woman who shattered myths and created new pathways as she fought her way from Hell to healing.



2. The Deepest Wound: How A Journey To El Salvador Led To Healing From Mother-Daughter Incest by Linda Crockett, is a powerful and personal testimony of her own life journey that draws parallels between healing from sadistic parental abuse and recovering from political torture. An insightful journey to how the scars of terrible, repeated trauma can be accepted, and adapted, without sacrificing one's ability to pursue hopes and dreams. The Deepest Wound is profoundly candid, deeply moving and highly recommended reading.

3 comments about Silent Struggler: A Caregiver's Personal Story.

1. This is an honest and touching account of what it is like to be a caregiver. The author is the spouse of a patient with advanced Multiple Sclerosis. One day this diagnosis given to his wife not only changed her life, but also changed his life. The author talks about how to care for the disabled in most every way imaginable, from eating and sleeping, to talking and sharing intimacy. As the story in the book evolved, so did the story of his wife. He speaks honestly about his feelings about her illness and about his love for her. This book is not only informative but it is helpful to those who have disabled loved ones and who are caring for them. The name Silent Struggler denotes that the struggle is not only one of the patient's...but it is also the caregiver who struggles with increased responsibility and loss.



2. Dr. Mollette shares his experiences, after his wife was diagnosed with MS, with clarity and refreshing honesty. He gives down-to-earth advice for care givers in an open and compassionate manner.

   This book is a must read for care givers and disability advocates alike. It will shed light on the every day realities for people who suffer from an illness/disability and those who love & care for them.

   Also recommended: The Throw-Away Kids, for which Dr. Mollette was the publisher.




3. Very informative and candid, spoken as only a caregiver with personal experience could. Dr. Mollette gives insight to life as a caregiver. He offers advice to help avoid pitfalls and hardships that the caregiver may experience. A good, easy read.

1 comments about Big & Tall Chronicles: Misadventures of a Life Long Food Addict!.

1. This Author walked From Florida to Boston and was a guest on Regis and Kelly.
   Once I started reading this book I could not put it down. Gary is an inspiration! This soft covered book has large print. Chapter after Chapter, I laughed and Cried. I felt like he was talking to me as I was reading this book. This book will help anyone trying to lose weight every step of the way. It is worth every penny and then some...A great book for anyone no matter what size you are Big or Small! This is how the "Million Calorie March" was Born.Fighting obesity in todays society.
   The Reality, The humor and the Results all in one!
   If I could give it 10 Stars I would.

5 comments about Red Star Sister : Between Madness and Utopia.

1. Leslie Brody's autobiography recounts her young life as an activist at the height of the counterculture movement, giving readers the inside scoop on the life of a radical hippie. With the body count for the Vietnam War on Cronkite as her background music, Brody leaves her home in a Long Island suburb to single-handedly save the world. She packs her red suitcase and heads into the unknown, stopping for episodes at White Panther collectives in Chicago and Ann Arbor, Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, and finally, Europe, where she hopes to attend the Vietnamese peace negotiations. Its rich detail, humor, and awareness of self and world make Red Star Sister a fascinating memoir.

   Brody gives readers a strong sense of the euphoria felt by radicals in the 60's and early 70's. She explains how the goal was to off the pig, and "the fashionable rhetoric encouraged kids not to trust anyone over thirty and, furthermore, to kill our parents". Adults represent the death culture, and hippies idealistically set out to recreate Woodstock all over the world, where love and community would reign over war, napalm, and lies.

   Brody's use of detail and allusion is effective in illustrating the counterculture atmosphere. She evokes the music of Phil Ochs and Country Joe McDonald, political role models Che Guevara and Mao Tse-tung, and of course, her literary heroes Doris Lessing, Joan Didion, and Anais Nin. With enjoyable candor, she recounts her experiences with hashish, Yellow Sunshine, and free love. Even as a young person born a decade after this time period, I still get a powerful sense of what the world was like for the radicals.

   In the midst of revolutionary zeal, however, Brody presents herself as a character with an undeniably human side to which I can relate. She is plagued by concerns that any young woman might experience--"I would wonder if I was a coward," Brody says. She engages in free love still wondering, "Does he just like me because he can have me? Does he even think I'm pretty?... Is it counterrevolutionary to want to be pretty?" I have no problem sympathizing with Brody as she blunders through her early life.

   In this tension between counterculture hero and regular girl, Brody holds a naive enthusiasm that manifests itself in a passion for the romantic and the literary. She takes solace as she wanders the streets of France, broke, in the fact that "I felt, despite my discomfort, emotionally pure, careless and thoughtless, down and out, a little crazy, and awfully literary". The irony through which the older Brody frequently views her youthful romanticism adds humor to the narration and conveys a well-rounded sense of self.

   Brody's memoir is more outward-looking than what one might expect from an author writing for the "me generation". She admits early on that "I'm sure brats abounded as they do in every age," and presents a balanced account of her youth by describing the bad drug trips along with the good ones. Brody does not proclaim that she and her comrades were the ultimate saviors of society, or that hers was the only valid experience to be had during that time. Instead, she says, "I offer you one woman's point of view". Fortunately, Brody has an interesting perspective and a talent for poignant narration.




2. This is the autobiography of a feminist "hippie" from the 60's whose witty writing style portrays her as a woman who does more than blindly preach against the Vietnam War. Readers of this book will find out that she is a true American. Brody, who grows up in a Jewish family, integrates Yiddish into her dialect. As soon as I read the word "zoftig" and "vildechaya," I felt connected to her through the culture we've shared. This culture connection, by the way, is a timeless generation bridge. It was as though I understood where she was coming from because she had the same grandmother, the same self-awareness, and similar prejudice problems as many Jews know quite well. Red Star Sister, in this respect, is timeless.
   My favorite anecdote of the story was her experience at Woodstock. This is because I could picture my mother somewhere in the crowd, while everyone at the concert was thinking and talking about the same things- either peace, drugs, love, or absolutely nothing at all. Of course we have all read about these things in other books that are probably better publicized. But the reason why this one is so good is that she developed my trust first. Brody captures me with commonalities of religion, language, and crazy-but-thought-out actions.
   I would especially recommend this book to women who want to read about themselves or read what they could have done if they wanted an exciting, politically active life. This book combines the location changes of the James Bond series, the class struggles and racism issues of Their Eyes Were Watching God, a witty personal perspectives like that of Virginia Woolf, and an effective writing style like Tim O'Brien. Brody shows herself as an American with the type of patriotism we are lacking today. The passion that comes with patriotism.



3. Red Star Sister promises no more than "one woman's point of view", a glimpse at a period in our shared history that was marked by turmoil and upheaval, but strife and idealism. This one point of view is more than enough to give the reader what Leslie Brody hopes for, namely a glimpse at an "often shadowy, anxious time", and through the retelling of the events therein, she hopes for herself a chance to recapture the utopian image of self and society that drew her generation together while they were being rived apart by the events of the day.
   Brody takes the reader through her childhood on Long Island, replete with insecurity stemming from her middle class upbringing to reprimands for her defiance and intelligence at the local public schools. Through a surprisingly personal and unflinching recounting of her teenage years, through her mother's death, her anger towards her father and the men in her academic life, and her ever increasing political awareness, Brody prepares the reader, through recollections and journal entries, for angst filled state of mind that could take a young hippie girl from Long Island to a White Panther commune in Chicago where she was trained in the art of guerilla warfare, should the ideal for society need to be defended, with force if need be. The ever pressing war in Southeast Asia translated into an intensely individual war at home, as Brody struggles to retain her idealism and even sanity as she comes to grip with her dreams clashing with reality.
   In the end what has been offered here is an unapologetic glimpse into the mindset of a woman who shared the life of a generation, without the recriminations or glorifications to be had within the memoirs of contemporaries, done, perhaps, as much for her own sake as that of the reader she takes with her on the journey.



4. After reading the book, and knowing that Leslie Brody is a professor at a college, which is a well-respected and honored job, people would not think that the things she explains in her book Red Star Sister would actually be things she did. She took a big social risk in writing her book because she took the chance of getting ridiculed because of her past. Anyone who reads this book will have a different opinion about it, but mostly it could be expected that they would respond positively to it, and praise her for a job well done. While reading a novel written as an autobiography, the reader feels as if he or she were in the position of the author because everything is told first hand, so it gives the feeling of reality and truth. That is how people would feel if they read Brody's book, she makes people feel as if they were experiencing everything she had; they would feel like war protestors from the 60's.
   Because she writes the truth, as she understands it, readers may think that her reality is being forced upon them. Except she states clearly in the book "I am writing this the way I remember it. I do know I'd have to be some kind of zealot to believe that what I say is the only truth" (5). She is writing what she knows, and whether or not that is the truth for others she does not know, but this book is her recollection of the past in the way she experienced it.
   As well as the narrative style and her opinion of truth, she represents an image of independence to women who read her literature, just as the women in the novels Summer, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Jane Eyre, and Wide Sargasso Sea. Brody is a woman of defiance and she differs from these other women in that she does things on her own and is independent from the beginning of her life. She may hold men on pedestals, such as Tim Lowenthal, just as Charity held Lucius on one. And her love life may be just as confusing as Janie's. Or she may have the same rebellious attitude as Jane does, and like part of the title of her book, she may have madness like Antoinette but she is the only one of all of them that obtains her independence as a child, and is not afraid of it. She is proud to be different because being normal is too boring. This image she portrays allows women to see themselves as independent and be proud of their unique or different qualities. She helps women to find their truth in life, by finding their independence.
   Since part of the title of her book says "Between Madness and Utopia" she clearly does not think that anything can be the same or have just one meaning or truth. By definition madness and utopia are opposites and so somewhere in between the confusion and agitation of madness and the perfection of utopia, there lies the truths that people understand and comprehend as their own. Through her book she explains the truth that she knows; she explains the places between madness and utopia where she found her truth.



5. This novel is the unequivocal history of both Leslie Brody, and to a larger degree the counterculture movement of the 1960?s and 1970?s. Leslie relives her experiences of many of the major events during this time period including Woodstock, the Chicago Democratic Convention, the underground high school press and the "San Francisco Peace Treaty". With utter fascination at the woman that she was before, Brody goes over her experiences with as much interest into who the girl in the picture and write the poems is.
   For the novice Vietnam War reader, or even one who would like to learn what the Vietnam War stood for in the protest marches, there is no better source of information than The Red Star Sister. Without first hand accounts of the actual motives of the protest movement, hippies would be smudged into history as a group full of drugs and free loving. However, this book shows the utopianism that hippies everywhere were seeking, a state that had peace and no need to attack other countries.
   Red Star Sister gives a breath of fresh air and reason to the hippie movement and is a must read by all people who did not go through what she has, which is roughly 99% of the population. If you are interested in reading a well-constructed and fair version of events that took place during America's hippie movement, then you must look no further than this book. However, if you ardently believe that the Vietnam War was the correct American foreign policy and the thought of the protest movement makes your stomach curl, then this book should be passed over. Either way, one cannot argue that Leslie Brody lived a truly remarkable life.