Category: Mental Health
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As Long as I’m Still Breathing: Becoming a Transgender Orthodox Jew by Avraham Kolenski
As Long as I’m Still Breathing is a 75-page memoir broken up into seven chapters of first-person past-tense prose and free verse poetry. It delves into Avraham’s struggles with depression and how transitioning to male and converting to Judaism helped give him the strength to stay alive. It tells the story of how he converted…
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I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
Is it okay to be glad over an abuser’s death, and if so, is it okay to express that feeling? In what contexts? What other factors impact the answer, such as the severity of the abuse or the feelings of others toward the deceased? What does it mean to feel relief or anger at the…
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The Invisible Hiker by Kira Harland
Rating: 4/5, good Full disclosure: This is my cousin’s book and I edited the first four chapters. The Invisible Hiker is the autobiographical tale of Kira, a woman in her 20s who suffers from Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), hiking the John Muir Trail (JMT) with her father, John, and her cousin, Melissa. It’s called The…
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Too Much and Never Enough by Mary L. Trump
Rating: 5/5, excellent It feels odd writing this after Trump’s been voted out of the presidency. I want to be done talking about him, but this book was fantastic and deserves the attention. Too Much and Never Enough is Mary L. Trump’s memoir/biography of the Trump family. Mary analyzes how Donald came to be the…
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A Little Life by Hanya Yanigahara
Rating: 5/5, excellent This book is amazing. Basically, A Little Life is the story of four men – Jude, Willem, JB, and Malcolm – who we follow over the course of thirty years of friendship. The main character, Jude, has been severely abused as a child and as a teen and only started to…
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Yes, You Are Trans Enough by Mia Violet
Rating: 5/5, amazing I started following Mia Violet on Twitter (@OhMiaGod) once I started being more active on Twitter a year or two ago and she consistently posts good stuff, mostly on trans topics but also on mental health and other subjects. This book is a memoir of Mia’s life from her childhood in a…
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Quiet by Susan Cain
This isn’t so much a book for introverts to learn how to fit into society as an argument as to why society should change to accept introverts.
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No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
Rating: 4/5, good I originally read this on a plane, quickly, without much thought. I tried to sit down and review it a few weeks ago, but I felt like I didn’t understand it well enough. I looked up Osamu Dazai’s biography and then reread No Longer Human, and it seemed to come into place.…
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The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells Rating: 5/5, excellent WARNING: This review contains spoilers! This book is a touchstone for me. I read it the first time in middle school, and it really resonated with me. The Invisible Man is a very irritable, impatient, smart person. He reminds me a lot of myself and my…
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Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
Rating: 4/5, good This book is horrifically, horrifically depressing. I usually enjoy dark books, but I didn’t get anything resembling “pleasure” out of this one. It is SO INCREDIBLY BLEAK. It doesn’t have the dramatic despair of Darconville’s Cat, the humble nihilism of Too Loud a Solitude, or the morbid curiosity of Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted.…