Saturday, September 29, 2007

October Reader's Rants



An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness /
by Kay Redfield Jamison, M.D.
Dr. Jamison is Chief of the Psychiatry Department at Johns Hopkins. She is also a life long manic-depressive making her a leading authority on this brand of bipolar disorder. Extreme despair and hyperactivity accompany Jamison from adolescence into her 40’s as she struggles through tattered relationships, spending spree manias, even a near fatal suicide attempt—all resulting from her condition. An acute perspective in the realm of depressive illnesses, her memoir is extremely insightful for anyone involved with someone suffering from a disease of this type.



The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid / by Bill Bryson
Think of Beaver Cleaver in his cuffed jeans and buzz cut eating dinner with his family. Now picture him sneaking in to a strip club. Such is the dichotomy of this authentic, humorous, and openly lascivious memoir by Bill Bryson who somehow embraces the 1950's America without censoring human nature. Bryson uproots his own Iowa childhood reminiscing on a wide spectrum of nuances like grade school drama, red scare follies, and Sunday morning TV. An easy read perhaps most aimed at baby boomers, this is for anyone wanting a laugh with a dose of nostalgia.

The Lost: A Search for Six of the Six Million / by Daniel Mendolshon

All or most of Holocaust literature is retrospective in nature. And while this book deals heavily with the past, it closes the gap between living history and the present day via Mendelshon’s passionate journey of discovery. Almost like true crime or forensic literature, we see a heavily involved man—Mendolsohn—seeking the truth behind his holocaust era Jewish relatives who vanished during the final solution. Plodding at times, readers may get too bogged down with details to appreciate the mystery.

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