![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness
Author: Susannah Cahalan
Narrator: Christie Moreau
Published: Grand Central Publishing, 2019
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 400
Total Page Count: 469,915
Text Number: 1652
Read Because: personal enjoyment
Review: One third the history of psychiatry, one third "On Being Sane in Insane Places" and its far-reaching impact on psychiatry, and one third an investigation of the study's author and the questionable veracity of his work. It's a small focus on a big subject, too ambitious for its own good and therefore unable to answer all the questions it poses, but I kind of like that: it's willing instead to accept incomplete and uneasy answers. That thoughtful ambiguity is somewhat soured by the borderline-unfounded optimism that seems to be required in the epilogues of all nonfiction.
Anyway I did have The Platters (and a smidge of Freddie Mercury) stuck in my head the entire time I was reading this and for a solid week after, so that's fun and totally fine.
Title: Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
Author: Susannah Cahalan
Narrator: Heather Henderson
Published: HighBridge Audio, 2012
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 270
Total Page Count: 480,840
Text Number: 1702
Read Because: reading more of the author, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A memoir of encephalitis: the gradual experience of going mad through the course of disease; wrestling with lost identity and time, and the luck by which the author's case was treated rather than dismissed as mental illness. I appreciate the addictive readability of memoir framed by larger issues: insight into a rare disease that stands at the fragile intersection between physical illness and mental health, illustrating systemic problems in treatment. I liked this.
But also, wow, everyone has their own valid relationship with their body and relationships with bodies altered by outside forces are exceptionally complicated, but the fat-shaming makes for a sour end note. I suppose it speaks to the flaws in the framing of memoir-as-social-issue, because it's also just one single person's story and thus comes laden with the baggage that person may carry.
(Also, yes, like The Monster of Florence, I read this with Hannibal perpetually at the back of my mind. That said, it usually is.)
Title: The Want-Ad Killer
Author: Ann Rule
Narrator: Paul Boehmer
Published: Tantor Audio, 2016 (1983)
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 270
Total Page Count: 481,110
Text Number: 1703
Read Because: reading more of the author, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Rand is so far up the police's butthole in this one that there's literal "wouldn't a police shooting fix all our problems?" and a "why does the 4th Amendment exist, actually?" sections - not surprising, but almost comically propagandist. Nonetheless this is one of the better not-The Stranger Beside Me Rands, mostly by dint of being less salacious than most. Thorough, readable, only a little tortured. That said, it may be time for me to stop chasing the ghost of The Stranger Beside Me, because her other books have been distinctly less impressive.
Author: Susannah Cahalan
Narrator: Christie Moreau
Published: Grand Central Publishing, 2019
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 400
Total Page Count: 469,915
Text Number: 1652
Read Because: personal enjoyment
Review: One third the history of psychiatry, one third "On Being Sane in Insane Places" and its far-reaching impact on psychiatry, and one third an investigation of the study's author and the questionable veracity of his work. It's a small focus on a big subject, too ambitious for its own good and therefore unable to answer all the questions it poses, but I kind of like that: it's willing instead to accept incomplete and uneasy answers. That thoughtful ambiguity is somewhat soured by the borderline-unfounded optimism that seems to be required in the epilogues of all nonfiction.
Anyway I did have The Platters (and a smidge of Freddie Mercury) stuck in my head the entire time I was reading this and for a solid week after, so that's fun and totally fine.
Title: Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
Author: Susannah Cahalan
Narrator: Heather Henderson
Published: HighBridge Audio, 2012
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 270
Total Page Count: 480,840
Text Number: 1702
Read Because: reading more of the author, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A memoir of encephalitis: the gradual experience of going mad through the course of disease; wrestling with lost identity and time, and the luck by which the author's case was treated rather than dismissed as mental illness. I appreciate the addictive readability of memoir framed by larger issues: insight into a rare disease that stands at the fragile intersection between physical illness and mental health, illustrating systemic problems in treatment. I liked this.
But also, wow, everyone has their own valid relationship with their body and relationships with bodies altered by outside forces are exceptionally complicated, but the fat-shaming makes for a sour end note. I suppose it speaks to the flaws in the framing of memoir-as-social-issue, because it's also just one single person's story and thus comes laden with the baggage that person may carry.
(Also, yes, like The Monster of Florence, I read this with Hannibal perpetually at the back of my mind. That said, it usually is.)
Title: The Want-Ad Killer
Author: Ann Rule
Narrator: Paul Boehmer
Published: Tantor Audio, 2016 (1983)
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 270
Total Page Count: 481,110
Text Number: 1703
Read Because: reading more of the author, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Rand is so far up the police's butthole in this one that there's literal "wouldn't a police shooting fix all our problems?" and a "why does the 4th Amendment exist, actually?" sections - not surprising, but almost comically propagandist. Nonetheless this is one of the better not-The Stranger Beside Me Rands, mostly by dint of being less salacious than most. Thorough, readable, only a little tortured. That said, it may be time for me to stop chasing the ghost of The Stranger Beside Me, because her other books have been distinctly less impressive.
