Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

From Goodreads:
An award-winning memoir and instant New York Times bestseller that goes far beyond its riveting medical mystery, Brain on Fire is the powerful account of one woman’s struggle to recapture her identity.

When twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a hospital room, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak, she had no memory of how she’d gotten there. Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: at the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened?

In a swift and breathtaking narrative, Cahalan tells the astonishing true story of her descent into madness, her family’s inspiring faith in her, and the lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn’t happen.

I read this book for week 34, a book about mental illness. Very enlightening, scary to think about, well-written. ★★★★

This one has been on my radar for a while - I have it down for my reject challenge (medical memoir). Glad to hear a positive review! It seems very interesting.

Jody, I hope you like it. I was fascinated by Calahan's story.

I added it, thanks! Seems interesting.

This book was so interesting/terrifying. The brain and body can do such crazy things. This book really made me think about how much things we consider mental can really be physiological.

I started listening to this one on my way home from work today. It's intriguing so far and I've heard great things about it. Listening for my A-Z Memoirs challenge.

As someone who works in psychiatry, this book is intriguing and if one only read the first half of this book they may be left thinking that Susannah did have some kind of psychosis or even emerging schizophrenia. This story goes to show, it's not always what we think it is, the brain is a strange creature which we still haven't fully figured out.

I loved the way that Susannah explains the neurological/medical jargon from a curious journalist point of view. She explains it in a way that anyone can understand and even includes examples of mnemonics that doctors use, which I actually found interesting and helpful to my own nursing practice recently (who would have guessed?).

I disliked the way Susannah talks about the psych ward. This is an example of stigma generating view points. She talks about the fear of being locked away. It's as if she thinks the psych ward is a place where people are left to rot. I understand that for her, this created fear that investigations would have stalled and perhaps prevented her from receiving the treatment she required, but people forget that psychiatrists always rule out organic causes of psychosis before making a formal diagnosis. So likely she would have had plenty of consultation wherever it was that she ended up in the hospital. Just needed to include my 2 cents there.

Hope i didn't give away too much for those of you that are still reading. Overall, I really liked this book, it's a great example of how brutal life can be, but also how having supportive people in your life can help you get through just about anything.

I read this for 2018, AtY Week 14 (A book linked to the Fire element). I thought I'd love this, but I just didn't. I found it difficult to connect with Susannah, which is really integral in a memoir. Her experience was certainly fascinating, but the way she wrote about it was not.

Just finished this for 2019's Week 7: two books connected by genre, theme, or topic. I'm going with mental illness for topic.... although I guess after reading it, it wouldn't really fit mental illness as much as I thought it would haha.

I really liked Cahalan's style of writing.. I agree with Renae in that it definitely feels like a journalistic piece of writing, rather than a normal memoir. There weren't many flashbacks and, other than what Cahalan says outright about herself, we don't really know who she was before the disease. Jody, that could be why you didn't connect with her as easily?

I didn't mind that though. I thought her story was totally compelling and scary, and I love that we got a first person point of view on it... seeing her delusions first hand (and having her think back on them after the fact) was really insightful.

I gave this book 5 stars because it ticked every box that I have for a nonfiction book.

That could be it - it really just didn’t do it for me, I’m afraid!