Whacha readin?

[Polar Bear]

Yankiwi - I looked up Dr. Oliver Sacks and he certainly does appear quirky and eccentric, what a life he had. I'll take note of your recommendation.

[ViewsAskew]

Sounds like a very good read.

[jul2873]

A wonderful—funny and moving—Netflix series called the Extraordinary Attorney Woo. It’s Korean but
the English is dubbed in which isn’t too awkward. It is one of my all time favorite shows now.

My granddaughter got me reading some Colleen Hoover books. Very busy plots—somewhat like Danielle Steel—but fun to read and some show some wisdom.

[Polar Bear]

I normally read psychological thrillers however my last book was Graham Norton (can't recall the title off the top of my head) who is an Irish comedian/chat show host turned fictional author. He writes in the style, I think, of Maeve Binchy it was light, funny, and moving. I was very surprised.

[Yankiwi]

I don’t usually read psychological thrillers but loved “Every move you make” by Deborah Bee.
Contemporary British fiction. Two sides to every story but only one is the truth.

Another one I loved is “Dictionary of lost words” by Pip Williams.
Esme, a small girl, spends her days in the Scriptorium where her father is part of a team collecting words for the first Oxford English Dictionary. The story follows her (and the dictionary) through their lives.

[jul2873]

I just read Unspeakable by Jessica Willis Fisher. You may remember the Fisher Clan, who performed wonderful musical routines, and who were on television as a family with 12 Children. Then, in 2016, it came out that the father, Toby Willis, had been both sexually and physically abusing his children for years. It was such a shocker. He was finally arrested, and is in prison now for 40 years.

Jessica was the oldest child, and the lead singer as well as the composer of most of their songs. She calls her book Upspeakable because she simply could not talk about her life for years. But she finally does in this book, and it is a very moving book. I couldn't put it down. There are still some youtube performances of the Willis Clan that you can see, and the book is all over. I downloaded it from Amazon. It's a real picture of how domestic violence can work.

[Polar Bear]

*Jul2873* - I feel that if Jessica is brave enough to write her story then it deserves to be read....... But I do find such stories so disturbing.......

*Yankiwi* - I will look for this book by Deborah Bee.

[Dr.Placebo]

The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O'Rourke. Very good writer describing her experience with an unknown, mysterious debilitating chronic illness trying for years to get help from the US Healthcare System. Just published in 2022 and her description of the current broken US Healthcare system is very current, accurate, and damning. Also her description of the mental and emotional state of a person who finds herself in this situation is so familiar it validates what we are feeling and that is somehow therapeutic.

Sounds depressing but if you want to see your own RLS experience-- fears, frustrations, lack of being taken seriously by the healthcare system-- perfectly and eloquently described, then read this book.

I have never come even close to being able to explain to others what I am going through, so now I can just say, "Read Invisible Kingdom and you might understand."

In short, the invisible kingdom is a world inhabited by people with a chronic illness that causes great suffering but doesn't have visible signs, doesn't show up on tests and x-rays, and is unknown, ignored or dismissed by most of the rest of the world.

Disclaimer: the latter part of the book concerns itself with a lot of science about immunology, almost like a textbook, that got to be tiring and didn't relate so much to RLS.

[TimG]

I've been reading the Invisible Kingdom due to my wife's Long Covid symptoms that have lingered for several years.

A book I'm really liking, also in the Health category is Breath Taking: The Power, Fragility, and Future of our Extraordinary Lungs by Pulmonologist Michael J. Stephen, MD (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2021) It is a fascinating history of lung diseases, anatomy, and the future of lung research and treatment. My father died from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a terrible progressive scarring of the lungs for which the only cure is a lung transplant. Dr Stephen devotes a chapter to this and writes about research and new drugs that may lengthen the life of sufferers.

[tagalongbuddy]

A very good friend of ours had pulmonary fibrosis and died last October. The pulmonologist told him he was a pretty good candidate for a transplant. However, he did not want to go through with it. So he progressed fairly quickly. You know how difficult this is since your father suffered with it.

[Yankiwi]

Sounds like an interesting bood.
A friend had pulmonary fibrosis in his early fifties. He was too sick to get a lung transplant so he died. He was ever hopeful of a lung transplant which was good for his mental health.