Readsday

A couple of posts by friends elsewhere reminded me of how much I liked 'Reading Wednesday' originally, before I burnt out on it (I think it's that it was always the same damn three questions -- I never do well with lists of questions, I always have the impulse to tear them up halfway through). So this: not capsule reviews really, not anything organized, just an update of sorts.

Inside Rehab by Anne Fletcher is interesting, if thuddingly written: "In short, the clients I met expressed pros and cons of residential treatment, depending upon where they'd gone, but it may also have been a matter of where they happened to be when they were ready for treatment" is a sample sentence from the page I'm on. Laura Miller (God, Laura fucken Miller - she and Dwight Garner are the twin banes of my goddamn online reading existence) misses the point spectacularly, opening with "Amy Winehouse was right," which is designed to make the reader say ho, ho, ho, I suppose. Fletcher's point isn't that rehab "doesn't work," as so many online "news" sites have picked up (sort of like "Einstein says everything's relative!"), but that there's no actual evidence that extremely expensive short-term inpatient rehabs work better than much less costly outpatient programs which can be attended for longer periods of time; and furthermore, rehab programs in general have a startling lack of evidence-based treatment, relying instead on amateur group therapy, lectures and readings from the twelve-step 'literature.' Although going to AA itself is not considered part of "rehab," most rehabs depend heavily on the twelve steps, and if the Program doesn't work for you, the problem is considered to be with you, not with the Program. I'm reading this half for book research, half out of personal curiosity; apparently Jane Brody wrote an article on this that "went viral" which I missed completely (not an uncommon occurrence, I'm always terminally out of the loop). I think this book would be a great read for families or loved ones of addicts trying to figure out how the hell they can help, and every therapist who treats addicts should read it. -- That said, Fletcher is pretty snobbish about recovered addicts who don't have degrees yet work at rehab centers, and while she flat-out says that it isn't true that only addicts can help other addicts, it's also true that recovered addicts will be able to catch a lot of the bullshit that non-addicts miss. But those are small flaws. The book's not great, and I can't put up with the lousy writing for more than a few chapters at a time, but it's worthwhile.

Jim Lynch's Truth Like the Sun, centered around the 1962 World's Fair held in Seattle, is much better than I expected, even if inevitably not as fantastic as everyone said it was -- a rather pleasant surprise. The 'Mr Seattle' mayoral candidate annoyed me so much I wanted to drown him in Puget Sound, but Lynch's writing has entertaining little blips of style: "He wasn't as dismayed by her lack of interest in jazz as he was by his interest in a woman who wasn't interested in jazz." That is actually funny. (Unlike cheap references to Amy Winehouse in a review about a book on addicts, for Christ's sweet suffering sake.) It's also nice to read a book about Seattle by someone who didn't move here in the last fifteen minutes, and can see beneath the dot-bomb headlines to the gold rush boom-or-bust mentality, which eerily foreshadows the way the post-90's economy has become dependent on bubbles (the stock market, IT, real estate, God knows what's fucking next. Virtual condos? Invisible beef?). Not that profound, but certainly a pleasant read.

I also inhaled a couple of Kindle Singles, which still make me feel uneasy -- are these long stories? Are they really worth $1.99 or even ninety-nine cents? If I bought a magazine for a showcased long article, I'd pay more....but I'd also get all the other stuff in the magazine. Then again, if you buy enough magazines you wind up wondering where the hell to store them, all slippery and floppy and thin, and once stored you can't flip through them easily for the original articles you wanted....unless you wind up buying them in book form. I was irrationally annoyed by Ann Patchett's selling "The Getaway Car," which I'd originally bought as a Kingle, again in her nonfiction collection (which I also bought as an ebook), even though it fit into the general narrative arc of the pieces well enough. If I'd bought it in a magazine, instead of a standalone, would I have been as irritated? I don't think so.... -- And then it seems like what we talk about when we talk about publishing is always money, which sucks. Basta!

-- I read:
 The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side, highly touted as an "Atlantic ebook," which was disappointing -- often sexist, slapdash and thrown-together, with no real insight. If you're interested in this kind of story, read Shoes Outside the Door instead. It did point me in the direction of shimanoarchive.com, which is an amazing, horrifying, absolute time-suck collection of original documents online (see also Sweeping Zen and thezensite). The pattern of sexual abuse in American Zen is very troubling, and while this book is good in that it's part of the public exposure of that pattern, it's not much more than that. (Natalie Goldberg pretty much fluffed the topic in her memoir The Great Failure, as best I can recall. Seriously: read Shoes Outside the Door. It's beautiful and wise and wrenching.)
The Man Behind Narnia, by A.N. Wilson, which was much more mellow and forgiving than his actual biography of C.S. Lewis which I read long ago, and is hilariously titled, given that Wilson hates Narnia and spends most of his time on all the other books Lewis ever wrote. It reminded me of Wilson's Iris Murdoch memoir, which was also good.
It's All In Your Head and The Man with the Electrified Brain, both well-written, harrowing memoirs of brain disease and disorder. The writing was admirable, but if you've ever suffered even the most minor twinge of hypochondria, not to speak of mental illness, you're going to be sorry you picked these up.


I bought the Fix.com book on Courtney Love, but it was only available via B&N so apparently I'm going to have to read it online, given that I neither want to download "Nook for PC" (not for one book, no) nor give my credit card number to some kind of DRM-stripping program (a lot of my friends use it with no apparent theft, but that still thicks my blood with cold). Argh.