In books
An important contribution to understanding how to dismantle the internal processes that sufferers of depression unwittingly maintain. Useful for sufferers themselves and those around them.
The author’s own web site www.undoingdepression.com covers a few other publications that I don’t have a view on but the is an Amazon link if you want or need this book.
Extract for the site:
“ This book presents a “program” for depression. AA people know that not drinking is not enough; they have to “live the program.” Like alcoholism, depression is a lifelong condition that can only be cured by a deliberate effort to change our selves. Later chapters explain how in five key elements of our personality–feelings, thoughts, behavior, relationships, and the self–depression has taught us certain skills which have come to feel natural, a part of who we are. But in fact we have to unlearn those skills and replace them with new habits–which are explained in detail–for real recovery to take place. Practicing the exercises described later can be a way for people with depression to “live the program”–and live a vital, rich existence again. “
Some books just make sense.
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In books
A short story by Jean Giono about a man who quietly brings about vast changes in a desolate place using nothing more than determination and gentle persistence. Elzeard Bouffier lives his life on a tiny scale consuming very little and asking for no assistance yet he is a channel for the force of Nature and leaves his anonymous stamp for the benefit of people who will never even know his name.
If you can find a copy of the BBC Radio 4 adaptation with Bill Paterson narrating you will love this story for the rest of your days.
If it persuades you to plant a tree or two, even better.
(Sadly the author’s wish to have this story freely available has been screwed up by some publishers and so I can’t give you a link to a free copy anymore but if you do want to buy it I recommend the version with the woodcuts by Michael McCurdy. I think there is a version published by Peter Owen in London. Better still, save a tree and buy a second-hand copy from somebody dumb enough to sell theirs!)
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In books
A monster novel by John (why use one word when a hundred will suffice) Barth which makes the www.time.com Top 100 novels published since 1923. Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo included this biting satire in their All Time 100 list and I couldn’t agree more.
Here is Richard’s review. The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)
Hell’s teeth! It’s even got a Wikipedia entry!
Makes Shakespeare in Love loveless and the Millers Tale chaste, an earthy novel, yes indeed.
Any book that revives the word swiving gets my vote but this wonderful romp through early America has much else to recommend it.
“In the 17th century, “swiving” was a wholly obscene word for sex, found most
commonly in the pornographic verses of the Earl of Rochester” – The Guardian. Oh yes, my kind of history. The adventures of the hapless, would be, poet Burlingame and his love for the whore Joan Toast survive all tribulations but don’t necessarily end happily but you will come to care about them and follow their progress against an epic backdrop. Oh yes, and don’t forget the Mighty Moor, what a bastard!
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