by Harley Rustad

I thought I’d like this better. I thought I’d admire the protagonist like I did Chris McCandless of INTO THE WILD. But Chris went off and didn’t tell anyone where he was going. Justin Alexander was an Instragram star who seemed very troubled.

by Bob Dylan

You have to read this book like you would listen to a Bob Dylan song. Don’t study it and wait for brilliance and look for the nuggets of awesomeness, although they will be there. Because doing it that way you will struggle through a lot of, “Is this brilliance or nonsense?” Just let it wash over you.

At first I was puzzled, but I just had to get into the groove. Then I felt like I was listening to “Theme Time Radio Hour”. I could hear his one-of-a-kind voice rambling through it all.

I think my favorite line is, this being a close paraphrase – people always ask the songwriter what the song is about. If we had had more words to explain it, we would have put them in the song.

While I wish for the purposes of this review that I had bookmarked more great one-liners, that would have interfered with my experience.

by Hermione Hoby

I feel this book really didn’t work. It’s told in a big foreboding tone, but “what eventually happened” didn’t really come across as believable or well-told.

And it was hard to read an entire story with such an insecure young narrator always doubting himself and never happy. Even when he pops into the present tense, he’s still unhappy. I think his descriptions of the wife and marriage he ended up with are cruel.

I only bookmarked one part, a passage which I guess gives lie to my claim that Luca is never happy. Describing an impossibly beautiful summer, “I felt a kind of benevolence so acute that I sometimes wanted to cry. It felt like all the days came with fat apples in their mouths. It felt like everything was made of poetry.”

Thing is, in the day-to-day passages, he is always self-doubting and never really conveys this happiness which is described above so well in theory. It all just didn’t work for me.

by Marsha M. Linehan

This is not a self-help book but a memoir. Marsha Linehan was the developer of a therapy for suicidal patients called Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, and was herself a mental patient, institutionalized from ages 18-20 after a sudden breakdown.

She is not a writer. Episodes repeat themselves or hit sudden dead ends. Sadly, electroshock treatment while in the institution wiped out all or nearly all of her memory of her life up to that point, and she relies on others for insights into her childhood. It is hard to make a coherent picture of her in her youth… a popular vivacious “motor-mouthed” girl, but worn down at home by a berating, fault-finding mother.

Through it all she has maintained a strong faith; a devout Catholic through most of her life, now a Zen Master. She has had mystical experiences and seems a very neurologically interesting person.

The snapshots of her life as a pious young girl resonated particularly with me “At one point I decided to sleep without a pillow, as a sacrifice to God.” This was so something I would have done. My own sacrifices veered more towards the giving up of foods. It was always Lent for me. I was skipping desserts every other day, then two out of three days… next thing you know I’m a teenager with an eating disorder. But I digress. She also quits a sorority as a sacrifice, and she feels strangely like she should not write about this particular episode, because at the time she promised God she would never tell anyone this real reason why she quit the sorority. She takes her vows seriously. Indeed, while she recognizes that life in a convent was not her calling, she takes vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience as a kind of “lay nun.”

DBT, the behavioral therapy she developed, is described in detail. But this is not a self-help book. This is a therapy for the most difficult of cases, people who have engaged in self-harm and are a real threat to themselves.

Her life trajectory – personal, professional, and spiritual – was interesting to follow; I like reading almost any life story, and the writing doesn’t have to be great. Here is someone who went through the “hell” of mental illness, and in her words, got herself out determined to help others get out of hell too. She seems to have achieved success and I was happy to see her end in a good place.