Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
I hadn’t read this since highschool. Hey, hey be honest with me, is it a bad sign my algorithms keep suggesting I read Kafka and Sylvia Plath?
So anyway, I reread it for shits and giggles and I wanted to let you know I neither shat nor giggled.
A lot of the things which happen in the story, I mean…do I have to tell you? He turns into a giant weird bug. He wakes up and is a bug. This could be interpreted as waking up as a young man to your role in society, a nod to religious persecution in some interpretations, or a more often a nod to the dehumanizing results of capitalism. Both are completely valid.
What I feel like people talk about less in the social osmosis are the reactions of the family to Gregor Samsa when he wakes up to this revelation. They all reject him. Some are nice than others, but it’s ultimately his father who leads to his death. And when he dies, they all leave and pretend he was never there, happier to be rid of him. A nod to whistleblowers being stomped out by the earlier generations for being too sensitive to harsh conditions? A nod to people not fitting into society’s norms and expectations being murdered by those closest to them to prevent being ostracized themselves? A nod to ….you get the idea. All of it. It’s all valid interpretations.
For real though, should I be worried this keeps coming up in my reading suggestions?
Tag: mental health
Review: Thistlefoot
Thistlefoot
GennaRose Nethercott
I’ll cut to the chase, this was one of my favorite books I read in 2023.
Thistlefoot takes place in a world of magic and not, a world where most things are exactly the same as they are in reality but with an important exception —the scars of an event can awaken the spirit of a place.
One of the early mentioned examples of this is a Burger King that grew eyes after a break in.
Thistlefoot, the book’s name sake, is a house that sprouted chicken legs.
The sibling pair at the heart of the story, Bellatine and Issac Yaga, are the inheritors of Thistlefoot and the generational trauma that both makes them who they are and that has been kept from them by their family. They both have their own unusual gifts, which unbeknownst to them are adaptations to that trauma. The book examines disapora in a fascinating way.
The story follows both the Yaga siblings and the history of the house itself in a slow burn reveal of the tragic events that led Thistlefoot to sprout legs and flee.
All while being hunted by a similar oddity, which intends to destroy Thistlefoot.
This book was such a delicate and well constructed handling of generational trauma and particularly genocide. I had gone into it blind and was taken in immediately with the world and characterization.
It’s an absolute recommendation.
Review: The Pram
The Pram
By Joe Hill
There are several stories available for free download if you are already subscribed to amazon prime, and I took advantage of that recently and thought I’d spend November telling you about the short stories and novellas I picked up that I liked best and thought was worth the read.
These tend to be stories commissioned by Amazon and put into collections by Amazon
The Pram is a short story about miscarriage and grief, particularly the grief of the protagonist Willy who feels overshadowed and pressured to resolve grief for his wife Marianne, only to realize he hasn’t resolved anything for himself.
I thought it was an honest treatment of a difficult topic, one I’ve dealt with personally and which I normally immediately stop reading once child or fetus death is involved.
At 57 pages, it’s a quick read and satisfying as a horror short story. Too often horror short stories are so focused on the twist that they fail to embrace the heart of their topic, particularly when they’re commissioned short stories on demand.
Never Whistle At Night
As always when I read any collection of short stories there are particular ones which catch my attention, but I really can’t stress how much I enjoyed ‘Never Whistle at Night’. The collection is extremely well put together, spanning a variety of topics impacting indigenous communities, whether that be indigenous folk lore inspired, inspired by racism, classism, internalized trauma, religious trauma, or all of the above and of course more. The cultural weight of each story has its place in the anthology.
The editors deserve all the credit in the world, it’s a wonderful collection. Please support them.
Camp Damascus
It’s October! I should do some spooky books.
Starting the month with Dr Chuck Tingle, Camp Damascus is hands down one of the best books I have read this year. A quick read under 300 pages, it is one of these most effective horror stories I have read in ages. Centered around religious trauma and homophobia, the action begins almost immediately, with no ‘wait till the third act’ nonsense. Shit hits the fan, and hard, and keeps coming. Dr Tingle takes no time to bullshit around with building suspense, the true horror comes from the nonchalant reactions and denials of the clear horrors occuring.
The main character’s neurodivergence was written so naturally and well, it was a wonderfully refreshing representation that I didn’t realize I had been craving.
Easily one of my favorite books of the year, I absolutely encourage you to read it, I am so excited for his next book that I know is in editing stages.
Prove love 💕
Review: A Primate’s Memoir
Earlier I reviewed Why Don’t Zebra’s Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky as a part of my mental health month and I already have Behave sitting in my pile; Robert Sapolsky, either through listened to lectures or his books, has been a subject I’ve no doubt my friends are getting tired of hearing about.
A Primate’s Memoir, however, is not the same breed of popular science book as Sapolsky’s other work, but rather a straightforward memoir about his experiences as a field researcher in Africa.
Sapolsky details his twenty-plus years living with a troop of baboons, their culture, and the conflicts in the scientific community of speaking about animal culture in human terms. He also details cultural shocks living among and interacting with different tribes and in different African countries and often his own fumbling unpreparedness as he adapts (including a notable horrifying first experience with tamarind).
The memoir includes harrowing stories of being taken captive, having guns held to his head, being mistaken for a mercenary, and in general the sort of adventures that come to a certain breed of guyâ„¢ with an irreverence and compelling story telling style.
He’s the sort of unassuming person that the vanilla masses probably believe just sits in a lab and wouldn’t expect to have spent a time traveling with a caravan of Somalis plundering locals, and yet.
The book is a compelling, engaging, very intelligently and thoughtfully written account. Sapolsky brings an honesty and no-bullshit narrative voice to his time in Africa while offering the perspective that he is just one researcher who has dealt with corruption, with cultural shocks, with various international blocks and that there is so much more to field research and medicine than most people realize.
Review: Musicophilia
Musicophilia by Dr Oliver Sacks is one of those books that I picked up and put down again over the course of years. First published in 2007, I used to fondly tap on a copy whenever I saw one in a bookstore. In part because of my love of Oliver Sacks. As a former neuro-whatever, the psychology equivalent of the muppet Gonzo, I’ve been reading case studies by Dr. Sacks for as long as I can remember. Musicophilia combines some of Sacks’ most keen interests, music and neurology, perception and creativity, and human perseverance into a book that feels inevitable.
It is a fingernail scratching at the surface of an iceberg, but it is the only book like it that I know of.
Dr. Sacks was, among other things, fascinated by music and keen pianist though he always lamented not being as adept as others; he was a very joyful man who pursued knowledge and understanding, conceptualizing things in a uniquely precise way. What sticks with me aside from Sack’s usual attention to detail and science, are particularly the opening chapter discussing a man struck by lightning who after developed keen musical intuition and writing ability. Other chapters which struck with me of particular interest were use of music therapies with individuals who have impulse and tic disorders. I think the applications of musical therapies are barely understood and so promising.
Dr. Sacks writes as he always does with keen, pointed interest. He doesn’t muck about, ever, he had far too much to discuss and learn, yet he was thrilled to talk about what he had learned with you.
The book is an excellent toe-in-the-water for learning about music therapy and musical disorders as well as music’s place in neurological development.
Week 4, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, Dr. Robert Sapolsky
Psychology month!
Week 4, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, Robert Sapolsky
Arguably not a psychology book, I couldn’t help myself. Dr. Sapolsky is a pre-eminent neuroendocrinologist whose research on stress has, since the 1990s, I think dominated the field of stress and trauma.
Also, he’s extremely readable which tends to be an oft-touted gift in reviews of his work. Sapolsky is a charismatic, humorous guy and it shows in his writing style, even when he’s verbally beating you up about the misconceptions of dopamine over the last few decades.
Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, of which I read it’s 3rd edition, was published originally in 1994 and has become a staple for anyone seriously studying stress and its affects on the body, mental health (which, yes, counts as part of your body), as well as the history of how the field of stress has developed through medicine over the last hundred years. Chock full of anecdotes about medical history, a remarkable breadth of knowledge on the subject, the book details what brought Sapolsky into the study of stress and what has, to the date of the most recent edition, been continually found and supported in the research.
Some people, me being one of them, find a lot of comfort understanding and also being able to explain mental health concerns from a medical standpoint. Some people will just not buy in to mindfulness or talk therapy seriously because they feel it’s a new science or there are too many elements of pseudoscience and that especially when dealing with mental illness, it’s easy for others to take advantage. That’s why I appreciate work like Sapolsky’s that provides so much empirical evidence that can be used to validate the importance of talk therapy, mindfulness, medicinal psychotropic therapies. It’s a huge boon to anyone to be able to understand their own bodies and brains better, but also to have that hammer in your back pocket of a wide history of medical research to support yourself as you navigate having a brain and other people who (yes, even that person) also have brains.
Week 3, Making Space; Taming the Tiger Within, Thich Nhat Han
Psychology Month!
Week 3, Making Space; Taming the Tiger Within, Thich Nhat Han
Mindfulness has been getting a huge spotlight in medicine the last fifteen years but I often worry that it’s clouded by patients dismissively thinking of it as spiritualism. Thich Nhat Han, a Buddhist monk who sadly died last year, was a mindfulness teacher with a wide variety of accessible material who often managed not to fixate on mindfulness or awareness as a spiritual problem but as a human one.
I was discussing with a friend at lunch recently another friend who has been recommended mindfulness again and again who always says it’s just too unappealing to her–and the friend at lunch burst out ‘but mindfulness is everything! You can’t do anything without doing mindfulness first!’
And, unfortunately, that’s pretty true. Mindfulness practices, like the ones I used to teach (Yep, I’m biased), are not about sitting in silence and not thinking, as the stereotype goes, but about learning to control your own nervous system. So much of mental health: addiction, anxiety, is rooted in not being able to engage in what we call non-striving behaviors. Sleep is a non-striving behaviors, the more you think about and force yourself to sleep, the less success you have switching effectively between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activation, for which there is the helpful acronym RIP. Relaxation induced panic.
Not being able to effectively not-strive leads to a huge prediction toward addiction, anxiety, panic attacks, as well as myriad behavioral problems.
I think Thich Nhat Han delivers a very good methodology of what Mindfulness really is–coming together with yourself, taking control of your own nervous system. Being able to sit with yourself without blotting it out with the noise of everyone else. I have talked to too many people who do not feel their sense of self is stable and who are amazed when nothing changes in their lives without addressing that first.
Making Space is dedicated to how to begin that practice of mindfulness, while Taming the Tiger Within deals specifically with addressing anger. In mindfulness, one of the greatest lessons is being able to sit with anger and embrace anger and appreciation of anger for what it is, without lashing out or causing harm. And it is, like my friend said, the start of everything.
Week 2, Self Compassion, Kristin Neff; Be Calm, Jill Weber
Psychology month!
Week 2, Self Compassion, Kristin Neff; Be Calm, Jill Weber
Self Compassion: The Proven Power of being Kind to Yourself by Kristin Neff is a straightforward argument for why being kind to yourself helps you best to be kind to others and to improve how you view and move through life. It highlights the importance of putting the brakes on catastrophic thinking and reactive behaviors. There’s going to be a theme, if you read all of these reviews on Psychology books, of curbing reactive, adaptive behaviors that may have been advantageous to you at one time in your life but aren’t any longer. It’s incredibly hard to unlearn maladaptive behaviors and Neff puts forward the importance of self compassion toward reaching that goal for yourself. Self compassion is touted and supported as being integral to adapting and learning new behavior and Neff is one of the biggest names in general audiences learning to that end.
Be Calm by Jill Weber is, like so many of these, sort of a hybrid between a work book and a psychology book, focused on anxiety. I decided to pair it with the book on self compassion because…..well, duh. You need self compassion to work through anxiety, the good news being that anxiety is extremely responsive to treatment.
This book is a compassionate description of anxiety symptoms, how they impact functioning and relationships, broken down into sections on thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It offers practical guidance on how to curb anxiety stemming from each of these and how they relate to one another.
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