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Title: Confessions of a Fat Girl
Author: Holly Dae
Release date: August 4th 2015
Source: IFB Tours
About the Book:
Smart and ambitious Season Minett was homeschooled, got accepted into college at 16, graduated with a B.A. in English at 20, got a job at a prestigious magazine at 21, and isn’t afraid to go after what she wants. Twenty-two-year-old Season has it made and everyone knows it. Except Season herself.
People can gush over her all day long, but Season knows they’re just being nice. In reality, she’s accomplished nothing. She doesn’t work hard enough, can’t get her book published, and worst of all at 5’6, 180 pounds with a thirty-two inch waist, a forty-four inch hip, and arms too big for her body, she’s fat and ugly. She's such a disappointment that after her mother divorced Season's dad, she went to live with her new, younger boyfriend and left Season to mother the rest of her siblings. So Season is quite bewildered when the guy she sees every weekend at the bookstore shows serious interest in her. And she ends up liking him. A lot.
Season's not naive enough to think love will solve all her problems though. In fact, love seems to be making everything worse because her food obsession is growing more and more out of her control. But that's impossible. There's nothing wrong with counting calories and wanting to be thin. There's nothing wrong with trying to be as perfect as everyone thinks she is. A fat girl can't develop an eating disorder, let alone have one. Right?
Review:
★★★
I admit, the reason why I signed on to read this book is largely the title, no pun intended. I'm a bigger girl, so I figured I would relate to the characters and the premise. Overall, this was a fairly enjoyable read.
There's a growing concern and focus on appearance and health, and I think this story gives a pretty realistic look on the issues that come with having a low view of yourself. Season is moody and closed off. She's self-destructive as she battles with her calorie count and tries to keep in control of her body and her life, with a lot of drama and consequences surrounding her as she tries to get through it all.
Season was a really complicated character for me. I related to her at times, I'll be the first to admit that. I think we all go through a little self-loathing and self-pity at times, and I'm surely no exception. But similarly, I think she represented everything that I hate in myself. She bugged me. She was hard to sympathize with, and hell, maybe I'm hard to sympathize with too. This didn't put me off of the book or her story or anything, but made me think harder about myself whenever Season did something that particularly annoyed me.
The writing was pretty solid. I was engaged throughout the text, and I rarely felt bored. It was well paced and you learned to feel for the characters, whether you loved or hated them. It was a fairly quick book to get through, but it's not a subject to be taken lightly.
In short, I think this book does a decent job of covering an important topic. Eating disorders are a serious problem, and I think that people who have experienced problems with their weight or their self-image can take something away from Season's story. Fat or thin, we can all I think relate to Season on some level.
I was provided a copy in exchange for my honest review.
Get it Here:
Amazon
About the Author:
Stuck in the transition between graduating from college and starting a life called no job, Holly Dae spends most of her free time writing raw and edgy Young Adult and New Adult contemporary novels that deal with rape, drugs, sex, and general psychological ills. When she isn't doing that, she's writing fanfiction for fun and obsessively playing Mario Kart Eight and Pokemon Games.
Website | Twitter
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Giveaway:
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Title: Big Fat Disaster
Author: Beth Fehlbaum
Format: egalley
Pub. Date: April 18th 2014
Source: Netgalley & Merit Press
★
One Star.
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Colby Denton is the less than perfect daughter of an up and coming politician, something her family never lets her forget. Her sisters are perfect, but her family is ashamed of her being in the limelight because of her size. Her world starts to come apart when she finds out that her father has been lying and stealing. Forced to move into the trailer on her cousin's property, she must face new obstacles like bullying, school politics, suicide, and self-worth and acceptance in a new town.
This book y'all. This. Book. It had me in rage-tears. It made me so ridiculously angry, you have no idea. I took about six pages of hand-written, venting notes and observations on this one. That being said, I have taken some time to cool off so that I may write a respectful and professional review. I'll try my best to refrain from spoilers.
I was really excited to read this one. In theory, I should have related to it on a lot of different levels. I'm plus sized. I have a father who left us for another family and lied about money so that we had to move in with family. But this novel just didn't click with me at all. Shall we begin?
I didn't like any of the characters, and that includes Colby. She's the main character, and I ought to have felt sympathy and compassion for her, but I found her to be just as bad as the rest of them. Her family is constantly belittling her and calling her uncreative insults like "fat" at every waking turn. Even the other heavy girl in the family makes comments about it. Almost all of her teachers for some reason hate her, and the whole school makes fun of her because she's in knock off clothes. I could have maybe dealt with that. But Colby is constantly talking shit to/about her little sister, she refers to her mom's willingness to go shopping for her at garage sales when they have no money as "dumpster diving". There's a whole lot of shaming going on. They almost all feel like villains, in a kind of melodramatic way. I've been in Colby's shoes, and I've never seen such across the board horrid beings. The family members all blame her aunt for her abuse, the cousin for his defending a girl getting raped, and even Colby's mom for getting dumped. That's not even mentioning the people at school.
I also feel like she brought a lot of this onto herself. And no, I'm not talking about her eating disorder, binge eating. She puts on clothes that are way too tight and gets made fun of for it and hurts herself in the process because she won't tell her mom they don't fit. She speaks her mind at horrible times, and has to pay the price. She lies. It's awful.
On the topic of her eating disorder, I felt like it was added as an after thought when I expected it to be a more central theme. It really, in my opinion, just served to open her up to everyone's hatred. It would go unmentioned long enough that I'd forget (not about her size- that's mentioned constantly, but her disorder), and then would have to think "oh yeah, she has that."
Similarly, there are a lot of heavy topics mentioned in this book that are treated fairly blase in a soap-opera like drama instead of being given the care, tact, and respect they deserve. Eating disorders, suicide, bullying, cyberbullying, abuse, rape, slut shaming, class shaming, this book has it all. There's so much mentioned, but I don't feel like any of them were thoroughly explored or attended to. A video of Colby goes viral, and her mom actually blames her for being fat. Because if she weren't fat, she wouldn't have been filmed. What? The one character that I did like, who called characters out on their bullshit the way they deserved, dies out of nowhere and that upset me too. Not because he died, but because it seemed so needless.
This could have all maybe been leading up to some greater resolution, where differences are resolved and tensions simmer down and Everyone learns something. Nope. Colby starts to sort of come around towards the end, maybe, and then the book ends. I didn't like her anymore at the end of the novel than I did at the beginning. I felt like I read all this drama and conflict for naught.
This wasn't the book for me. If rape, abuse, suicide, or eating disorders are a trigger for you, please read this with caution. In short, it was too much drama and not enough likable characters. Be warned that this has a lot of serious themes and vulgar language. Maybe you'll like it better than I did. Thanks to Netgalley & Merit Press for my chance to read this.
Title: Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
Author: Susannah Cahalan
Format: ARC
Pub. Date: November 13th 2012
Source: Goodreads First Reads
★★★★
3.5 Stars, rounded up.
I received this book from Goodreads First Reads.
Susannah Cahalan was a busy New York woman. A promising reporter with the Post, happy with her boyfriend and her life, it all falls apart in a manner of days. A string of mysterious symptoms (seizures, rigid muscle movements, nonsensical talking) leads to her waking up in the hospital, restrained to her bed without an idea as to why she's there. In this memoir, Susannah chronicles her journey through her mysterious illness from the first creeping symptoms, to the final treatment. She shares her triumphs, her downfalls, her heartache, and the bonds between the friends and family that never left her side, even when "old Susannah" was nowhere to be found. This is a story of warning and of sharing, and most importantly, a story of the human mind and the obstacles it can overcome.
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This book was a very interesting read. I can't call it "good" without feeling guilty- Miss Cahalan's story is unfortunate. However, I had never heard of this illness until I read this book. It is both informative and personal, making it a deep but not difficult read.
+ One of the most positive traits of this book is the way that it's written. Because of her mental state at the time of her hospitalization, a large part of this memoir is taken from other peoples' perspectives. I feel that this gives the book a vibe of honesty. Upon release, she leafed through the journals kept by both herself and her parents and her charts. She interviewed her doctors and nurses, and the friends and family members who visited her, and even watched the surveillance videos taken from her room. It has to be an odd experience, piecing together one's life in an out of body-esque situation like this. But the book flows and is cohesive, painting a vivid portrait of the struggle that she went through.
+ This book is heavy handed with medical jargon. The author did a very good job of breaking this down as simply as possible (after all, the brain is a very complex thing). Better yet, at the end of this book is a bibliography, showing that Susannah most definitely did her research when writing both her original Post article on this scary new autoimmune disorder, as well as this memoir.
- That being said, this was a negative point for me. I understand that research is crucial to this book. I respect the brain's complexity, this disease's mystery, and the author's need/desire to explain this scary situation to the best description that is medically possible. However, in parts I felt extremely weighted down by the scientific discussion. I had to press on forward. This is just a personal opinion, and again, I realize that it is necessary to the narration.
+ But, an interesting bonus to this book that I wasn't expecting was the breaks in text. There are excerpts from medical charts, her own personal test results. There are pages taken from her journal to chronicle her journey and to fully illustrate her various states of both mental health and emotion. These little images speak volumes, adding an extremely personal glimpse into Susannah's mind.
Overall, I think this is a fascinating read. It is horrifying and amazing that so much is still unknown about the human brain. The fact that something like this could happen to anyone in the blink of the eye is so scary. I'm very grateful to Susannah for writing this memoir. I had never heard of this autoimmune disorder before, and I'm glad that I now know what possible symptoms could be, so that if anyone I know exhibits them, I can keep this in mind. This book strikes a bit of a personal nerve with me, because my own mom was in the hospital for a month with unknown neurological problems (that turned out to be a stroke and a fistula). Many of her symptoms were similar to this, which made this an extremely emotional roller coaster for me.
If you enjoyed books such as Sybil or When Rabbit Howls, are interested in psychology/neurology/disorders, or are a fan of nonfiction in general, I would definitely give this a read.
Title: The Last Time I Wore a Dress
Author: Daphne Scholinski
Format: Paperback, 224 pages
Pub. Date: October 1st 1998
Source: Purchased.
★★★★
Four stars.
I'm not sure how to feel about this book.
On one hand, this book was really interesting. It was a nice insight into the life that someone in an institution has. I felt a bit personally attached to it on some level, for one because I'm from Chicago & know of these hospitals, & then again because my girlfriend, in the past, has struggled with some gender issues of her own.
With that being said, in the book, Daphne lies. All the time. About everything. It makes her stay far worse, plus, it makes me question the memoir. If she lied so easily about everything else, then why am I expected to believe that the events in her hospitalization happened the way they did.
I think this book is worth it, since it was an easy read & interesting at the very least. But if I were you, I'd take it all with a grain of salt. I recommend it for people with gender identity problems & those interested in psychology.
