Book Review: "Lucky Man: A Memoir"

It's no secret to anyone who knows me personally that lately, I've been on a huge Michael J. Fox kick. (No, really; I barreled through the entire series of Family Ties in the span of one month. I've been attempting to watch anything he's ever been in.) I more recently found out that he's also an author who's written three books. This is the first of those three.

Lucky Man: A Memoir is not exactly an autobiography, although it does have a lot of the makings of one. How it varies, however, is that it focuses primarily on Michael's journey with Parkinson's disease: how it started, how it progressed, how it affected his life, the extents he'd go to to try and mask his symptoms so nobody would know about it for years, and how he eventually became somewhat of an ambassador for the disease, although hesitant to become its poster child. At the same time, however, it does include a lot of details involving his personal life that don't necessarily have anything to do with the disease either; returning the humanity to Michael that the label of victim almost immediately stripped from him as soon as he went public about his diagnosis.

The book bounces back and forth a lot between earlier days and more modern times; in a way, he's writing two separate timelines in tandem. Although that may sound weird or confusing, it actually works. What makes it work even moreso is that Michael is one of few celebrities who've written a memoir that's written in the same exact style he speaks in. (Davy Jones is one other such example whom I've personally read an autobiography of that encapsulated that quality.) You enter the book almost feeling as though you know him because of this quality.

I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed every last bit of this book and took my time savoring its every last word. I highly recommend it to just about anybody, and I rate it a 5 out of 5 stars!

Book Review: "Baby City - An Inside Look At Labor & Delivery"

Baby City: An Inside Look At Labor & Delivery by Freida McFadden & Kelley Stoddard is not exactly a memoir; it's based in truth, on real life, but with just enough details changed to where it cannot necessarily be considered so much a memoir as a realistic fiction. That said, the book itself purports that everything between its covers IS based in true happenings lived by the authors on the maternity ward. However, the story is told as a first-person recounting of events -- as a singular someone. You can begin to see where this starts to make sense in how these are stories that happen every day in maternity wards around the country, but at the same time, has just enough fiction peppered in as well as to make it uniquely their own.

Anyway, this is the tale of a resident at Cadence Hospital (may or may not be the actual name of a real hospital) who works all hours on the maternity ward, and has to put up with trying to train new medical students on rotation -- some of who are more annoying than others (if you read this book, there's one in particular who you'll know exactly who I'm talking about). There's many different personality types at play, both amongst the staff and of the patients, and this book is also a wonderful example that no two births go exactly the same -- even with a veteran mother who's already had five children. It's also a perfect example of just how quickly things can turn tragic in the blink of an eye, and even in our modern age, there are no assurances when it comes to childbirth. There's a lot of humor included in the stories throughout the book, but overall, there's a brutal reminder of humanity, and that it is not just an industry; these are people's lives, their hopes, and their dreams we're talking about.

The book isn't perfect -- it has a lot of typos throughout it and could have been edited a lot better than it was, but ultimately, I found it to be a very enjoyable read and would recommend it highly to anyone who has an interest in the medical field, be it obstetric or not. I rate this book a 4 out of 5 stars!

Book Review: Keith Moon Stole My Lipstick

With a title such as Keith Moon Stole My Lipstick, I thought there was no way that a book such as this could lose. ...I thought wrong.

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of The Who. Nor that my favorite member of the band is Keith Moon. (I'm even posting this on what would have been his birthday.) When I found out a book by this title even existed, naturally I was intrigued. Given the sort of antics that Keith was so famously notorious for, I began brainstorming what sort of a story this could possibly be. I came up with all sorts of possibilities of what Keith could have done with this lipstick....if, in fact, he did truly steal anyone's lipstick. Or perhaps it was just an attention-grabbing title? Who knew...

The book is rather convoluted. First off, it's pretty bad when I initially couldn't tell whether this book was actually an autobiography, or rather, just a very realistic work of fiction involving real-life celebrity names as the main players. It took me several chapters before I started fact-checking names -- the author's name, the name of the publication she worked for, etc -- to see if they existed in real life or not. ...Unbelievably, they did. Alright, at least we've established one thing here. Now knowing that this was in fact a true story, I began to digest it as an autobiography...which are normally my favorite genre of book. This one, however....

It's strange. It had all the elements going for it that under normal circumstances, would automatically be enough to make me love it. It's an autobiography. It's by a british author. It's about classic rock music. There's mentions of the Beatles, the Who, the Monkees, even Lorna Luft, for god's sake (about as close to Liza Minnelli as we get in this book, unfortunately), as well as some classic film stars such as Bette Davis. There's even a fairly good story about Andy Williams in here. And yet.... I still have to say, this book was about the dryest thing I have ever read.

Even the anecdote for which this book was titled after was amazingly lackluster. Yes, Keith stole the author's lipstick. All he did with it was draw on his chest, and remove his shirt to show off his artwork in the middle of a show. ...Honestly, I was expecting a much larger, grander-scale story about Moonie here.

 Another gripe I have is how the author is just so unimpressed with just about everyone in this book, and feels the need to nitpick everyone -- usually on their appearance, mostly. Good god, woman, if you were so miserable in your work, why didn't you leave a lot sooner and do something else if you didn't even like any of these people? (Seriously, when we're even at the point of nitpicking Paul McCartney's appearance and failing to understand why the world thinks he's cute....Houston, we have a problem.)

Lastly, and my biggest problem with this book indeed, is the fact that -- okay, this book is written by someone who wrote for music publications FOR YEARS. Not only that, but has since gone on to write 25+ books... AND YET, spelling errors, grammatical errors, YOU NAME IT, they all run absolutely rampantly through the book. I could've excused a few here and there, but honestly, they were all over the place to the point where I was getting beyond annoyed even just trying to read the book and kept having to put it down every few pages to calm myself.

I wanted to enjoy this book; I really did, but I just didn't. And I admit, that left me feeling very sad and quite empty, given what all the book was about, but it was just written in such a way to where I highly doubt it ever grabbed anybody. I'm going to rate this book 2 out of 5 stars, and even at that, I feel like I'm being generous.

Book Review: "Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood"

I'm going to throw a disclaimer out there right here and now: if you're easily triggered by child abuse, TURN BACK NOW. DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW NOR THE BOOK. This is not a happy-go-lucky read (who would've assumed that anyway, given the title?) -- no, no. This is a horribly harrowing tale -- a heartbreakingly true story -- that will make you sick that a human being could actually inflict this -- ON PURPOSE -- on an innocent child. And not just on one -- MULTIPLE CHILDREN.

This book is about a little known mental disorder called munchausen by proxy, and a mother who took it out on so many innocent children.

Munchausen, in and of itself, is a mental illness that manifests as an individual who will chronically -- pathologically -- feign illness in the pursuit of sympathy and attention. There's a wide spectrum of severity a person might go to the lengths of in this endeavor, but more serious cases will drive an individual to actually seek out medical help for their mystery ailments -- but, unlike a hypochondriac, who doesn't actually have anything wrong with them, the munchausen patient will go to great lengths to manifest specific physical symptoms in order to obtain unnecessary tests, medications, surgery, you name it. Because they find ways to provoke actual symptoms, they're not dismissed in the way hypochondriacs are; rather, they fly under the radar as a doctor will fall for test after test to try and diagnose these mystery illnesses. And as soon as one doctor may hit a brick wall and give up, the patient will just pick up anew with a different doctor and start the process all over. You would not believe the lengths people would go to as a result of this psychiatric disorder.

Now, in munchausen by proxy, this is a disorder that affects a caretaker -- typically, a mother. The difference is that this patient doesn't make themself out to be the ill one -- no, no. This is where hte "by proxy" part of the name comes in. Generally they'll start with a child, usually a very young one who doesn't know any better, and will start to shape them into the sick child they want them to be. They may intentionally injure the child; they might poison them; they might do any number of atrocious things, all to provoke symptoms in what would otherwise be a normal child, but for whatever sick reason, the parent wants to make their child out to be ill and abnormal for their own emotional gain. Some children end up so badly abused in this manner that they end up dying as a result... and it just looks like a medical mystery. The parent starts again on another child. Until a trained professional who knows what to look for spots specific patterns happening over and over with multiple children of a specific parent, the person may easily get away with it unnoticed by the medical profession and never end up so much as persecuted for what they've done, despite all the world of hurt they've so needlessly caused.

The author of this book, Julie Gregory, was one such victim.

The book follows the story of Julie from as far back as she can remember, and even at such a tender age, you start to witness various forms of abuse unfolding and this poor little girl not having so much as a clue as to what's being done to her, or even that any of it's wrong. One of the earliest clues that something is very off with this family: on a very early remembered car trip, her mother offers her a mini sucker from inside her matchbook. Julie comments on her excitement at seeing the double row of suckers lined up in there, but it isn't until she starts describing the consumption of this 'treat' that you realize that, with no uncertainty, this poor child literally IS eating matches and doesn't have a clue that they're not some kind of candy. (And thus we see probably one of the earliest examples of how her mother managed to coerce symptoms out of an otherwise fine child....) As horrifying as that example is? It's only the very tip of the iceburg of what lies between the covers of this book. That was actually a tame example. Without giving too much away in the way of details for those of you who do wish to read the book, the mother DOES go so far as putting her child electively through unnecessary surgery, amongst so many other things. And that's just the MBP end of things -- this isn't counting the other numerous abuses that Julie is forced to endure at home.

So much of my subconscious desperately wanted to believe that this book were a work of fiction, a horror novel, but not real....and every time I had to remind myself that this did, in fact, happen to a real, live, living and breathing human being..... I couldn't help but lose a little more faith in humanity that someone out there could be as horrible as that to another person. And the knowledge that this is just one girl's story -- there's probably hundreds, if not thousands of others out there who've suffered silently at the hands of such torment as well. It boggles the mind to even try to grasp how a person could even live with themself after inflicting such a thing on another human, and yet, the fact that there's a name for this condition goes to show just how many people there must be in the world who're guilty of doing such things. With no pun intended on the title, one can't help but feel a little sick thinking about these things.

This story is terribly unsettling, but eye-opening for sure that there's a problem like this existing in our world that very few people are able to see if it happens in front of them. One can only hope that by telling her story, that Julie's bravery will help others come forward and share their stories as well in hopes that MBP will become a more widely-recognized form of abuse that will not be tolerated if detected, and hopefully many lives can be saved and spared. As jarring of a story as this is, I have to rate it a 5 out of 5 stars, because it's SO well-told to where it puts you right in Julie's shoes, and your heart aches for everything she's gone through.

Book Review: "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl"

Similar in style to The Fault In Our Stars, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is another teen/YA story dealing with the topic of teenage cancer. The difference in this case being, it's told in a bit of an off-color style, without any huge lesson to be learned, or teary-eyed love story to be had, or any of the stuff that made up TFIOS.

This is the story of Greg Gaines; amateur film-maker, and his desire in life to remain politically neutral when it comes to the delicate ecosystem known as high school. His partner-in-crime (or rather, partner-in-film-making) Earl, despite being from entirely different worlds, gets dragged along for the ride. Greg is basically your typical all American overweight dorky teen boy, whose exploits with girls are quickly made known -- as well as all the ways he's managed to fail with all of them.

That is, until one of them later down the road ends up developing cancer and his mother forces him to go rekindle a friendship.

It's an awkward, bumpy ride. Greg isn't exactly thrilled with this plan; nor is Rachel, the girl in question. Yet they manage to forge a sort of friendship, especially when she gets made privvy to the top-secret library of films that Greg and Earl have made over the years that have never been seen by another set of human eyes aside from their own. She becomes their biggest fan -- and as her illness progresses, her best friend rallies for them to make a special movie, just for her.

Cue many failed attempts at making this film. They try it in a variety of different styles, none of which pan out into turning into much of anything worthwhile. The harder they try, the worse the attempts become, until Earl's sudden realization hit that they haven't been truly trying to make a film about this girl... they'd revolved it around themselves the whole time without meaning to, while never truly getting to know the girl known as Rachel, and before they know it, it's too late.

There's no sappy love story here. Not even a proper coming of age story. And yet, there's a certain truth that rings through in this novel that makes it feel authentic, as if this were a true story that really happened to someone. There's something to be said for that.... and for that, I rate this book a 4 out of 5 rating. I'd say it's well worth giving this one a read.