Total Recovery: Gary Kaplan

This book was very insightful on full body health, where symptoms could be pointing at something deeper and treatable. I am finding myself in this situation where you feel your doctor has given up and you are trying everything and anything to feel better. This book gave me some different things to try.

Coma: Robin Cook

It was odd that his book was written by a man, it seemed very early 80's woman finding her voice in writing-ish. A med student starts her rotation at a hospital and questions why so many people using operating room 8 go into comas. She finds out the hospital director is using the black market to sell body parts to those whose tissues match people looking for them and willing to pay.

My Best Friends Exorcism: Grady Hendrix

After reading "Paperbacks From Hell" I thought this was going to be a non-stop hilarious book. It had it's moments, but read like a normal teen novel, with a bizarre twist. At a slumber party one of 4 friends disappears into the woods and when found hours later she is acting odd. The book continues with the rotten things she does as she is possessed by a demon. Her one friend is able to save her and they remain friends and occasionally question what keeps them together.

Rywka's Diary: Rywka Lipszyc

Like the Diary of Anne Frank, this was wrought with grief. After reading Rywka's diary you assume she died in a concentration camp as there are no prefaces hinting at any sort of reconciliation between the writer and her diary. At the end of the book they have an insert believing that Rywka did survive the war as there was another diary found 5 months after the concentration camp was liberated, but from there she seems to disappear again. I found myself really wanting to believe she found some sort of happiness after the war and was a survivor.

The Bastard on the Couch: Daniel Jones

This actually wasn't what I was expecting. It was the companion novel to "The Bitch in the Kitchen" and a collection of stories of men talking abut life. A few of them talk about trying to find balance at home now that women are in the workforce and exhausted when they come home ad would like help raising the kids and doing chores. Some live non-traditional lives where the wife works and the man stays home with the children. Some stories talk about their relationship with their Children and views on life. the stories were written from vastly different people and they were all very interesting and enjoyable. None were "wife bashing" and gave insight on how the men view the feminist movement differently.

Hope was Here: Joan Bauer

This was a cute teen fiction about Hope Yancey and how she deals with a life of disappointment. Her mom left her with her aunt to raise and they move from city to city working in restaurants. They end up in a small town in Minnesota where her Aunt falls in love with the owner, who has leukemia and runs for governor. The book talks about waitressing and the politicking and campaigning to get him in office. The book ends with Hope finding a dad in the restaurant owner and he succumbs to the disease.

The Bird's Nest: Shirley Jackson

The protagonist, Elizabeth Richmond is introduced as a very plane woman who has more and more time she can't account for or remember as the book progresses. She is soon diagnosed with multiple personality disorder as 4 distinct personalities emerge. we find out her mother had had a personality illness and Aunt Morgan, who has raised her since her mother's death, is about at wits end dealing with the "four" women. Elizabeth's personalities seem to have "spilt" from the death of her mother, which is seems like she had a part in when Elizabeth shook her mother. her mother was seeing "Robin" who didn't want a child and Lizzie can't remember if her mother ever defended her. Aunt Morgan and Dr Wright get Lizzie to understand that her mother is dead, because one of the personalities, Betsy, believes she is still alive and Beth, thinks her mother just died 3 weeks ago. Once the girls come to the realization their mother is dead, they all merge back into the one personality, or so we believe.