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Bookchat: Healing books [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-12-20

Welcome to Bookchat! Where you can talk about anything; books, plays, essays, and audio books. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.

Recently, I wrote a novella about a man healing from trauma. (More on that later.) That got me thinking about how healing is presented in the book world. As I see it, there are books about the healer (doctor/nurse/veterinarian, etc.) and the healing workplace. Many of these are memoirs, but there are some in the world of fiction as well. Then there are books about physical healing including about specific diseases, and books about emotional healing. And finally there are books that may not be written specifically about healing, but which just make you feel better for having read them. These are often the ones that hit most personally and may vary quite a bit from person to person, depending on what they are healing from.

Books about the Healing Profession

My favorite book in this arena is one about healing animals, not people. I refer, of course, to James Herriot’s masterpiece, All Creatures Great and Small. The TV show is pretty good, too. There are so many dimensions to this book. There’s the historical perspective of veterinary medicine in a bygone era; there’s the compassion for both the animals and their owners; there’s the struggle to find your feet as someone newly entering the workplace.

Another memoir is about human medicine, Intern: A Doctor's Initiation by Sandeep Jauhar. I’m a doctor’s daughter; I grew up knowing what doctors go through to make it in their profession. If you aren't familiar with how the process works, this book is a good place to start.

One of my favorite book series (although a bit dated in how it treats relationships between men and women) are the Sector General books. A deep space hospital populated with alien doctors/healers as well as even more aliens as patients. What could be more fun? (I am in the process of writing a novel about a fantasy hospital with dragons, dwarfs, gnomes, etc. and both magical and nonmagical diseases and healing. Inspired by my love of the Sector General books, naturally.)

Books about Physical Diseases

My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD Not only does this tell us what it is like to have a stoke and gives hope for recovery, but it is written by a brain scientist who suffers a stroke.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukhergee is a book about the history of cancer treatment.

Fiction about diseases often is about the worst case, not the healing. Books like Beaches: A Novel by Iris Dart and The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. They are meant to tug at our hearts. People often want to read books that will make them cry and fiction about people with health problems are a good source for that crying jag when you want one. Some, like My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Piccoult, can even make you cry more than once.

Wish You Were Here: A Novel by Jodi Piccoult — This book is about the Covid epidemic in 2020. The main character is quarantined out of the country while her boyfriend faces working in a hospital in NYC during the worst of the epidemic.

Books about Emotional Healing

These books are usually about grief or some sort of trauma such as abuse that the person has to learn to live with and recover from.

First up is The Year of Magical Thinking by Didion which is the best book on grieving that I’ve read.

Brené Brown has written many books that touch on emotional healing. One of my favorites was Braving the Wilderness.

The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler was another book that resonated strongly with me, saying things that I needed to hear. I particularly was drawn to the chapter on shifting perspective. To some extent that is why I often talk about difficult things each year when I publicly post my gratitudes. It’s not easy to find something to be grateful for in the bouts of depression or the crippling anxiety. But when you do shift the perspective, these things become easier to endure.

Books that Made Me Feel Better

Sometimes a book comes out of nowhere and strikes such a cord that it helps heal something deep inside you. These books are often very personal to your own particular situation, so my list will not necessarily be yours. But there is a genre called hopepunk that consists of books that give the reader a sense of hope, useful while we live in a world that often seems hopeless. Books like The House in the Cerulean Sea by Klune or A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Chambers. You just feel better after reading such books. (At least as long as you avoid looking at the news!)

In the comments, feel free to mention books that you have personally found healing.

Shameless Self-Promotion

Skip this section if you aren't interested in supporting an independent author.

My most recent publication is a fantasy novella that has the theme of healing from trauma. It’s as close to autobiographical as I will probably ever write. While the specific things that happened to me are not the specific (and much worse) things that happen to my protagonist, the way he finds healing and joy again are very similar to my own journey. The book is dedicated to Karl, the man I lived with for 26 years until his death in 2008. He found me broken, and he left me healed. Can there be a better tribute to love than that? So if the idea of reading about a man healing from trauma appeals to you, then look up my book, Gone Man. A small snippet follows. The characters are Tor who was enslaved and abused and is now free, his wife Sylvie, and one of Sylvie’s relatives, Jorie, who has run away to escape an arranged marriage to a rich, but abusive, man.

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