Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye. This week all three come via a NYT article – ‘7 Memoirs Therapists Think You Should Read‘.

An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison

Summary: While Jamison was pursuing her career in academic medicine, she found herself succumbing to the same exhilarating highs and catastrophic depressions that afflicted many of her patients. Jamison examines manic-depressive (bipolar) illness from the dual perspectives of the healer and the healed.

I’m thinking: No.

The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon

Summary: Examination of depression in personal, cultural, and scientific terms, revealing the subtle complexities and sheer agony of the disease.

Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair.

I’m thinking: Yes.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Summary: When sober, Jeannette’s brilliant and charismatic father captured his children’s imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who didn’t want the responsibility of raising a family. The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.

I’m thinking: Yes.