Wednesday, November 19, 2008

October #3 - AGAINST MEDICAL ADVICE


Title: Against medical advice

Author: James Patterson and Hal Friedman

Publisher: Little, Brown & Co.

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 978-0-316-02475-4

Series or stand-alone: Non-fiction

1st Sentence:

I'm seventeen years old and lying like a pathetic, helpless lump in the backseat of our family car, being transported to a place that treats crazy people.


Comments:

This book documents the journey of Cory Friedman, who one day just before turning five had the urge to shake his head, and spent the next decade plus fighting his often debilitating and crippling Tourette's syndrome and OCD. The story was good although the writing was pretty elementary because it's told from Cory's point of view. It moved along at a quick clip and the subject matter is just something you don't find a lot to read about. I was quite thrilled to put a name to my own OCD tendencies. I'm a "checker".

My sister-in-law laughs every time we discuss OCD though, because I saw a bumper sticker that I liked once. It said, "I have CDO. It's the same as OCD, only in alphabetical order the way it SHOULD be. I shared it with her and it cracks us up every time we talk about it.

Back to the book, I was disappointed however, because the only thing James Patterson had to do with this book was lend his name for sales. It's written by Cory, from Cory's point of view, yet his name shows up nowhere on the cover. I wasn't too impressed by that.

2 comments:

Jake said...

I'm pretty sure Patterson is like Shakespeare and Stephen King-- they don't write their books anymore, they just tell a committee their plot idea and the team writes it for them. What's he published, three books in the past year? I read his books for curiosity's sake, but I make sure to rent them from Bookswim in case I need to mail them back after the first few chapters in literary conniptions.

Shannon said...

Hi Jake,
Thanks for writing. Yeah, I think his books are being mass produced by someone other than himself. For the most part though, I don't mind because like so many other readers, one of the main appeals are the quick readable chapters that he features in all of his books.
I've not used Bookswim, although I know it's like Netflix, but can I ask, why aren't you using your public library?