It's both fun and heart-wrenching, breaking up beautiful and important pieces on PTSD, substance abuse, BPD and eating disorders with funny inspirational artwork and reading lists. Jae Jones' examination of the manic pixie dreamgirl to Meredith Russo's experience of mental illness as a transwoman, this book talks in a frank open way about the realities of mental illness and its treatment options. From Holstrom's piece on trichotillomania to Kuehn's misophonia to S. And I am so so thrilled that the brave writers, actors and artists in (Don't) Call Me Crazy came together to open up this discussion. I'm telling you this because we need to talk openly about mental illness. And I'm still here because this place has been better for me than any of the meds I've ever taken. Thinking deeply about how books made me feel and turning that into reviews was the perfect food for my weird analytical brain. I was not in a good place at that time, but this site turned out to be exactly what I needed. It was two years after my suicide attempt that I discovered Goodreads. I didn't know for so long why I was bad at existing and interacting in ways that are considered socially acceptable. I recently found out that a lot of the social problems and strange habits I had as a young child (and still have to some extent) are because of high functioning autism - things I remember, like my tendency to not "get" jokes and sarcasm, and things I don't remember, like covering my ears, throwing myself on the floor, and screaming when my parents first tried to take me into a busy preschool class. I have spent many many years of my life wondering what was wrong with me. But here's the truth: reviewing books is my way of surviving. How I review books to be mean or contrarian, or because I am too stupid to do anything else. How I am an evil villainess waiting to tear down the latest YA book. I've seen theories about me circling on Goodreads and Twitter. When you start putting parts of yourself out there on the Internet, people begin to wonder about you and to form their own stories. This book made me cry, but for all the right reasons. I only wish someone had told me not that I was "crazy" but that I was sick, and there was a way to get better. Please note: I don't take review requests via Goodreads and I don't respond to comments on reviews that are more than 6 months old. Her writing has been featured on The Huffington Post, at Rookie Magazine, The Horn Book, BlogHer, and School Library Journal. In her free time, she teaches yoga, writes for her personal blog STACKED (), drinks a lot of tea, and enjoys disappearing for days reading good books. Kelly lives in the Chicago area with her husband, her daughter, her rabbit, and five needy-but-awesome cats. Before becoming a fully-fledged adult-like person, she worked in the swanky Texas Legislative Library entering data into a computer while surrounded by important politicians, scooped gelato for hungry college students, and spent hours reading, annotating, and scanning small-town Texas newspapers into a giant searchable database. Her current position is with Book Riot, the largest independent book website in North America, where she focuses on talking about young adult literature in all of its manifestations. Kelly Jensen is a former teen librarian who worked in several public libraries before pursuing a full-time career in writing and editing.
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