More Than It Hurts You

It's hard to concisely discuss how many different things I disliked about this book. Simply put, it aims high, but Darin Strauss is not good enough as an author to have successfully written this. For the book to have had two editors (allegedly), so many things (both narratively and straight-up typos......more

This is an absorbing psychological study of what people do to motivate themselves and others as well as what secrets and lies they tell themselves to do so. At one point a main character asks himself "How much blindness does a happy life require?" On the surface, this is a story about a family deali......more

This book is trying to take on so many Big Topics -- race, gender, class, etc., etc. -- all under the umbrella of Munchausen's by proxy, which is one of those car-wreck-curious sorts of topoics. I want to say it half-succeeds, because the book is immensely readable and the characters very believable......more

Munchausen by proxy is obviously a super creepy interesting topic, but this book has too many characters, none of them really likable, and too much going on, like a character named Intelligent Muhammad, and this fake Jon Stewart monologue, ugh: "So, I misunderstood," Jon Stewart was saying. "I though......more