Book Reviews

Hi Everyone,

We encourage you to recommend any book you loved reading. If you have one, kindly indicate the name of the book, author or maybe write a brief description about the book through the comments of this post. If you can add the link about the book, that would also be cool!

Thank you very much!

Scott

Suggestions:

Ben's Friends Recommendation:

We're In This Together: Stories & Tips from Patients with Rare Diseases

This book is a compilation of patient tips and stories to help others patients and loved ones get through this difficult time in life. Ben’s Friends is a “little Internet miracle” and we plan on continuing for many more years.

To help others locate the ebook easier, don't forget to give the ebook a 5-star rate review in Amazon. Strong positive review like 5-star bumps up the ebook in Google search results. Thanks!

Seenie's Recommendation:

Psoriatic Arthritis Facts by Gladman, Dafna D. and Chandran - "This book is the best comprehensive resource that any PsA sufferer could have. It was written for a lay reader, but it contains so much information that medical professionals will find it useful as well."

nym's Recommendation:

You Don't Look Sick!, Second Edition: Living Well With Chronic Invisible Illness: 1

You Don't Look Sick chronicles one person's true-life story of illness and her physicians compassionate commentary as they journey through the four stages of chronic illness-Getting Sick, Being Sick, Grief and Acceptance and Living Well. The authors address such practical aspects as hiring a doctor, managing chronic pain, coping with grief and loss of function, winning battles with health and disability insurers, countering the social bias against the chronically ill, and recognizing the limitations of chronic illness care and charting a path for change and more. This warmhearted resource helps you focus on building a meaningful life as opposed to a life of frustration and fear.

Jane's Recommendation:

How to Be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers

This life-affirming, instructive and thoroughly inspiring book is a must-read for anyone who is—or who might one day be—sick. And it can also be the perfect gift of guidance, encouragement, and uplifting inspiration to family, friends, and loved ones struggling with the many terrifying or disheartening life changes that come so close on the heels of a diagnosis of a chronic condition or even life-threatening illness.

Jules' Recommendation:

Living with a Long-term Illness: The Facts

The authors accept that you know more than them about how you experience it, so that rather than telling you what to do, they offer a tool box from which you may pick the strategies that best suit you. The two authors, one a person with a long-term illness and one a doctor, combine their expertise and experience to offer a practical and comprehensive guide along your own unique journey. If you have a long-term illness, or if you care for someone who does, then this is a book for you.

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (Facts)

This patient-centred guide covers all aspects of IBD including common symptoms, tests used to make a diagnosis, treatment and overall management of the condition. Providing up-to-date factual information, it is easy to read and allows quick access to key facts and helpful advice. With consideration given to new developments in the understanding and treatment of inflammation of the bowel, including complementary and alternative therapies, this book will help to improve the overall quality of life for all those affected by this chronic disease.

TaraLynn's Recommendation:

Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking: The Easyway To Stop Smoking

Allen Carr's Easy Way To Stop Smoking is one of the biggest selling self-help titles in publishing history having sold 13 million copies worldwide. The book is a complete guide to stopping smoking easily and permanently.

Pleasure Reading Books:

TarraLyn's Recommendation:

The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography

A rigorously unfictionalized narrative that protrays Roth unadorned -- as young artist, as student , as son, as lover, as husband, as American, as Jew -- and candidly examines how close the novels have been to, and how far from, autobiography.

Tirezza's Recommendation:

Foundling (Monster Blood Tattoo, Book 1)

Meet Rossamünd, a foundling, a boy with a girl's name who is about to begin a dangerous life in the service of the Emperor of the Half-Continent. What starts as a simple journey becomes a dangerous and complicated set of battles and decisions. Humans, monsters, unearthly creatures . . . who among these can Rossamünd trust? D. M. Cornish has created an entirely original world, grounded in his own deft, classically influenced illustrations. Foundling is a magic-laced, Dickensian adventure that will transport the reader.

Lamplighter (Monster Blood Tattoo, Book 2)

Rossamünd Bookchild is finally becoming a lamplighter. Sworn into the Emperor's service, his duty is to light the lamps along the Emperor's highways, and protect all travelers from the ferocious bogles that live in the wild. But he's found it no easier to fit in with the lamplighters than he ever has - always too small and too meek, his loneliness continues no matter how hard he tries to succeed. But when a haughty young girl, a member of a suspiciously-regarded society of all-women teratologists is forced upon the lamplighters for training, Rossamünd might no longer be the most despised soul around.

tmb's Recommendation:

Affordable Recipes for Everyone

Affordable Recipes for Everyone is a cook book that is based on recipes that I use to raise my three sons on a low income. I have recipes in my cook book that will save you money and are easy to make, good and filling. Affordable Recipes for Everyone is for people that would like to save money on every day recipes. And to make use of all the foods from food pantries and food give away. All the ingredients are easy to find in any store. Affordable Recipes for Everyone has an index, chapters, and a lot of references.

Hi, our very first Ben's Friends ebook We're In This Together: Stories & Tips from Patients with Rare ... is now available at Amazon. If you got a minute today, kindly give a positive review to the book on Amazon to make it easier for other patients to find it.

Thanks a bunch!

I bought the book! I will read it later today and post a review sometime this weekend.

I second How to Be Sick!

Also...You Don't Look Sick: Living Well With Chronic Invisible Illness by Joy H. Selak

This is a very insightful, in-depth book from both the patient and the physician's perspectives. It goes through the process from diagnosis, through acceptance, coping, and living with chronic illness.

Oxford University Press who publish the 'thefacts: Psoriatic Arthritis by Dafna Gladman & Vinod Chandran' that Seenie recommends (and so many of us now own!) above publish a number of other books in this series which also offer practical advice about an illness or condition written by leading authorities in their fields.

There are too many to list out but if you have another condition it is well worth investigating whether 'thefacts' have a corresponding publication.

In addition to the one on PsA I have two others, one which is useful to anyone with any long-term illness and one which is condition specific. Both are excellent.

thefacts: Living with a Long-term Illness by Frankie Campling and Michael Sharpe

thefacts: Inflammatory Bowel Disease by Louise Langmead and Peter Irving

I've bought all mine on Amazon (some have Kindle versions) but they are also available direct from the OUP online bookshop (you may need to backtrack on the site for non-uk purchases):

http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/p2p/endecaSearch.do?keyword=the+facts+se...

Yikes!! Sorry Scott...I must of posted the wrong link...the book I was referring to is the same book Seenie recommended. Not sure how that happened ;-)

http://www.amazon.com/Psoriatic-Arthritis-Facts-Dafna-Gladman/dp/0199231222

I've never read book posted ? :

TarraLyn's Recommendation:

The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography

A rigorously unfictionalized narrative that protrays Roth unadorned -- as young artist, as student , as son, as lover, as husband, as American, as Jew -- and candidly examines how close the novels have been to, and how far from, autobiography.



TaraLynn said:

Yikes!! Sorry Scott...I must of posted the wrong link...the book I was referring to is the same book Seenie recommended. Not sure how that happened ;-)

http://www.amazon.com/Psoriatic-Arthritis-Facts-Dafna-Gladman/dp/01...

Hey, guys, it is me, Theresa, aka Tirezza. The whole family came down with the flu during the second snowfall of the year for Atlanta. That is why I have been so quiet. Anyway, I love to read. I just finished with Book One of the Monster Blood Tattoo series by D.M. Cornish, titled Foundling. It is a fantasy book set in the world of Half-Continent about a foundling boy with a girl's name, Rossamund. In Half-Continent humans and monsters are in constant conflict with one another, leading the humans to become different types of monster hunters, because all monsters are evil. Or are they?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Blood_Tattoo:_Foundling

http://http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FIE678M/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_img?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3F7956PKDE940&coliid=I1R5G59NN3O91JI have not been able to work outside my home for about two years. I raised my sons on welfare and worked my way off by cooking. I made these recipes to feed us on little money. I have PSA now and can't cook that much now so I wrote a cook book to help me stay busy and feel useful . I hope you enjoy reading it.

OOps, tmb, that link doesn’t work for some reason.
Can you check it, and maybe give us the title and the author’s name so that we can find it?
I LOVE cookbooks, and always welcome a good and economical recipe. Making pea soup today! Mmmmmmm



tmb said:

http://http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FIE678M/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_img...I have not been able to work outside my home for about two years. I raised my sons on welfare and worked my way off by cooking. I made these recipes to feed us on little money. I have PSA now and can't cook that much now so I wrote a cook book to help me stay busy and feel useful . I hope you enjoy reading it.

I have just finished Book Two in the MBT series, titled Lamplighter. So far both books have been comparable to Tolkien. I can picture the world of Half-Continent as well as the people and places. My review of Foundling hardly did it justice and I barely scratched the surface of such a remarkable book. Rossamund becomes a Lamplighter in service to the Emperor. It is his duty to keep the highways lit to protect travelers from the things that lurk just on the edge of darkness.

http://www.amazon.com/Lamplighter-Monster-Blood-Tattoo-Book/dp/0399246398/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393204148&sr=1-1&keywords=d+m+cornish+lamplighter

http://monsterblood.wikia.com/wiki/Lamplighter

This link gives a definition of what a Lamplighters duties are and also shows off some the authors wonderful art work.

Currently reading Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking....I'm about 3/4 of the way through it.

Last time I read it I quit for about 6 months...started smoking again last summer :-( It's a great book and I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to Quit.

http://www.amazon.ca/The-Easy-Way-Stop-Smoking/dp/1402736592

Every book is of being sick and that is OK. But, surely there is more to us that a disease or two or more. So, on that thought, I highly recommend all of Mr. Mark Levine's books( I think there are 4 total). They are political in nature, but well written, and not dumb down writing. He is probably one of the best to write for and about the constitution. There are many others to be sure, others who are like Mr. Levine all the way to people that believe out constitution is a living document.

I think you may want to re-read people's lists above. There are a lot of books there that are not about sickness or illness. I would expect a book list on a site dedicated to an illness there would be more about illness.

I have just completed the Monster Blood Tattoo series. The last book, Factotum. A factotum is a servant or person with many responsibilities. Rossamund is now factotum to the great teratologist, monster hunter, Europe, Duchess of Naimes. She is also Rossamund's protector because he stands accused of not being an everyman, human, but a monster.

http://www.amazon.com/Factotum-Monster-Blood-Tattoo-Cornish/dp/1849920370

Wonderful books, if you are a fan of the genre. :)