Fight your way through the bulls**t and you’ll find good reads

The BBC has discovered bibliotherapy. My Bulls**t Detector began beeping. James Carney, “a computational cognitive scientist” (that rated a BD of 9)  said fiction can help boost well-being, but it depends on the book, the person and how they engage. James gets a Gold Star for academic brilliance.

According to Katya Zimmer of the BBC, “creative bibliotherapy” is big,  it’s new and it’s out there on the internet, waiting for you. Look up Ella Berthoud, a bibliotherapist (BD 7) who co-wrote a book called The Novel Cure¹. Contact Berthoud and she will send you a list of literary remedies, tailored to your circumstances. “I was just blown away,” said Elizabeth Russell, who got the Berthoud treatment. Russell was going through a divorce and depressed. Berthoud recommended a book called George and Lizzie² by Nancy Pearl. Reading fiction about marital misery helped her navigate the troubles she was going through, Russell said. Berthoud will give you tailored literary recommendations for HK$1000 a session. This is a good lark.

Here are some suggestions from BUZZ for free:

IF YOU ARE DEPRESSED, read The Road Less Travelled³. M. Scott Peck’s book begins with a simple phrase, “Life is difficult.” The psychiatrist writes the path less followed is believing in yourself and respecting yourself. If you do that you can overcome life’s difficulties. Towards the end the book becomes quite religious. It had a big effect on me when I was in my 40s and a bit depressed. I even became religious for a time until I discovered the books of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris. Let’s not forget Bertrand Russell whose Why I am Not a Christian⁴ has had the churches stymied since 1927.

IF YOU LIKE HISTORY read Jan Morris’s Pax Britannia trilogy. No praise is high enough for this writer. Morris’s last book in the trilogy, Farewell the Trumpets⁵, begins, “Queen Victoria went home happy on her Diamond Jubilee day, June 22, 1897. The sun had shone all day. Victoria had passed in procession through London intermittently weeping for pleasure, and studded her diary that evening with joyous adjectives: indescribable, truly marvellous, deeply touching. . . The British had chosen to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee as a festival of Empire. They were in possession that day of the largest Empire ever known to history, and since a large part of it was acquired during the sixty years of Victoria’s reign, it seemed proper to honour the one with the other. It would mark this moment of British history as an Imperial moment, a Roman moment.” Also history lovers will likely enjoy Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile⁶. A shining example of how history should be written. Also recommended — of course! — anything by Winston Churchill, especially My Early Life⁷ said to be his most readable book.

IF YOU LIKE FICTION, we have suggested in these columns, Delia Owen’s Where the Crawdads Sing⁸ (the best and biggest bookshop I have visited was Dymocks in Sydney; at the time they devoted a whole wall to Owens’ book) Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible⁹, Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove¹⁰ and Jojo Moyes, Me Before You¹¹.

OTHER NON-FICTION suggestions: Alexandra Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight¹², Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air¹³ (both of these books brought tears to my eyes twice) and Robert Mason’s Chicken Hawk¹⁴, which is about Huey flying in the Vietnam War and said to be the best book about that war. Also Henry Marsh’s Do No Harm¹⁵, a shockingly honest portrayal of a neurosurgeon’s successes and failures.

The Bulls–t Detector voiced no objection to the 14 books recommended above.

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