Book Review by Gene Bild I’ve long thought an anthology by a range of ex-addicts and other sober folk telling their life stories was overdue. It’s now arrived as a graphic novel and that’s surely icing on the cake. Forty-four mostly anonymous souls were paired with cartoonists and then bared all, delivering gripping tales of sad descent and then some measure of redemption. I binge-read Bottoms Up! cover to cover in one sitting and here mention a few of its highlights. Accepting the premise that these are first person narratives, the mere fact of their telling implies the recovery,… Read More
Tower 25
Guest Review by Gene Bild PJ Patten’s Tower 25 is the remarkable autobiographical story of a period of months some 15 years ago when, due to his methamphetamine addiction, the author became homeless in southern California. When the story begins Patten persists in getting stoned despite the dire need for a new living situation: he’s been given only a few weeks’ respite before having to move out of his apartment. When the deadline passes, he begins walking for miles back and forth along the oceanfront, often sleeping near the lifeguard tower named in the title. It is during this journey… Read More
Alcohol Addiction: a Memoir and a Fiction
Guest Review by Gene Bild Books relating personal battles with drugs and alcohol naturally tend to feature the authors as characters. While Ollmann distances himself somewhat by fabricating a stand-in alter ego named Caleb Wyatt, Nagata renders her harrowing warts-and-all story of hospitalization and eventual semi-recovery realistically. The two stories are quite different in tone. Nagata’s story is a memoir, an account of her several-year binge and eventual hospitalization. Not only is Ollmann’s novel fiction, but he ensures our awareness of this with the book’s title. Ollmann’s book is gently playful and quite funny, and not the dark whistle-as-you-pass-the-graveyard humor… Read More
The High Points of Sobriety
Guest Review by Gene Bild The High Points of Sobriety: A Comical Guide to Addiction Recovery by Tony Rubino (comic strip creator of Daddy’s Home) could be classified as an illustrated book, though I’d call it a paperback-sized coffee table book, a collection of mostly one-sentence “inspirational” sobriety gags, on the order of “when you sober up you won’t [insert shocking bon mot] anymore.” Each page is headed with the bolded phrase “Reasons to Stay Sober” possibly because any poor soul stumbling onto this book will need constant reminding of why they are wasting their time with it. Here’s a… Read More