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
Operation Pokies
Guest review by Gene Bild Set in New Zealand, where the author lives and has a psychiatric therapy practice, Operation Pokies opens with adult animal characters bemoaning the malign effects that pokies (the word in New Zealand for slot machines) have on their village and personal lives. Then the story segues into a children’s crusade in which cute animal children and their insect allies, disgusted and angered by the way pokies have warped their lives, take action and dump all their villages’ slot machines into the ocean. The Amazon site for the eBook gives some startling statistics, without citation,… Read More