It’s time again for another Rest Room Rambles. It has been a while since we’ve done one of these, and I’m excited to open another community discussion thread.
This month, I thought we’d do something a little bit different, given that I know a lot of people here are avid readers, even if it’s something that you may struggle to do because of your symptoms.
Last year, before I moved to Substack, I recorded a podcast episode dedicated to just this topic, that (I think slash hope!) is full of tonnes of useful advice if you need to find ways to adapt your reading life to make it accessible to you.
A few years ago, I’d not only been struggling with the practicalities of reading (a real challenge given how central it was to my life) but I was also in a weird place of transition with my health. I was anxious, I was depressed, I was frustrated. So I treated myself to something I’d always wanted to do - a bibliotherapy session.
“you'll explore your relationship with books so far and your unique readerly identity will be sketched. You will be guided to books that can put their finger on feelings that you may often have had but perhaps never understood so clearly before; books that open new perspectives and re-enchant the world for you.”
It really was like a therapy session…but with a whole lot of books sprinkled in. We talked about the issues I was struggling with as well as my reading life (what I loved, what I hated etc), and soon afterwards I received an email with a “reading prescription”. It was centred around the idea that I was looking for uplifting and immersive reads to help me cope with (or distract me from?) living with chronic illness.
Today, I’d like to open up a thread to offer just a little bit of that, and to do so I’ve partnered with my friends over at Listening Books for a bibliotherapy discussion thread.
Listening Books is a charity which provides an audiobook lending service for anyone in the UK whose illness, mental health condition, physical disability, learning disability or learning difficulty makes it more challenging to read or hold a book. Online access to their collection of over 10,000 audiobooks is just £20 a year, with free memberships also available to anyone who would find this fee a barrier to joining. For more information, you can visit www.listening-books.org.uk.
Obviously, we can’t do a full bibliotherapy session for each person, but I thought it might be nice for us to be able to share a little bit about what kind of books/vibes of books we’re looking for and we can recommend a read to each other.
I’ll be in the comments with Emily Pye from Listening Books, but I thought it would be nice if we could also all recommend books to each other too. So if you read a comment where you’re like “I know JUST the book for this person” - please do share!
I think it’d be helpful to share a little bit about what kind of book you’re looking for (perhaps even why) and what you enjoy/don’t enjoy in a book. Obviously, they don’t have to be books about chronic illness - they can (and I think, should) be about anything.
Here are some examples to get you started:
What book would you recommend for someone who likes cold, dark mysteries set in a fantastical world with a romance element?
Can you recommend me a book I might enjoy based on my love for a certain TV series?
What non-fiction books can you recommend to help me manage finances in the cost of living crisis?
Can you recommend any children's books with a disabled protagonist?
So…over to you! What kind of books would you like to discover?
This concept really brings me joy! While I’m outside of the UK, I’d still love to receive recommendations.
I’ve recently been enjoying fantasy and speculative fiction- an escape but also worlds where non normative bodies are.. the norm! Some recent favorites include Clair Khloda’s “Woman, Eating” (I swear the author based her lead character on someone with ME and Dysautonomia), Ken Liu’s short stories “The Paper Menagerie” (I adore LeVar Burton’s narration of some of them) and work by NK Jemison. I prefer work right now without such complex names and/or shorter chapters so I can try to recall things and continue to read through a crash (though I often have to go back as I’ll forget everything). I particularly love work in this genre that pays attention to food as I do some food writing as a side hustle.
I do also enjoy illuminating non Fiction when I’m up for it and read several works recently on the cultural invention/history/ trauma of hysteria. Again, I swear these women, or some of them had hEDS, MCAS, and Dysautonomia. Some I think me/cfs too. I don’t need to necessarily continue on that theme but reading about cultural histories of disability interests me. Thanks for this amazing consult!!!
Wow! I absolutely love that bibliotherapu exists. Strangely enough I think I did this with films too when my endometriosis was keeping me in bed but I needed an escape/distraction but I think crucially a story that mirrored in some way my own. Hello Marvel Universe with epic themes. I love, love, love mythology but also I felt if I'm honest I wanted something that seemed visceral too. Because it felt 'epic' just getting out for a ten minute walk, having a bath - I'm sure this is similar to others too.
I wanted to say thank you for saying 'reading is reading is reading' because as a dyslexic learner I'd always undermined my listening to books as somehow less than real reading. Not anymore!
Okay I have some suggestions...I've been reading the audiobooks of the Wimsey series. They have romance and mystery and murder and I fins they can feel like being in a fantasy world because they are set in a past era. There is a dash of humour too too keep up some light and shade.
For a children's book about a disabled character I have some points that might help??? I watched the Merlin series on BBC as he is 'magical' but has to hide it and I felt it related to his lack of acceptance in a society that ignores him but he has a destiny. Which seems so big headed but it really helped me! Also he gets underestimated a lot and I felt I was going through a bad patch with feeling very patronised whenever I disclosed my disability. Also there are the Shardlake books which has the main protagonist with a disability set in Tudor england and he solves murders.
Apologies for the tv recommendation but thought it might offer a genre of books in a similar genre?
I've never heard of bibliotherapy before. So cool!
I really enjoyed reading The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and mostly read via audiobook. Do you have any recommendations that are similar to that with great narration?
I LOVE this topic! I've been reading lots of memoirs as I've found them more accessible with brain fog - as you don't need to remember the plot details so much. Particularly ones either about another culture, or about someone on an adventure. As someone who loves the outdoors but can't hike right now, it's great to be able to still live these experiences through books. Is anyone else into this type of reading? I've just finished Unlost by Gail Muller which I really enjoyed
I love this thread so much, and I’ve just signed up to listening books! I use Libby a lot already for my local library, but so excited to have a much wider range of audiobooks available (and I’ve recently had to cancel my subscription to the big audiobook place because it was getting too expensive).
I’ve already added a whole pile of books from this thread to my wishlist. I’m particularly looking for book series with a soothing narrator that are well written but not highbrow, and fairly gentle and undemanding (I have a short attention span for audio even when not fatigued). I’ve been listening to Stephen Fry read Sherlock Holmes on repeat lately (skipping over some of the stories that don’t age well), and I love Terry Pratchett - Discworld is my all time favourite. Every single time I re-read or re-listen I’ll pick up something I missed before, and since getting sick I’ve found a lot of themes about doing the hard grind that’s in front of you from the witches books especially to have fresh resonance.
I’ve also liked Jodi Taylor’s chronicles of st Mary series, though it gets a bit samey and predictable in the middle, the Sean Duffy Belfast series by Adrian McGinty, the Rivers of London books...I guess I’m not too focused on genre as long as it’s not horror or overly gory, but I like a sense of humour and something that’s a little bit distanced from present day either by place or time. And not too emotionally stressful - I love Marian Keyes but have had her latest book sitting waiting to be read for months now because I know that as much as I’ll love it, it’ll also make me cry and I’m not ready 😂
I feel like this post is just a mess of contradictions, but I’ve tried a couple of series recently and given them up because of the way the (male) author wrote the female love interests, so would love some ideas!
I'd love recommendations for books like Becky Chambers'. Full of warmth, strong characters and relationships, that feels like wrapping yourself up in a blanket when you need something comforting. Sci-fi/fantasy would be great but other genres are good too. Bonus points if it's in the Listening Books catalogue!
This concept really brings me joy! While I’m outside of the UK, I’d still love to receive recommendations.
I’ve recently been enjoying fantasy and speculative fiction- an escape but also worlds where non normative bodies are.. the norm! Some recent favorites include Clair Khloda’s “Woman, Eating” (I swear the author based her lead character on someone with ME and Dysautonomia), Ken Liu’s short stories “The Paper Menagerie” (I adore LeVar Burton’s narration of some of them) and work by NK Jemison. I prefer work right now without such complex names and/or shorter chapters so I can try to recall things and continue to read through a crash (though I often have to go back as I’ll forget everything). I particularly love work in this genre that pays attention to food as I do some food writing as a side hustle.
I do also enjoy illuminating non Fiction when I’m up for it and read several works recently on the cultural invention/history/ trauma of hysteria. Again, I swear these women, or some of them had hEDS, MCAS, and Dysautonomia. Some I think me/cfs too. I don’t need to necessarily continue on that theme but reading about cultural histories of disability interests me. Thanks for this amazing consult!!!
Wow! I absolutely love that bibliotherapu exists. Strangely enough I think I did this with films too when my endometriosis was keeping me in bed but I needed an escape/distraction but I think crucially a story that mirrored in some way my own. Hello Marvel Universe with epic themes. I love, love, love mythology but also I felt if I'm honest I wanted something that seemed visceral too. Because it felt 'epic' just getting out for a ten minute walk, having a bath - I'm sure this is similar to others too.
I wanted to say thank you for saying 'reading is reading is reading' because as a dyslexic learner I'd always undermined my listening to books as somehow less than real reading. Not anymore!
Okay I have some suggestions...I've been reading the audiobooks of the Wimsey series. They have romance and mystery and murder and I fins they can feel like being in a fantasy world because they are set in a past era. There is a dash of humour too too keep up some light and shade.
For a children's book about a disabled character I have some points that might help??? I watched the Merlin series on BBC as he is 'magical' but has to hide it and I felt it related to his lack of acceptance in a society that ignores him but he has a destiny. Which seems so big headed but it really helped me! Also he gets underestimated a lot and I felt I was going through a bad patch with feeling very patronised whenever I disclosed my disability. Also there are the Shardlake books which has the main protagonist with a disability set in Tudor england and he solves murders.
Apologies for the tv recommendation but thought it might offer a genre of books in a similar genre?
Great ramble topic Natasha!!
I've never heard of bibliotherapy before. So cool!
I really enjoyed reading The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and mostly read via audiobook. Do you have any recommendations that are similar to that with great narration?
I LOVE this topic! I've been reading lots of memoirs as I've found them more accessible with brain fog - as you don't need to remember the plot details so much. Particularly ones either about another culture, or about someone on an adventure. As someone who loves the outdoors but can't hike right now, it's great to be able to still live these experiences through books. Is anyone else into this type of reading? I've just finished Unlost by Gail Muller which I really enjoyed
The Clockbreakers series by Kate Ristau is a really fun fantasy series with a disabled protagonist! Full of magic & mythology. For ages 8-12.
I love this thread so much, and I’ve just signed up to listening books! I use Libby a lot already for my local library, but so excited to have a much wider range of audiobooks available (and I’ve recently had to cancel my subscription to the big audiobook place because it was getting too expensive).
I’ve already added a whole pile of books from this thread to my wishlist. I’m particularly looking for book series with a soothing narrator that are well written but not highbrow, and fairly gentle and undemanding (I have a short attention span for audio even when not fatigued). I’ve been listening to Stephen Fry read Sherlock Holmes on repeat lately (skipping over some of the stories that don’t age well), and I love Terry Pratchett - Discworld is my all time favourite. Every single time I re-read or re-listen I’ll pick up something I missed before, and since getting sick I’ve found a lot of themes about doing the hard grind that’s in front of you from the witches books especially to have fresh resonance.
I’ve also liked Jodi Taylor’s chronicles of st Mary series, though it gets a bit samey and predictable in the middle, the Sean Duffy Belfast series by Adrian McGinty, the Rivers of London books...I guess I’m not too focused on genre as long as it’s not horror or overly gory, but I like a sense of humour and something that’s a little bit distanced from present day either by place or time. And not too emotionally stressful - I love Marian Keyes but have had her latest book sitting waiting to be read for months now because I know that as much as I’ll love it, it’ll also make me cry and I’m not ready 😂
I feel like this post is just a mess of contradictions, but I’ve tried a couple of series recently and given them up because of the way the (male) author wrote the female love interests, so would love some ideas!
I'd love recommendations for books like Becky Chambers'. Full of warmth, strong characters and relationships, that feels like wrapping yourself up in a blanket when you need something comforting. Sci-fi/fantasy would be great but other genres are good too. Bonus points if it's in the Listening Books catalogue!