Readin' and Dreamin'

A semi-autobiographical tale about a young woman's slow decent into a mental breakdown.

This was a heartbreaking, and at times, disturbing book. We traveled inside the head of a young woman from the start of her mental breakdown while at a magazine internship in New York to the final plunge of her insanity while home in Boston and through the several institutions she finds herself in.

I'm not going to get too personal here, but there were some things in this book I could identify with. And when you read a book of this kind of magnitude and find yourself thinking, "Wow, I've been there," it's not a happy thing to realize. Thankfully, I am well past all this stuff, but it brought a lot back.

The Bell Jar is probably one of the most real books I've ever read. It was painstakingly honest. There was no holding back for Plath.

I'm still digesting it. It will be awhile before I read this again, if I decide to.