Readalikes: If you enjoyed October's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover, then you might also enjoy these books and television series suggested by our discussion group members:

Books:
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Laura Fraser
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder
Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over by Nell Painter
Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance
The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls

Television Series:
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt created by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock
Country Music: A Film by Ken Burns

October Not Fiction Book Discussions

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover, one of the most read and discussed books of the year, asks us to consider what it means to be educated.

Born to a family of Mormons who embrace a survivalist worldview and distrust, among other things, public schools, Westover had little formal education of any kind as a child. She worked for her mother's herbal supplement and midwifing businesses and her father's scrapping business until a brother who had left home for college encouraged her to study for the ACT. Westover passed and was accepted to Brigham Young University at the age of 16. Westover performed brilliantly academically, and ultimately earned graduate degrees from Cambridge and a fellowship at Harvard. Yet Westover's steepest learning curve was less academic than social, cultural, and emotional as she outgrew her family's world on Buck's Peak in rural Idaho.

What do you think? Have you ever outgrown a world or worldview? What sparked that learning curve? Did you have to make difficult choices? In pursuit of her academic and personal education, Westover endured active opposition from her father, demeaning abuse from her brother, mixed messages from her mother, a limiting view of women's place in the world from her religion, and, initially, suffered from limited cultural intelligence. Why do you think she was able to persevere? What personal qualities contributed to her success? Ironically, did those same qualities also limit her in some ways? Crucial to most people's education are the mentors and guides we meet along the way. Who do you think was important to Westover's education? In addition to books and lectures, we also learn from experiences. Which life experiences had the most impact on Westover? At Cambridge, Westover attends a lecture about Isaiah Berlin's concept of negative versus positive liberty, a concept reiterated to her in the lyrics of a Bob Marley song. How did these two very different texts help Westover to understand her education? Westover wrote her memoir at a relatively young age, close in time and emotion to the experiences depicted. Why do you think she chose to write it at this time of her life? Do you think it would differ if she wrote it at a later point in her life? How?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, October 1, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, October 17, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed September's selection . . .

If you enjoyed Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and The Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy, then you might also enjoy these books recommended by Macy:

• In Pain: A Bioethicist's Personal Struggle with Opioids by Travis N. Rieder
• Drug Dealer, MD: How Doctors Were Duped, Patients Got Hooked, and Why It's So Hard to Stop by Anna Lembke, MD
• The Big Fix: Hope After Heroin by Tracey Helton Mitchell
• The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison
• If You Love Me: A Mother's Journey Through Her Daughter's Opioid Addiction by Maureen Cavanagh
• American Overdose: The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts by Chris McGreal
• Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town by Brian Alexander
• What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte
• Trampoline and Weedeater, illustrated novels by Robert Gipe
• Ohio, a novel by Stephen Markley
• Cherry, a novel by Nico Walker
• I Know Your Kind, poems by William Brewer

Macy's follow-up to Dopesick:

• Audible Original Finding Tess:A Mother's Search for Answers in a Dopesick America

And these articles and videos suggested by our discussion group members:

• Wall Street Journal article Schism in the House of Sackler by Jared S. Hopkins July 13, 2019 print edition
• Opioids and Opioids II segments from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, available on YouTube

September Not Fiction Book Discussions

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy is a perfect example of how narrative nonfiction can help us to better understand current events by providing the in-depth stories necessary for us to identify with the people behind the headlines.

Just this week, Purdue Pharma filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in an effort to shield itself and its owners, the Sackler family, one of the richest families in America, from over 2,600 federal and state lawsuits concerning their role in America's opioid addiction epidemic. It is estimated that at its peak, over 100 people died every day of opioid drug overdoses, and Macy describes the devastating effects of addiction on these individuals, their families, and their communities. In fact, Beth Macy's clear-eyed and compassionate reporting may be in part responsible for a growing awareness of the extent and causes of the crisis. Although it is a sobering, infuriating, and heartbreaking read, Dopesick is also inspiring because Macy profiles individuals who have devoted their lives to raising awareness about and combating the epidemic, and she provides an overview of the different treatment protocols and of different models of community response.

What do you think? Before reading Dopesick, were you aware of the extent to which the opioid addiction epidemic had spread in America? Do you know someone actively experiencing or recovering from addiction? How does Dopesick help you to understand what they and their families are going through? To what degree do you think Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, and other pharmaceutical companies should be held responsible for the opioid addiction epidemic? To what degree should the Sackler family be held responsible? Within the addiction treatment community, there are two very different approaches to treatment, abstinence and medicine-assisted therapy, and, in general, effective and affordable treatment is difficult to find. What were your thoughts about the nature of addiction and its treatment before reading Dopesick? Have they changed? What strategies--legal, medical, cultural--would you suggest? Macy profiles a large number of people touched either personally or professionally by the opioid addiction epidemic. Which stories of loss and grief, of personal and professional responsibility or irresponsibility, of self-sacrifice or greed most moved you? Why? Macy both profiles specific individuals and provides an overview of the crisis. Does she manage to integrate both the intimate and the broad view successfully? Does Dopesick end on a note of hope or of despair? Are you optimistic or pessimistic about our collective will to find solutions?

We hope you will join the discussion: Thursday, September 19 at 11:00 a.m. and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed August's selection . . .

If you enjoyed How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan, then you might also enjoy these books suggested by our discussion group members:

Outside Looking In: A Novel by T. C. Boyle
Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality by Barbara Bradley Hagerty
The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson
A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life by Ayelet Waldman

And check out this fabulous list of resources, including further reading and viewing, on Michael Pollan's website: https://michaelpollan.com/resources/psychedelics-resources/.

August Not Fiction Book Discussions

With How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food, Food Rules, and Cooked, shifts his focus from how we might best feed our bodies to how we could, to paraphrase Jefferson Airplane, feed our heads.

Pollan admits that he is a philosophical materialist and "less a child of the psychedelic 1960s than of the moral panic that psychedelics provoked," yet he was intrigued by research that shows these substances can aid those experiencing addiction, depression, trauma, chronic pain, and the existential fear of dying. He blends incisive journalism and candid memoir to explore the history, politics, science, and potential medical uses of psychedelics as well as his own "ineffable" personal experience of psilocybin, LSD, and 5-MeO-DMT. He discovers that, in a carefully controlled environment, with the aid of psychedelics, we can temporarily experience life without the filter of the default mode network of our brain, which relies on habit to help us efficiently navigate the world. Without this filter, we can literally expand our consciousness, cultivating what Pollan thinks of as neural diversity.

What do you think? What were your thoughts and feelings about psychedelics, Timothy Leary, and the 1960s "turn on, tune in, drop out" culture before reading Pollan's book? Have you changed your mind? How? Considering their potential benefits and risks, should psychedelics be regulated for medical use? Should they be available for recreational use? Pollan includes his thoughts and feelings about psychedelics and his own experience with them in his narrative. How did this affect your understanding of the topic? Did he adequately explain both the scientific technicalities and the "ineffable" quality of the experience itself? Pollan notes that there is "a universal desire to change consciousness" and that "[o]ne of the things that commends travel, art, nature, work, and certain drugs to us is the way these experiences, at their best, block every mental path forward and back, immersing us in the flow of a present that is literally wonderful--wonder being the by-product of precisely the kind of unencumbered first sight, or virginal noticing to which the adult brain has closed itself." Meditation and prayer can also offer access to this wonder-filled state. Have you ever had an experience of expanded consciousness, of wonder? How would you describe it?

We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, August 6, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, August 15, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed July's selection . . .

If you enjoyed American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic by Victoria Johnson, then you might also like these books recommended by our discussion group members:

• Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species by Sean B. Carroll.
• Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
• The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
• The Collector: David Douglas and the Natural History of the Northwest by Jack Nisbet
• Hamilton : The Revolution : Being the Complete Libretto of the Broadway Musical, with a True Account of Its Creation, and Concise Remarks on Hip-Hop, the Power of Stories, and the New America  by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter.
• Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation by Andrea Wulf
• The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf