Notes in the Margin Weblog

Walker on mission | Denton Record-Chronicle | News for Denton County, Texas | Local News
Herschel Walker, winner of the Heisman Trophy (an award for college football players) and former member of the Dallas Cowboys, has written a book about his experience with dissociative identity disorder (DID, commonly known as multiple personality disorder) and his efforts to overcome the disorder. He has been touring to promote the book, Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder. This article reports on his appearance in Denton, TX, in association with University Behavioral Health (UBH) of Denton:

‘He [Walker] has a mission for himself of bringing a message out to people who have mental health issues, that it’s a strength to ask for help, not a weakness,’ said UBH of Denton Chief Executive Officer Susan Young. ‘He wants people to know he’s had issues and he sees that as something very positive. He doesn’t want anybody to be uncomfortable or ashamed.’

Walker’s own condition surfaced about 10 years ago, when he suddenly developed anger problems. His search for the cause of his problem finally led to the diagnosis of DID. He wants to let people with mental health issues, including substance abuse, know that it’s all right to seek help. He is critical of the National Football League’s substance abuse policy, which, he says, suspends players for abuse without providing treatment.

Four quite different memoirists help to prove the vitality of the literary form

John Marshall, book critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, briefly discusses four memoirs that “demonstrate the genre’s vitality and variety.” The four cover very different subjects:

1. childhood in Africa
2. divorce
3. alternative lifestyle–”living green”
4. mental illness

Oprah Makes Her “Boldest Choice” - 1/30/2008 9:27:00 AM - Publishers Weekly

Oprah’s going all out with this book club choice, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle:

Saying she was “over the moon excited” about the book, Oprah described it as an extension of her life’s mission, “to lead people to their higher selves.” She also announced that the book would be the subject of her “first worldwide interactive class,” a free 10-week course she will co-teach with Tolle on Oprah.com live Mondays at 9 p.m. EST beginning March 3.

Amazon.com: Best of 2007: Books

Sorry to be so late with this, but here’s one of those year-end lists that I missed.  In fact, there are several lists here, broken down by subject matter. There are readers’ favorites as well as editors’ picks included, so you can get a feel for what books other ordinary readers (not just editors or critics) liked best from last year.

What’s a nice girl like Ann Rule doing in a genre like true crime?

In this piece in one of her hometown newspapers, true-crime queen Ann Rule, a former Seattle police officer, tells how she found her true calling. Her first book contract was for the story of a serial killer then stalking the Pacific Northwest. When a suspect was finally arrested, she was stunned to discover he was someone she had volunteered with at a local crisis hotline–Ted Bundy. Bundy was convicted and eventually executed, and The Stranger Beside Me was Ann Rule’s first published book.

According to the article, Rule has had 28 books on the New York Times bestseller list.  I can attest that her writing is detailed, thorough, and very readable.

THIRD CULTURE HOLIDAY READING 2007

This is the season for year-end lists of books in which the mainstream review media steer literate culture away from deep questions about how our world works and who we are and toward celebrations of narcissism, celebrity gossip, and literary cliques.

John Brockman, editor and publisher at Edge, laments “that there are no science books (and hardly any books on ideas) on the New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year list; no science category in the Economist Books of the Year 2007; only Oliver Sacks in the New Yorker’s list of Books From Our Pages .” He presents a list of books published in 2007 by science writers who help us understand how science contributes to dealing with some of the world’s most pressing issues.