Lonely: Learning to Live With Solitude by Emily White
Despite having a demanding job, good friends, and a supportive family, Emily White spent many of her evenings and weekends alone at home, trying to understand why she felt so completely disconnected from everyone. In this insightful and soul-baring memoir, White recounts her struggle to comprehend and overcome her chronic loneliness, a debilitating condition that she contends deserves the same attention as depression and other mental difficulties. Interweaving her personal story with cutting-edge scientific research—as well as incredibly moving accounts offered by numerous lonely men and women—White provides a deep and thorough portrait of this increasingly common but too often ignored affliction. -- from TLC Book Tours
I was excited to receive this book because I live my life very isolated. I'm extremely introverted and I don't socialize at all, even in my work setting. I thought reading about Ms. White's struggles would help me. As I read this book, I realized that I'm not lonely. I'm alone but not lonely and I think there is a huge difference between the two that many don't realize. This has nothing to do with the book, but I felt I should kind of elaborate on why I was drawn to this book initially.
I found the premise of loneliness versus depression to be a fascinating subject, however, I found the actual reading material a little dry. Don't get me wrong, Emily White researched the heck out of loneliness and her writing is quite good. However, much of this book read like a text-book and I was expecting more of her personal experiences with loneliness (more memoir and less text-book).
My complaints aside, I see the merit in this book as I've never really thought about chronic loneliness. It just never entered my mind. Ms. White did a great job researching, I cannot deny that. My personal reading style may be different from yours, and I don't do well with studies and research. My mind goes blank but that is a personal thing and not at all the fault of Ms. White. I would be more interested to read her personal story without the research. I think an online forum oh her site or blog would be great too. It would give others a chance to share their story, and that is something I would love to read!
Thank you to TLC Book Tours for providing this book to me as part of their program. Check out Emily's website and her blog. Here are the stops for the Lonely TLC Book Tour:Tuesday, January 18, 2011: The House of Seven Tails
Wednesday, January 19, 2011: Sophisticated Dorkiness
Wednesday, January 26, 2011: Silver & Grace
Friday, January 28, 2011: BookNAround
Tuesday, February 1, 2011: me!
Wednesday, February 2, 2011: Lisa's Yarns
Monday, February 7, 2011: Sara's Organized Chaos
Tuesday, February 8, 2011: she reads and reads
Wednesday, February 9, 2011: 1330v
Thursday, February 10, 2011: A Certain Bent Appeal
*TLC Book Tours provided a copy of this book for review on this blog as part of their TLC Book Tours Program.
2 comments:
Thanks for your honest review. I think you're right in that some people enjoy more non-fiction in their memoirs and others enjoy more memoirs in their non-fiction - it's too bad that this book wasn't the best fit for you. But thank you for being on the tour and I'm glad that you were able to discover for yourself the difference between being alone and being lonely.
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