Reasons to Stay Alive

If you know depression and/or anxiety intimately, this book is a mirror. If you don't, I suspect it's a pretty good bit of insight. It's said to be partly self-help, but it's mainly memoir - the comfort it provides is in illustrating that someone else has felt the same agony and survived it. The author is clear that what works for him may not work for others, and what hasn't worked for him might yet work for others - his goal is to show that there is a way through, and he's done that successfully. He doesn't present how he made it through, but that he did. There is a path; I can't tell you where it is, but have hope, because maybe you'll find it.

3 stars feels harsh, but ultimately I'm rating my experience reading it. I wasn't enamoured by the style - it was like reading a blog. Short chapters for the short attention span of the modern reader. Lots of whitespace, short sentences, lists, pop culture references, and even a chapter of tweets! And there were a lot of quotations - sure, a writer with depression discussing other writers' struggles with depression is relevant - but a lot of the namedropping felt superfluous.