Book cover of The Trouble with Being Born

Book description

“A love of Cioran creates an urge to press his writing into someone’s hand, and is followed by an equal urge to pull it away as poison.”—The New Yorker

In this volume, which reaffirms the uncompromising brilliance of his mind, Cioran strips the human condition down to its most basic…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Trouble with Being Born as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The Trouble with Being Born is, in my opinion, Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran’s swan song.

Cioran presents a bleak worldview in which history is simply a long string of failures. Paradoxically, however, it’s almost life-affirming. Personally, I can hardly stand the creep of New Age philosophies and attitudes into mental health discussion, part of which inspired my book.

Constant lectures on how I ought to view life, how I ought to cope, and how I ought to “heal,” a word that’s been beaten to death, pretty much had the opposite effect on me. Instead of feeling understood, I felt alone.…

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Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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