The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 627 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Freeing Teresa: A True Story

Jim Gottstein ❤️ loved this book because...

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Emotions 🥈 Writing
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Franke James, Teresa Heartchild, Billiam James

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Freeing Teresa as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Freeing Teresa is a true story about an activist who tries to stop her powerful siblings from putting their disabled sister into a nursing home. She fails. And then must rescue her sister.

Franke James immediately objected when she heard her siblings’ plan to put their youngest sister, Teresa Heartchild, into a nursing home. “What about Teresa’s human rights?” But Franke was told that Teresa, who has Down syndrome, had lost her right to decide. She had been declared “not capable” by a social worker. The other siblings, now acting as Teresa’s “guardians,” insisted they had all the decision-making power,…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Prescription for Sorrow: Antidepressants, Suicide and Violence

Jim Gottstein ❤️ loved this book because...

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Teach 🥈 Immersion
  • Writing style

    👍 Liked it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Patrick D. Hahn,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Prescription for Sorrow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One could scarcely have been alive and conscious anywhere in the Western world any time in the past twenty-five years and not have been aware of a raging controversy surrounding antidepressants, suicide, and violence—a controversy that shows no sign of abating. During that same period, prescriptions for antidepressants have skyrocketed. So what is the story? Do these drugs drive people to suicide, or do they not? What about homicide? Are they addictive? Do they even help with depression? Author and researcher Patrick D. Hahn has examined the scientific literature and the trial transcripts. He’s listened to doctors and the patients.…


My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Dear Luise: A Story of Power and Powerlessness in Denmark's Psychiatric Care System

Jim Gottstein ❤️ loved this book because...

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Emotions 🥈 Writing
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Dorrit Cato Christensen, Peter Stansill (translator),

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Dear Luise as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

‘An unintended event.’ This was the bland phrase used to describe Luise’s sudden death in the psychiatric ward at Amager Hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark. She was 32.

Dear Luise is a mother’s deeply personal account of her struggle to ensure her daughter’s survival through 20 years of treatment in the Danish mental health system. It is an alarming – and thoroughly documented – exposé of the abject failure of the medication-based treatment regimen routinely imposed on vulnerable psychiatric patients. This book is also a poignant tale of love and hope, brimming with tender memories of the creativity, originality and wry…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

Book cover of The Zyprexa Papers

What is my book about?

On December 17, 2006, The New York Times began a series of front-page stories about documents obtained from Alaska lawyer Jim Gottstein, showing Eli Lilly had concealed that its top-selling drug caused diabetes and other life-shortening metabolic problems. 

In The Zyprexa Papers, Mr. Gottstein gives a riveting first-hand account of what really happened, including new details about how a small group of psychiatric survivors spread the Zyprexa Papers on the Internet untraceably. All of this within a gripping, plain-language explanation of complex legal maneuvering and his battles on behalf of Bill Bigley, the psychiatric patient whose ordeal made possible the exposure of the Zyprexa Papers.