Here are 100 books that Lithium for Medea fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am a creature of habitat. I can’t help but connect with my environment in every possible way. It’s physical, emotional. I spent the first 23 years of my life in Mexico City. Leaving was heart-wrenching, but the promise to fulfill a dream drew me to Los Angeles. During the next four decades I became a student of Los Angeles and the Latino community that populates it. I agree with Randy Newman: I love L.A.
I fell in love with Los Angeles in 1983 when I immigrated from Mexico, young, penniless, and ignorant, to start an ad agency for the Latinx community. As the years went by, I succeeded in the business, raised a family, and wrote three novels. It is after you read a book like Peter Lunenfeld’s that you understand why such an improbable story like mine could ever materialize. As in the movies, L.A. is not what it seems. Go behind the scenes with City at the Edge of Forever, Los Angeles Reimagined and debunk some myths.
An engaging account of the uniquely creative spirit and bustling cultural ecology of contemporary Los Angeles
How did Los Angeles start the 20th century as a dusty frontier town and end up a century later as one of the globe's supercities - with unparalleled cultural, economic, and technological reach? In City at the Edge of Forever, Peter Lunenfeld constructs an urban portrait, layer by layer, from serendipitous affinities, historical anomalies, and uncanny correspondences. In its pages, modernist architecture and lifestyle capitalism come together via a surfer girl named Gidget; Joan Didion's yellow Corvette is the brainchild of a car-crazy Japanese-American…
I’m a novelist who was first a reader. For me, books are windows, showing the world through lenses I haven’t experienced before. In difficult moments, they’ve been lifelines, proof that I’m not alone and happy endings (at least happier) are possible. What “feels good” in a book is a quality unique to each reader. Below are stories about imperfect characters who not only survive their pasts but succeed—in unwinding from the wounds, changing aspects of themselves that no longer fit who they choose to be now, and ultimately creating happier lives. That kind of success feels great to me. I hope it might for you, too.
Malibu Rising was the first book I read by Taylor Jenkins Reid. As soon as I finished, I read three more of her novels. All of them made me feel great. Hers are stories you can lose yourself in and come out feeling refreshed and optimistic.
Malibu Rising centers around the adult Riva siblings, children whose parents stopped parenting long before the kids were equipped to care for themselves. Particularly impacted is Nina, the oldest, who has spent her life making choices that prioritize the well-being of everyone except herself.
This is a book about dealing with old wounds, the kind that hide under the surface of successful lives. It’s a story that takes us on multiple journeys of self-discovery and healing. For me, a book doesn’t get more “feel good” than that.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Read with Jenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today • From the author of Carrie Soto Is Back, Daisy Jones & The Six, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo . . .
“Irresistible . . . High drama at the beach, starring four sexy, surfing siblings and their deadbeat, famous-crooner dad.”—People
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Time, Marie Claire, PopSugar, Parade, Teen Vogue, Self, She Reads
Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of twenty-four hours,…
I am a creature of habitat. I can’t help but connect with my environment in every possible way. It’s physical, emotional. I spent the first 23 years of my life in Mexico City. Leaving was heart-wrenching, but the promise to fulfill a dream drew me to Los Angeles. During the next four decades I became a student of Los Angeles and the Latino community that populates it. I agree with Randy Newman: I love L.A.
If You Lived Here You’d Be Famous By Nowis a debut novel by Via Bleidner, a young writer who reports her experiences living in the L.A./San Fernando Valley enclave of Calabasas, attending the Calabasas High School. Calabasas, for those who have missed this essential chapter of contemporary lunacy, is home to the Kardashians. Bleidner writes about the world she has inhabited as a reporter. She participates, but she also is able to maintain a certain writer's detachment describing the shenanigans the natives engage in: lip surgery, social media, and dog celebrities. But there is humor in this slice of the L.A. experience. Bleidner not only describes, but also tries to understand and reflect.
If You Lived Here You'd Be Famous by Now is an insider's collection of funny and warmhearted stories about coming of age in the Los Angeles suburb famed for birthing the Kardashian-Jenners and the Bling Ring.
For Via Bleidner, transferring to Calabasas High from the private Catholic school she's attended since second grade is a culture shock, not to mention absolutely lonely. Suddenly thrust into an unfamiliar world of celebrities, affluenza, and McMansions, Via takes a page from Cameron Crowe and pretends she's on a journalism assignment, taking notes on her classmates and jotting down bits of overheard gossip.
I am a creature of habitat. I can’t help but connect with my environment in every possible way. It’s physical, emotional. I spent the first 23 years of my life in Mexico City. Leaving was heart-wrenching, but the promise to fulfill a dream drew me to Los Angeles. During the next four decades I became a student of Los Angeles and the Latino community that populates it. I agree with Randy Newman: I love L.A.
Born in Los Angeles and with profound connection to this city’s psyche, Wendy Ortiz delivers a map of Los Angeles transformed into words, a fragmented memoir of hurt, love, loss, and reinvention. What does a young writer (one of thousands) living in this city and trying to make it worry about? Joblessness. Rent. Bills. Riding the metro. Alcohol. And yes, sex and publishing too, of course. This book proves that it’s not always 72 and sunny in Los Angeles.
Hollywood Notebook is a prose poem-ish memoir of fragments. Ortiz takes us through the streets of Los Angeles and the internal maps she's charting as she moves from her twenties to her thirties in a studio apartment in Hollywood. A cartography of love, loss, and transformation, Hollywood Notebook is a portrait of the author's psyche overlaid on a map of the city she makes her home.
I'm a mystery writer and teacher now. Back then, I spent 10 years homeless and addicted on the streets of San Francisco. I could always return to Mom in CT and get put in a cushy rehab. Until I couldn't. And then she was dying, and my younger brother was addicted and soon he'd be dead too. It got scary at the end because I wasn't just some white suburban kid playing a scumbag junkie. I was a scumbag junkie. But why do I have a passion for the topic? I guess it's because it isn't all bad. I know that sounds weird, but being homeless and addicted has moments of beauty and joy too.
The gold standard of recovery books. I found this gem literally in the gutter when I was homeless. Changed my life by showing me if I could get my shit together, I, too, could write a book about my experience, and, in the process, maybe help someone else who was suffering as well.
Jerry Stahl's seminal memoir of drug addiction and a career in Hollywood, Permanent Midnight is a classic along the lines of Hubert Selby, Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn. Illuminating the self-loathing and self-destruction of an addict's inner life, Permanent Midnight follows Stahl through the dregs of addiction and into sobriety. In 1998, Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, and Maria Bello starred in a film version of Permanent Midnight to much acclaim. Nic Sheff, author of Tweak, writes the introduction to this edition.
I'm clinical psychology professor at UMass Boston and expert on mentoring relationships. When I was a senior in high school, my dad left behind thirty years of marriage, four kids, and a complicated legal and financial history to start a new life. I couldn't fully comprehend the FBI investigation that forced his departure—any more than I could've fathomed the fact that my classmate Jim Comey would eventually lead that agency. I was also reeling from a discovery that my dad had “shortened” his name from Rosenzweig to Rhodes, a common response to anti-Semitism. It was during that period that I experienced the benefits of mentors and the joy of books about hidden agendas and subtexts.
Bad City: Peril and Power in the City of Angels, written by investigative reporter Paul Pringle is another gem of this literary genre.
What began as Pringle’s investigation of a young woman’s overdose, led him to the prominent dean of the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California (USC). Once on this trail, he uncovered the corruption at USC, the incompetence of the Pasadena Police Department, and a coverup at the Los Angeles Times.
After reading the first few pages, I was forced to cancel all meetings and plans. Pringle investigative reporting not only helped to uncover the toxic mix of money and power, but the mechanics and drudgery of getting to the bottom of things.
"Pringle’s fast-paced book is a master class in investigative journalism... when institutions collude to protect one another, reporting may be our last best hope for accountability." ―The New York Times
For fans of Spotlight and Catch and Kill comes a nonfiction thriller about corruption and betrayal radiating across Los Angeles from one of the region's most powerful institutions, a riveting tale from a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist who investigated the shocking events and helped bring justice in the face of formidable odds.
On a cool, overcast afternoon in April 2016, a salacious tip arrived at the L.A. Times that reporter Paul…
As a graphic novel creator and art teacher with years of experience, I understand the importance of introducing serious topics for discussion in an accessible way. My art students of all ages are curious about different subjects, wondering what life is like for others and if their own feelings are normal. Graphic novels are a perfect tool for fostering these discussions. Having been interested in comics as a medium for a long time, I'm thrilled to share this with young audiences and encourage exploration of diverse perspectives.
Families come in all shapes and sizes, and it's crucial for children to see a variety of experiences in literature.
Hey, Kiddo portrays the author's upbringing with his grandparents due to his absent father and mother's substance abuse. The book offers child-friendly talking points on the challenging topic of addiction. It captures the complexities of growing up and family life amidst life-changing events.
An important graphic novel memoir that was a US National Book Award Finalist. In kindergarten, Jarrett Krosoczka's teacher asks him to draw his family, with a mommy and a daddy.
But Jarrett's family is much more complicated than that.
His mom is an addict, in and out of rehab, and in and out of Jarrett's life.
His father is a mystery - Jarrett doesn't know where to find him, or even what his name is.
Jarrett lives with his grandparents - two very loud, very loving, very opinionated people who had thought they were through with raising children until Jarrett…
I'm an immigrant child-survivor of the Holocaust, came to America after living in a DP camp in Linz, Austria in 1947 with my wonderful parents. We lost 25 members of our family to the Nazis so I “know evil”. I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, went to Washington High School, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, and Northwestern University where I received a Ph.D. in sociology and studied with one of the best sociologists of deviance (Howie Becker). I combined sociology with deviance, evil, the Holocaust, and genocide, but as a progressive Zionist, I added socialist and kibbutz-life. All these things make up my memoir If Only You Could Bottle It: Memoirs of a Radical Son.
I studied with a most fascinating sociologist of deviance Howard S. (but we called him, Howie) Becker.
His most famous book is Outsiders. The topics may seem tame by today’s standards but at a time when graduate school was often boring and filled with inscrutable jargon, Howie’s topics were fun: becoming a marijuana smoker, a jazz pianist, even a medical student.
He sent out us out into the city of Chicago to do “participant observation”, meaning, become part of the people you study, usually people deviating from the norm. Observe, observe, observe! At all hours of the day. I remember my paper was on a “hippie pot store”; other classmates studied drug dealers, cross-dressers, or people who work at an abortion clinic. In short, these were dangerous observations at times.
Other sociologists of deviance and their books that influenced me were Erving Goffman (Stigma); Laud Humphreys (…
One of the most groundbreaking sociology texts of the 20th century, Howard S. Becker's Outsiders revolutionized the study of social deviance.
Howard S. Becker's Outsiders broke new ground in the early 1960s-and the ideas it proposed and problems it raised are still argued about and inspiring research internationally. In this new edition, Becker includes two lengthy essays, unpublished until now, that add fresh material for thought and discussion. "Why Was Outsiders a Hit? Why Is It Still a Hit?" explains the historical background that made the book interesting to a new generation coming of age in the 60s and makes…
It’s no wonder South Brooklyn, in the latter half of the last century, is the setting for so many remarkable dramas for both page and screen. In fact, when legendary former NYPD Detective Thomas Dades offered to make introductions to a Colombo Crime Family associate who cooperated with the federal government, I leapt at the opportunity. I was born in Greenpoint in 1971 and grew up on 16th Avenue in the heart of Bensonhurst. It’s not just South Brooklyn’s raw, urban chaotic physical setting, but the sheer volatility of this period in time, where so many transformational trends of the larger culture were evident, and some even epi-centered.
Hubert Selby Jr. delivers another dark indictment of life along the outer shores of South Brooklyn, in the form of both this 1978 novel and the grim 2000 film Darren Aronofsky film adaptation (co-written with Selby, with a cameo as prison guard).
The characters of this disturbing drama are as marginalized as the bleak 1970s backdrop they infect. Selby’s prose holds us by the back of the neck as his characters descend down awful spirals of addiction: Sara Goldfarb with her diet pills, and her son Harry, his girlfriend Marion, and his best friend Tyrone, all heroin addicts. Electroconvulsive therapy, reluctant prostitution, and amputation abound, harrowing hallmarks you’d expect from Selby.
For this trip to Coney Island, think more Warriors, less Woody Allen, and buckle up. It’s going to be a spectacularly gruesome ride.
Locations of interest: Coney Island Clam Bar; Brighton Beach Boardwalk; Surf Avenue Second-hand Shops; 3152 Brighton…
Harry Goldfarb, heroin addict and son of lonely widow Sara, cares only about enjoying the good life with girlfriend Marion and best friend Tyrone C Love, and making the most of all the hash, poppers and dope they can get. Sara Goldfarb sits at home with the TV, dreaming of the life she could have and struggling with her own addictions - food and diet pills. But these four will pay a terrible price for the pleasures they believe they are entitled to. A passionate, heart-breaking tale of the crushing weight of hope and expectation, Requiem for a Dream is…
I came to writing later in life – at age forty-two. Writing was something I had always wanted to do. Still, it wasn’t until I experienced something that was in some ways extraordinary and in some ways prevalent–the inadequate treatment of maternal mental health and maternal health in general–that I felt my story had to be told. While maternal mental illnesses are expected, there is a shortage of books on the topic. When I was deep inside my illness, I searched for any story that might mirror my own and had difficulty finding one. With this list, I hope to help anyone who needs a hand to reach out to.
Melissa Bond’s harrowing memoir is so close to my own experience—a new mother struggling with a descent into a sleepless vortex where she finds herself slowly detaching from reality. It’s difficult and painful but also a necessary story to share, as we find these struggles that new mothers face are so much more common than we think.
This book explores addiction, mental illness, motherhood, and, ultimately, the love that carries us through. It’s a serious page-turner—I devoured it in one sitting.
Brain on Fire meets High Achiever in this "page-turner memoir chronicling a woman's accidental descent into prescription benzodiazepine dependence-and the life-threatening impacts of long-term use-that chills to the bone" (Nylon).
As Melissa Bond raises her infant daughter and a special-needs one-year-old son, she suffers from unbearable insomnia, sleeping an hour or less each night. She loses her job as a journalist (a casualty of the 2008 recession), and her relationship with her husband grows distant. Her doctor casually prescribes benzodiazepines-a family of drugs that includes Xanax, Valium, Klonopin, Ativan-and increases her dosage regularly.
