Bibliotherapy?

I had not heard of this. Perhaps we are all practitioners already and can simple use this as another excuse for not doing whatever else we had planned for that time of day when we are still stuck in that book.

I read about it in an article in the latest Maclean's (http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/09/05/the-healing-power-of-books/)

If you could recommend (or prescribe I should say) two books as a fix everything cure what would they be?

Interesting! I've ordered the book.

Fix everything cure? For me, that would be any book that totally absorbed me and took me away from what was ailing me. Something by Graham Swift or Anne Tyler, likely.

2: good for you. I am tempted to get a copy as well. I might even suggest it to my library.

I have been pondering my fix everything cure and oddly I picked two books from a place I have never been! A Fortunate Life by A.B. Facey and Dirt Music by Tim Winton are both set in Western Australia and powerful in very different ways. I think a reread of both is in order over the next few years.

In terms of a comfort cure I would always have to go with The Lord of the Rings which just makes me feel good.

fmgee, I loved Dirt Music!

My fix-everything cure would probably be a funny book. I often read a chapter of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at random, or perhaps a Dave Barry book. This year I have added Starter for Ten, by David Nicholls, to my collection of funny pick-me-ups.

There was a really good article about it in a Quebec magazine (of course I can't remember either the name of the magazine nor the issue). They gave several titles and I was able to find this one at the library: 100 Romans de première urgence pour (presque) tout soigner by Stéphanie Janicot. It was light, but suggested titles by 'ailment', recommendations which are a mix of humour and drama to both dig into the symptoms and relieve.

If I had to pick one book, I think I would give George Perec's La vie: mode d'emploi. I haven't read it yet, but it seems to me that a manual to life would be appropriate!

My favourite therapy book is an old one, A Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. I read it during my early feminist period in the 1960s and it's still a good read. Very contemplative.

Around 1970-1972, I was 8-10 years old and my parents' marriage was breaking apart. For some unknown reason I ended up picking up a Mary Ingalls Wilder volume from the Little House on the Prairie series from my school library at the Elementary School that I attended at that time in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (Hazeldean Elementary School, Edmonton Public Schools).
I became a lifelong reading addict from that time forward, I suppose.
Plus, once I discovered that there were a significant number of volumes in the author's oeuvre, I was over the moon in love with that story. Here was a family that wasn't disintegrating, which was quite therapeutic for me to hear about.
Later on I came to the conclusion that in a facile categorization, this could be considered a girls' book, but no matter, for as I boy I had no concern about that at that time, or now.
I see now that the first episode of the TV series was aired on September 11, 1974.

I wonder, was this series of print books a form of bibliotherapy for any other LibraryThing members?

School's website:
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