Archive
Announcement: Mental Illness Advocacy Reading Challenge 2014
I am pleased to announce that I will again by hosting the Mental Illness Advocacy (MIA) Reading Challenge for 2014!
History and Goal of the Challenge:
I started the MIA Reading Challenge in December 2010 in an effort to raise awareness, knowledge, and acceptance of mental illness. Reading, both fiction and nonfiction, is an excellent way to broaden one’s horizons and expose one to new ideas and ways of thinking and being. Many reading challenges already exist in the book blogging community to address racism, sexism, and homophobia, but I could not find any to address the stigma faced by those suffering from mental illness. In spite of mental illnesses being recognized by the scientific community as diseases just like physical ones, many still think those suffering from one are at fault for their own suffering. I hope reading and reviewing books featuring characters struggling to deal with mental illness, whether their own or another person’s, will help remove the stigma faced on a daily basis by those with a mental illness. They already have to struggle with an illness; they shouldn’t have to face a stigma too.
What books count?
Any book, fiction or nonfiction, that is either about mental illness or features characters or real people with a mental illness counts for the challenge. However, the book must not demonize people with mental illnesses.
So, for example, the movie Fatal Attraction, which features a character with Borderline Personality Disorder, would not count since she is demonized in the movie. However, Girl Interrupted, which also features a character with Borderline Personality Disorder, would count since that character is presented as a three-dimensional person with good and bad traits.
If you’re having trouble coming up with books to read for the challenge, check out the list of recommended reads that I maintain on the challenge’s main page.
Challenge Levels:
Acquainted–4 books
Aware–8 books
Advocate–12 books
How do I participate?
Sign up by filling out the sign up form! I will post a list of all 2014’s participants on the challenge’s main page.
Feel free to grab the badge on this announcement to feature on your blogs. You can also join the GoodReads Group if you want.
Please make an announcement post on your blog about your participation to help spread the word.
Leave links to your reviews throughout 2014 by commenting with them on the challenge’s main page.
And that’s it!
Thanks, and I hope you’ll consider participating!
Movie Review: Choke (2008)
I promised you guys more than just book reviews, but what can I say, I read more books than I finish movies and definitely videogames. I play them a lot, but it takes me forever to finish. Anyway, I’m finally keeping that by-line promise. Here be my first movie review! (They will be much shorter than the book reviews).
Summary:
Vincent had to drop out of medical school to get a full-time job as a colonial reenactor in order to pay the bills to keep his Alzheimer’s mother in a good home for people with mental illness. To help boost the bank account, he sometimes pretends to choke in fancy restaurants, then sues his rescuers. Of course, that’s what he goes to meetings for. He goes to meetings because he’s a sex addict. When he meets his mother’s new doctor, he starts to question who he really is when he discovers that he might sort of actually like her.
Review:
I admit it. I have a weakness for movies about legitimately crazy people finding their way through life. Particularly when finding their way involves falling in love. Although the title implies that Vincent’s scam is the focus of the movie, in fact it is about how his random childhood with his mother and foster families made him who he is today.
For a movie based on a Chuck Palahniuk book, this isn’t very graphic. Clearly since Vincent’s a sex addict, there are some moderately graphic sex scenes, but there is little violence and the sex is pretty normal. I’ve seen more disturbing scenes on Entourage.
The acting is good. It’s nothing mind-blowing, but it’s not bad either. Setting of the scenes is done quite well. It feels like the everyday world cranked up a notch.
What makes Choke interesting isn’t the violence shock factor that Fight Club had going for it. Choke modestly proposes that it’s ok to be a bit crazy–in moderation. It also dares to suggest that we can be who we decide to be instead of what society says we are as long as we’re aware enough to make that conscious decision.
If you want gratuitous sex from the author who brought us the violence of Fight Club, don’t bother with Choke. However, if you enjoy movies about the mind and what makes us who we are, give Choke a shot.
3.5 out of 5 stars
Source: Netflix
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Opinions of a Wolf 