Book Reviews by Stacey J. Miller

In Pieces by Sally Field Raise your hand if you thought Sally Field might be the one person on the planet who had been blessed with a perfect set of life circumstances. Me, either.  Her lifelong challenges were as real and profoundly disturbing as those of many other people. The good news is that Sally's wisdom and self-awareness turned her experiences into a candid, compelling memoir that all of her fans -- as well as everyone who appreciates autobiographies, as I do -- should read. Candid and compelling, " In Pieces " is a story that deserved to be told, and Sally should be gratified that she had the ability to tell it so well. Solid, poignant writing by a gifted and highly skilled actor. She is as good at parsing words as she is at working a stage (and screen). Five stars! See my full review on Amazon. 

How can catatonia be a major psychiatric illness when no-one knows what it is? Could it be that psychiatry has lost touch with the real mental disorders? The question is important because catatonia is probably more treatable than anything else in psychiatry. And it affects one patient in every ten with a serious illness — but first it has to be recognized. It is not a form of “schizophrenia,” and does not respond well to the anti-schizophrenic drugs that many doctors might be inclined to use.   In his novel, The Winter Soldier, Daniel Mason writes of a World War I soldier's body that is curled up among a pile of roots: "Alive...But it doesn’t move. It doesn’t speak." The fictional soldier's body only twitches when someone touches his shoulder. "The man’s eyes were wide, his nose flared, as he tried to take in breath. But no words, nothing save the flinch, the stare," the novel continues. That is a fair description of catatonia, a bodily cond

The "Mama Mia, Part 2" movie was supposed to be the cultural highlight of my summer. That let me down, bigly. I am not easy to please. There are 844 books downloaded onto my Kindle and another 2,197 archived items. (I call my Kindle "Cokie" for a reason.) That's 3,041 ebooks, and I don't even want to tell you how many actual printed books I have stacked in every nook and cranny (in fact, I may be wearing several of them). The point here is that I have way too much reading material to whine that I have "nothing to read." But, for much of the summer, I flitted about from book to book, taking a few sips of one and lingering for a couple of days at another, but savoring few of them for very long. Nothing captivated me. It was not a good season for beach reading. Until Ace Bryant's The 25 came along. Ace Bryant, you rescued me from a summer of aimless meandering. You gave me a book that I could sink my pointy, over-sized, nearly imp

Writing Samples  by Stacey J. Miller You can see my latest two books on Amazon.  1. Getting Past Childhood Bullying: How Adults Can Recover From Trauma That Began at School (BPT Press, 2018) 2. Feline Operation Barfitty Blues: The College Emissions Scandal (BPT Press, 2019) Writing Sample 1 The Truth About Root Canals Meta : You may associate the phrase "root canal" with intolerable suffering. Ask yourself, though, which is likely to hurt you more: intractable tooth pain, or having a root canal. What Is a Root Canal? A root canal, which means removing an infected nerve, is a generally accepted way to relieve serious tooth pain. Since the tooth's nerve serves no vital function, you can eliminate it with impunity in the event of severe tooth decay, injury, or infection. Most of the time, root canals are relatively safe and effective. There are few risks associated with having the procedure, while there are many potential drawbacks to avoiding it