paula kamen's all in my head
hm. well. this book wasn't exactly what i was expecting--it's being touted as a humorous memoir chronicling the author's quest for treatment for her chronic headache, but it's definitely more of a serious/academic work. chapters dealing w/ kamen's visits to various practitioners are interspersed with sections on feminism and women's health, and studies of attitudes toward headaches in psychology, and so on. also, there are frequent distracting sidebars that seem unnecessary and weirdly-placed. and as long as i'm on the subject of the book's appearance, the text seems sort of small and the margins seemed pretty narrow, so it's not really a friendly-looking book; reading each page seemed like a chore.
i think that had this book been described as a memoir-cum-academic-study of chronic pain, i would have either a) not been frustrated while reading, or b) avoided it altogether. it's not a bad book--but it's not really a fun read, or an engrossing one.
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