SDG

This book was sent to me by an old Florida friend, now living in upstate New York. He’s friends with the author, has been reading my reviews, and thought I would like to read and review this. I agree (cause the only thing better than books is free books) but was nervous. I feel a strong need to be honest, but I also don’t like to hurt people’s feeling, and knowing that there was only two degrees of separation between myself and the author was daunting. Luckily, I enjoyed Naked show more immensely.

The first hint that I would enjoy reading this was on the edition notice page of the book, in which the author states her desire to have all editing mistakes pointed out to her. I love point out other people’s writing errors! I knew that, even if I didn’t enjoy the writing, I would at least not want to be mean to her.

One of my favorite books of all time (maybe my absolute favorite) is Chronology of Water, by Lidia Yuknavitch, and this book reminded me of that. It’s a bunch of personal essay-type sections, written by someone who has been through a lot of things in her life and has a knack for describing them in a deep yet very relatable way. Some of my favorite things about Naked:

The story of giving birth to her first child was absolutely heart-breaking and filled me with a sense of anger at our failing medical system. I have heard bits of pieces of the way doctors treat women, especially during childbirth, but never like this one.

Dulany-Gring is polyamorous and isn’t afraid to write about both the good and bad things she’s experienced trying to make this work.

The way she talks about her change from just surviving and hyper-focusing to just trying to live life and observe what is going on around her was very relatable. As were the way she wrote about her first time, and overall experiences, meditating; and her struggles with being able to practice regularly and live in the present.

I obviously have never met or talked to this person, but from the way she writes about her brain and her life, she seems like a very caring, loving, understanding, and accepting human being with whom I’d love to grab a cup of coffee.

She writes about death in a way that makes her experiences obvious. I wish she had gone into slightly more depths, but she still did it better than the vast majority of other people I’ve read.

She tells a story of imagining her son getting into a confrontation with an aggressive driver, and—for whatever reason—imagines the asshole driver as being from New Jersey. I can relate.

The only thing I didn’t love was the way she jumped around. I’m not one who needs a story to be linear, but at times I was confused about what was taking place when.

In the end, she claims that she has plans to write many more books. I hope she does and I would very much enjoy getting to read them, even if I have to pay for them show less