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Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig
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Reasons to Stay Alive (original 2015; edition 2015)

by Matt Haig

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
1,3914113,253 (4)27
Biography & Autobiography. Self-Improvement. Nonfiction. HTML:From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library.
"Destined to become a modern classic." â??Entertainment Weekly

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO FEEL TRULY ALIVE?
At the age of 24, Matt Haig's world caved in. He could see no way to go on living. This is the true story of how he came through crisis, triumphed over an illness that almost destroyed him and learned to live again.
A moving, funny and joyous exploration of how to live better, love better and feel more alive, Reasons to Stay Alive is more than a memoir. It is a book about making the most of your time on earth.
"I wrote this book because the oldest clichés remain the truest. Time heals. The bottom of the valley never provides the clearest view. The tunnel does have light at the end of it, even if we haven't been able to see it . . . Words, just sometimes, really can set you free."
… (more)
Member:audrey0510
Title:Reasons to Stay Alive
Authors:Matt Haig
Info:Canongate Books (2015), Edition: Main, 272 pages
Collections:Non-fiction, Paper books, ZB, Read
Rating:
Tags:psychology, mental health, anxiety, depression, suicide, self-help, memoir, -- Read 2021

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Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig (2015)

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» See also 27 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 39 (next | show all)
I listened to the author read the book while on a car trip. I listened so I could better understand those in my life that have issues with depression. This book is part memoir and sharing of methods the author has found to live with his struggles with depression. I don't know if the advice he gives is good or bad, so I don't feel comfortable giving the book a rating better than three stars. He is obviously being as transparent as possible in this book, and I applaud him in doing so. I will let others decide whether his advice is good or bad. ( )
  wvlibrarydude | Jan 14, 2024 |
Good lord, read this book in one afternoon, too shocked to cry, too shocked to have room for words afterwards. This. Pretty much exactly this is how I've been feeling for over 30 years. God I'm tired.

My reasons:
- I've seen what it does to the people around you. You multiply and transfer your pain. Not cool.
- Lovely vulnerable fallible humans all around me, trying so hard.

I need to recuperate, then read this again, and annotate the shit out of it. Compulsive swallowing! I thought it was just me! I thought I was insane! I never even told anyone, how is this a thing more people have?!

Mind. Blown.
( )
  Yggie | Oct 12, 2023 |
Since Reasons to Stay Alive is a book I can’t pigeonhole into a specific genre (I'm a little OCD in wanting to) I think I would have asked Matt Haig the question his editor didn’t – "is it a memoir or a self-help book or an overview?" The truth is it’s all of those things and probably more depending on the reader. For me, it was a short book that took a long time to read because I found I had to keep stopping to process what it had to say. My own experiences with depression and anxiety are limited to the garden variety I think most of us know about so, as the author points out in one chapter, I didn’t have the reference points. But I’ve seen the effects depression can have and wanted to understand it better, especially the ‘reasons to stay alive’ that help those who suffer from it. The chapter #reasonstostayalive that listed people's answers to the question, "what keeps you going?" the author posted online was, to me, the most illuminating and relatable part of this book. ( )
  wandaly | Sep 2, 2023 |
I read this book in spurts, but that has everything to do with my own mental health issues interfering with my ability to focus, and absolutely nothing to do with the book itself. The book is beautifully written, and is truly a treasure that I’m sure I will refer back to from time to time. ( )
  KrystalRose | Aug 17, 2023 |
To paraphrase Dostoevsky, every person suffering from depression is unhappy in their own way. This book will be very helpful to some people, and I think men in particular may resonate with Haig’s form depression and his strategies for managing it.
  eringill | Dec 25, 2022 |
Showing 1-5 of 39 (next | show all)
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For Andrea
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This book is impossible
Quotations
Depression makes you think things that are wrong. But depression itself isn't a lie. It is the most real thing I've ever experienced. Of course, it's invisible. (p. 1-2)
I stood there for a while. Summoning the courage to die, and then summoning the courage to live. To be. Not to be. (p.20)
The evolutionary psychologists may be right. We humans might have evolved too far. The price for being intelligent enough to be the first species to be fully aware of the cosmos might just be a capacity to feel a whole universe's worth of darkness. (p. 42)
From the outside a person sees your physical form, sees that you are a unified mass of atoms and cells. Yet inside you feel like a Big Bang has happened. You feel lost, disintegrated, spread across the universe amid infinite dark space. (p. 60)
Maybe love is just about finding the person you can be your weird self with. (p. 122)
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Biography & Autobiography. Self-Improvement. Nonfiction. HTML:From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library.
"Destined to become a modern classic." â??Entertainment Weekly

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO FEEL TRULY ALIVE?
At the age of 24, Matt Haig's world caved in. He could see no way to go on living. This is the true story of how he came through crisis, triumphed over an illness that almost destroyed him and learned to live again.
A moving, funny and joyous exploration of how to live better, love better and feel more alive, Reasons to Stay Alive is more than a memoir. It is a book about making the most of your time on earth.
"I wrote this book because the oldest clichés remain the truest. Time heals. The bottom of the valley never provides the clearest view. The tunnel does have light at the end of it, even if we haven't been able to see it . . . Words, just sometimes, really can set you free."

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