Katie's Books

 I bought this book for work, but found it of personal impact, too, hence it's inclusion here. Marsha Linehan is the founder of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, an evidence-based treatment for several hard-to-treat mental health diagnoses including chronic suicidality, borderline personality disorder, and more. "Building a Life Worth Living" chronicles both her life story and the development of DBT, as they are intertwined. DBT would not exist were it not for Marsha's personal experiences.  I expected to find such a personal stake kind of trite-- I know DBT is effective but I don't need to know the events of her life to believe it. At times, I was annoyed by the tone of the book. "I made it and so can you." She writes with the confidence of a second wave feminist and boomer and that did annoy me several times. Yes, she suffered, but she also had tremendous privilege, and I wish there had been more reckoning with that. Yet, many times I found her honesty ref...

This book is delightful-- it's fast, it's funny, and delicious in both words and imagined recipes. I attempted a recipe (I made October's Cream Fritters) and it was a disaster, hence I recommend only imagining the recipes.  Maybe Mexican eggs at the time were different or maybe the recipes are intended to be like the rest of the story: rooted in some reality but embellished with broad strokes of magical realism. Years ago, sister Gertrudis ran off with a general in the army in a particularly unexpected and visually memorable spectacle. Cream fritters were here favorite so when she brings all the troops back home, cream fritters get served. Each food has a story, each story has some unexpected twists, and each character fits an archetype that makes them both easily understood and surprising all at once.  "Like Water For Chocolate" is a reference to a hot chocolate recipe. The water should boil then be taken off the heat so it comes very close to boiling over, but d...