so i’ve been doing these book reviews for a lil bit and it’s been cool because not only have i connected with a bunch of you sexy people out there watching me tell bad jokes in my bedroom, but i’ve also had the opportunity to talk to some of the actual authors of these books, which is f-ing DOPE. kevin roose (who penned The Unlikely Disciple) posted my review on twitter and said yooooo flay and i was like yoooo kevin your book is rad. then, sylvia plath started hollering at me on my ouija board and i was like girl, you are very inspirational to me.

just kidding, we communicated via seance.

THEN everything got stepped up a couple notches when stephen elliott, author of The Adderall Diaries, agreed to do a video interview with me!! sooo, the clip above contains (1) my thoughts on the book and (2) me and stephen chillin in a garden, talking about the writing process, bobby fischer, the nature of honesty, lil kim, etc.

SPANNING THE GAMUT ALL OVER THE PLANET.
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what you need to know about The Adderall Diaries is this:

although the book is a memoir, its scope feels much broader than just one individual’s experience, and the kinds of topics that stephen explores — depression, murder, writing, truth, addiction, self-knowledge, sex, just to name a few — really resonated with me after i finished the book. probably the coolest thing about The Adderall Diaries is the way in which people and events from entirely different corners of stephen’s world turn out to resemble each other in surprising – and sometimes unsettling – ways. in the video, stephen discusses how the book came to fruition, and how in large part, The Adderall Diaries is a book about writing a book, about searching for meaning, about attempting to make sense of things that ultimately can never been known or understood by anyone.

i’d recommend The Adderall Diaries for pretty much everyone, but especially all the young writers out there. i will say that the book can be a little bit creepy at times (a real-life murder trial figures prominently in the text), so if you’re a wimp like me, you might not want to read it right before bed. BUT, the important thing to remember is that LIFE IS CREEPY and this book does a phenomenal job of exploring some of the reasons that life is amazing and terrifying and totally unfathomable, all at the same time.

big thanks again to stephen elliott for his insights, his sentences, and his willingness to meet up with a crazy musician like me.