A Book Not To Buy

[dr_pretentious]

So there I was at Barnes & Noble, doing some research for the new Rugosa story: horological astrology, obsessive compulsive disorder, and the Jersey Devil. And I found a book on OCD that promised to be a complete guide to getting well and staying well. Up to the minute! shouted the jacket copy. Cutting edge! All the latest websites! The copyright date? Why, that would be 2000. Who, I wondered, spends $35 on a hardback that's eight years out of date? And then, flipping through the pages, I found the punch line.

About a third of the chapters were upside down and in reverse numerical order. No matter what the content of the book might have been, the physical object was like a warning about the hazards of recovering from OCD. Well people, non-obsessive people, let books go out into the world upside down, backward, piebald, and in dire need of a new edition. If that major university press only employed a proper complement of OCD sufferers, one of them would have been sufficiently fretful about what-ifs to think, The blurbs need to praise at least one thing about the book that will age well, if we're not planning to do a revised edition within the next few years. One of them would have caught the printing and binding problem before the books were shipped.

Comments

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

Ha!

Were you interested because you are OCD? (My therapist has floated that diagnosis for me more than once.)

[skyefyr.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it was supposed to be that way to force them to deal with the lack of order in the world?

[vgnwtch.livejournal.com]

Perhaps if they had their full complement of people who were AWAKE it wouldn't have happened.

Nightmare!

[spiffnolee.livejournal.com]

It's a practicum. If you can make it through that book, you're cured.

I complained to a shrink once that the book on his shelf with OCD in big, bold letters, should really be upright, not leaning askew.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Yes and no. The character who has the POV for the next project is the one who's served as comic relief in the previous stories. She believes in everything, tries to observe every taboo and superstition she comes across, and lives by her ephemeris. The minute I asked myself why she was like that, I realized she was a closeted full-blown OCD case, and that appearing to the be the world's most gullible New Ager was as close as she could get to passing for normal.

I have a little touch of it. Through most of my life, it's been too useful and has caused me too little trouble to qualify as pathological by the DSM-IV standards, though the postpartum period was kind of problematic. For several weeks, everything in my house suddenly looked like an overwhelming danger to my baby.

Inconveniently enough, my own OCD has never been severe enough to serve as sufficient research for the new novella. So I hit the books.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

::snort::

[oaktavia.livejournal.com]

ROFLMAO

OCD in my house is the norm..! when I read your post, I thought you were kidding... then I realized - 'wait this is dr_pretentious, she would never joke about a books presentation..!' and I shuddered.
(and I've done the book straightening thing!)