Book Review: Reasons To Stay Alive; Matt Haig.

So this is my first Non-Fiction read in a long time and it was actually a recommendation from my sister so I was quite excited to get round to it. I didn't really know what to expect but I'm pleased to say it was everything I ever hoped it to be. I'll also be entering this into the Key Words Challenge AND the Monthly Motif Challenge for this month! 

SOURCE: Borrowed
TYPE: Paperback

TITLE: Reasons To Stay Alive
AUTHOR: Matt Haig
SERIES: --
PUBLISHER: Canongate Books
PAGES: 272
GENRE: Non-Fiction, Autobiography, Memoir, Mental Health

RATING: 4.5/5 Stars

Blurb:

What does it mean to feel truly alive?

This is the true story of how Matt Haig came through crisis, triumphed over a mental illness that almost destroyed him and learned to live again. Moving, funny and joyous, Reasons to Stay Alive is more than a memoir. It is a book about making the most of your time on earth.

What I Liked:

• I could relate to this book on a very personal level, and that really helped me to enjoy and understand it. I suffer from pretty severe anxiety myself, and there are many times that I feel like it's just me who panics the way that I do. Reading Haig's words gave me comfort and confidence that I was not alone and there are others who 'worry' as much as I do. Haig writes on Depression too, which I found that I related to less but was glad that it was included because Mental Health is something that seriously needs to be talked about more.
• Haig writes beautifully on his chosen subject and the facts, thoughts and opinions that he includes are informative and interesting. This book is very educational in a lot of ways and I loved that his chapters were short and to the point. Not only that but they were each styled in an interesting way that meant maintaining concentration was easy for me and I flew through this book. It was clearly well-researched too and that's obviously important when talking about a subject such as this one.

What I Disliked:

• There was very little to dislike about this book. It included so much of worth that I was pretty hooked from start to finish. At times it was a little repetitive I suppose, Haig often reiterated the points that he was trying to make. This is a very minor quibble however.

Overall Conclusion:

A book well worth reading and one that I am glad came into my notice, I must once again thank my sister's awesome reading tastes. She stumbled upon this gem and I'm grateful to her for letting me borrowing it and discovering it's brilliance for myself. As I said, Haig really did his homework before writing this but he never bogged me down with facts or let me become bored. A lot of what he wrote was of his own opinions and experiences too and it made so much more sense than some of the psycho-babble one hears on topics such as Mental Health. This is a topic that needs to be spoken about more and I think that books like this ought to be more widely read. Hopefully I'll be able to read some of Haig's fictional work in the near future!