Rate this book

And Then I Thought I Was A Fish (2012)

by Peter Welch(Favorite Author)

3.79 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

12by3 Press

review 1: I bought this book because of a witty blog post/article the author wrote about trading some sanity to help keep the interwebs running. Unfortunately, absolutely none of that sort of material was present in this book."And Then I Thought I Was a Fish" is an autobiography of sorts. In it, Peter Welch describes how he truly lost his mind as a result of drug usage and sleep deprivation. Looking for programming-related tales? Nothing for you here - sorry.The book was interesting to read (and I did read the whole thing), but it's all about drug usage, psychosis, recovery, and page-after-page of the crazy thoughts he had in between losing his sanity and regaining it. It's pretty interesting at first, but it gets old pretty quickly ... which is too bad, because that's the bulk of t... morehe book. Oh, and the book also has some "junk" in it like his mental assessments (from when he was admitted) - dull.As a result of his experiences, I think the author has an interesting perspective on life and the nature of what constitutes "sane" and "normal." I did see and extract value from his observations and interpretations on a number of mental health and process-related topics, and that was why this book ended up with three stars instead of one or two.In any case, if you're thinking about picking this up based on this quick review, then you may enjoy yourself. If you're looking at this book after having read one of the author's articles or blog posts on another (computer-related) topic, then do yourself a favor and move on.
review 2: This book mostly consists of a personal memoir or account of the author's experience with a long psychotic break triggered by a combination of LSD, sleep deprivation, and intense stress. At first, I really enjoyed what I was reading. The story of what Peter was feeling and experiencing was really interesting. The personal accounts reminded me a bit of It's Kind Of A Funny Story and The Psychopath Test. I enjoy reading explorations of the mind and psychology in this informal way.However, once the personal account wraps up, the author begins analyzing his own experiences with a lot of research and technical writing that pulled me away from the story, and the writing began to lean more toward a research paper. I understand that the author did the research as a way to understand why his brain may have reacted in the ways that it did, and as a way to explain psychosis in contrast to psychedelic experiences. I just didn't enjoy the analysis because it seemed to really split the book into two wholly different styles. First I was reading a very personal, first-hand account of a wild series of experiences, told in a very casual style as though it was being told out loud, and then suddenly I'm reading a college psychology dissertation.I also have to say that the constant need to check the footnotes for the punchline grew tiresome. There are 200 of these.Overall, it was worth checking out, considering that it was a short book that was quick to read, and it was free on Kindle. less

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