4 out of 4 stars
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Daniel Hotchner has high hopes for his life; there is much that he wants to do and achieve. But, there are major obstacles in his way. Follow his story in Dreaming to Be the Outlier.
We first meet Daniel as a young boy being bullied by his classmates. These incidents will haunt him the rest of his life; indeed, they send him into a severe depression. He contemplates suicide, and takes to cutting himself for some release. He sees doctor after doctor trying to find some relief from this torment. Sadly, this isn't the only difficult part of Daniel's life. He develops a condition that is extremely painful for him. How much can one man endure?
Eye-opening. Inspirational. Motivational. Illuminating. Entertaining. All words that can be used to describe this book. Daniel tells the reader of his struggles through his own words. We follow him on a journey through the medical system which most of us know can leave much to be desired. Yet, this book is not at all dry, like you might expect. Mr. Hotchner has a very eloquent way of telling his story that kept my attention throughout the whole book. It is rare that I put a memoir down and can't wait to get back to reading it. But, I can say that about this story.
The book is organized quite well and flows from when the bullying first starts to present day. There were no major time jumps which made the story easy to follow along. I also encountered only one grammatical error in the entire book which speaks not only of the author's great style of writing but also of great editing and proofreading.
My only complaint about this book (albeit a minor one) is that I'm not sure the author is explicit enough in some details. Most of the time Mr. Hotchner has a great balancing act between too much and too little information. He even goes so far as to tell us which medicines he was taking and how he reacted (without being too technical.) There were just a few times that I felt like he fell off the borderline onto the side where we didn't learn all that I would have liked.
I suppose that you could, also, call this ending a cliffhanger. I think that's not to be avoided, though, as the author is not finished with his journey. I hope that he can post follow-ups to his journey and update his readers. Perhaps, there may even be a future edition or even another book altogether.
Overall, it was a great pleasure to read about such an incredible person. I, therefore, rate Dreaming to Be the Outlier a 4 out of 4 stars. I can only see a couple of people that wouldn't enjoy or benefit from a book such as this. The first would be those that are completely against memoirs. The second would be those that might be triggered by learning of some of the events that took place when Mr. Hotchner was in his darkest moments. Other than that, I highly recommend this book to anyone that enjoys a good, true story.
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Dreaming to Be the Outlier
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