Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect

How it reads

Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect is narrative nonfiction (psychology and self-help, specifically), and its dominant mood is hopeful. Whatever it puts its people through, it believes things can get better. The pace is moderate — neither a page-turner nor a slow burn — so it holds up whether you read it in long sittings or short ones.

It's set in several locations, in the present day, told in the first person by a single narrator. Its central concerns are family, identity and redemption. In weight it sits in the middle: substantial without being heavy going.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending resolves happily. At 227 pages it's a quick read. It's a mega-bestseller — the book everyone seems to have read.