Sam Reviews "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou

Memoirs are hard to rate because some stories are better than others, but overall this was a very nice read. Maya lead a very interesting life even before she turned 18 and I was never bored reading her stories. I'm a little disappointed that my high school never made me read this book, so I experienced it for the first time at 23, but I'm glad I did. I'd recommend this to anyone who already knows they like memoirs, but also to people who are just starting to get into them (like me!).

"I hadn't so much forgotten as I couldn't bring myself to remember. Other things were more important."

"[The town]  closed in around us,  as a real mother embraces a stranger's child. Warmly,  but not too familiarly."

"I could feel the evilness flowing through my body and waiting,  pent up, to rush off my tongue if I tried to open my mouth. I clamped my teeth shut,  I'd hold it in. If it escaped,  wouldn't it flood the world and all the innocent people?"

"I have never known if Momma sent for us, or if the St.Louis family got fed up with my grim presence. There is nothing more appalling than a constantly morose child."

"I was liked,  and what a difference it made. ...  Childhood's logic never asks to be proved (all conclusions are absolute).  I didn't question why Mrs. Flowers had singled me out for attention."

"For a few seconds it was a tossup over whether I would laugh (imagine being named Hallelujah) or cry (imagine letting some white woman rename you [Glory] for her convenience."

"Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives."

"She was our mother and belonged to us. She was never mentioned to anyone because we simply didn't have enough of her to share."

"Bailey was talking so fast he forgot to stutter."

"What child can resist a mother who laughs freely and often?"

"Through food we learned that there were other people in the world."

"I concerned myself less about everything and everyone. I often thought of the tedium of life once one had seen all its surprises."

"I had known all along the inevitable outcome and that I dared not poke into his knapsack of misery,  even with the offer to help him carry it."

"My tears were ... for the hopelessness of all mortals who live on the sufferance of Life. In order to avoid this bitter end,  we would all have to be born again,  and born with the knowledge of alternatives. Even then?"

"Nat King Cole warned the world to "straighten up and fly right."  As if they could,  as if human  beings could make a choice."

"Even as the scene was being enacted I realized the imbalance in his values. He thought I was giving him something, and  the fact of the matter was that it was my intention to take something from him.  His good looks and popularity had made him so inordinately conceited that they blinded him to that possibility."

Sam Reviews "Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded" by Hannah Hart

Buffering was everything I wanted it to be and more. I find Hannah Hart to be one of the most selfless and inspiring pop culture figures today. Starting off by utilizing her publicity tour as a way to encourage people to volunteer their time at food banks, to now getting the nitty gritty details of the struggles she has overcome, I don't know how someone could not appreciate her light. I'm not typically one to favor non-fiction books, but I managed to swallow this one whole in three days. I'll be honest, there were section in the book I felt were a little jumbled and I did have to go back and reread in order to regain my footing in the story, but overall this was a lovely memoir and I'm so glad Hannah opened herself up to her fans (and hopefully to other people as well).

As much as I want everyone to read this book for themselves, I also can't keep from sharing these wonderful, beautiful snippets from her story.

"Selfishly, I wanted to write this to feel less alone.  Selflessly, I hope it helps you feel less alone too."

"Regarding the appearance of the house alone,  the level of filth,  one would think that five people were living here,  but the feeling of stillness,  the dust,  the stagnance of inactivity were inescapable markers of the truth."

"I feel guilty,  like I'm blowing up a museum.  It's no wonder Mom can't throw these things away.   Of course she can't.  It feels like disposing of a body or packing up after a funeral.  Aside from the damp breaths of mold or the soft smell of rot associated with the clothes,  there are a thousand memories attached to each item. ... At a time when we had so little these clothes gave us so much.  Until now. Until this moment when I throw it all into this big black bag.   The reward for their tenure."

"... maybe she's been saving all this stuff for so long because she was waiting for her life to start back up again.  Is that hope?"

"Sometimes we have to start over and make new heirlooms for our children to eventually put into their own boxes or bags as they see fit. "

"'Am I ever going to get a real job? I work part time,  dude.  At a coffee shop.  Is this going to be my life forever?'
"'There's no such thing as forever,  man!  It's just right now.  And right now you work at a coffee shop and you're learning how to be an awesome barista.  We love coffee shops!  That's cool!'

"'I think I have to realize that being 27 and not having done my thing yet is not the catastrophe it seems to be.'"

"Depression is a wordless whisperer telling you that this feeling is the true feeling and that every other feeling you've ever had was only temporary.  This is your lasting reality.  Those memories you called happiness or peace were just distractions,  but this is you at your most real.  Don't bother to fight against it,  because you're always fighting against it,  and since you're fighting against your own nature,  you'll never fully win."

"Sometimes I have to remind myself that I am real."

"... healthy relationships weren't born out of the desperation to avoid a feeling of loneliness.  ...  Loneliness can come with you into even the most crowded of rooms."

"... dealing with depression isn't about trying to run away from the feeling; it's about learning to walk alongside it."

"I felt young and inexperienced but also free and reckless."

"'The only real danger is the comedown [from ecstacy]'

"'How will I know when I'm coming down?'
"'When all the judgement starts to seep back in.'"

"This girl, who had been a stranger an hour before, was now someone I knew I could trust.  We all trust until we're taught otherwise."

"Was I myself only when I was with other people?  Could I be myself alone?  Did I have a self alone?"

"Walk until you see a new perspective. You may not see a way out, but you can always change your perspective."

"You know what another word for fear is?  Intelligence."

"Achieving inner peace is real.  It's out there.  You just have to be willing to walk past the darkness, and even past the light, to find it."

"If you're the type of person who is logging internal complaints 99 percent of the time, it's not actually about the outside circumstances, it's about your internal head space.  Think about it...what are the odds that you're actually constantly surrounded by idiots? ... If you're someone who likes to complain and be negative, ain't nothing gonna change that but you."

"First anger, then guilt, then isolation.  That was the only pattern I knew."

"'Is it always this bad?'
"'Not always. But sometimes. Just like everything else.'"

"There are no bad guys in this story.  Things are always more complicated than one person who was wrong or one person who was selfish.  ...  Sometimes it's easier to decide that someone is the bad guy.  But the truth is never that simple."

"She said that handsome men don't stay handsome for long.  Or maybe she just said they don't stay long.  Both turned out to be true."

"You're a good person.  You're the best of any of us.  You'll take care of so many things."

"'I'm not your dad.  We're friends. We're family. But I'm not your dad.  Your dad is a good man.  He's just not here.'
"'Yeah, but you're here.'"

"What's the point of keeping a fragment of something that was already gone?"

"This is a message for those of you who contemplate permanent solutions to temporary problems [suicide].  You never know what could be coming in the future.  There is so much music you've yet to hear."

"We'll grow old together and laugh while we watch each other fall apart.  I love you."

"For his sake, I'm glad he disappeared.  I don't blame him.  I know it was an act of self-preservation."

"If you ask me about "the first time I thought I might be gay" ... I could say it was any time I was near another girl at all and she smelled so clean and nice and I wanted to be her favorite thing in the world.  ...   The truth is that I think it was in every moment."

"Denial is both active and passive."

"I'm glad we were on the same page. But I think that was the last time that we ever were."

"I wasn't gay when people asked me who I was dating because she and I weren't dating:  we were in love.  Good thing that she wasn't gay either. She was just experimenting and that's what she told everyone. Which is why she was comfortable talking about it. But I couldn't talk about it with my family because I knew we weren't an experiment. We'd get married (as two straight women) and then and only then would I tell my family. I didn't need to say the word "gay" because this wasn't long term. I wasn't gay at all, I was simply hers."

"The kind of conflict that's quiet - the quiet of two people who know that something is about to go terribly wrong. The quiet before an earthquake. Except who knew if the earthquake was going to bring forth a volcano and who knew if that volcano would destroy everything we had built."

"I was formed in response to her,  as she was formed in response to me. We were each other's parent and each other's child."

Sam Reviews "American Psycho" by Bret Easton Ellis

It took me way too long to finish this book, but I really did not enjoy it.  I did not appreciate the incessant description of what name brand clothing the characters were wearing or the bizarre foods they were eating.  While the description during some of the more sinister scenes was enticing, those scenes did not make up for the amount of boring chapters in this book.  I understand why these chapters were there, they were meant to show the inner workings of this man's mind, but I really didn't want to know about those bits.  I don't know who I would recommend this book to.  I don't see myself going out of my way to read other books by this author.

"I keep studying her face,  bored by how beautiful it is,  flawless really."

"It's so much worse (and more pleasurable)  taking the life of someone who has hit his or her prime,  who has the beginnings of a full history, a spouse, a network of friends, a career,  whose death will upset far more people whose capacity for grief is limitless than a child's would,  perhaps ruin many more lives..."

"'People need each other.'
"'Some don't.  Or, well, people compensate.  They adjust.  People can get accustomed to anything, right?'"

"It did not occur to me,  ever,  that people were good or that a man was capable of change or that the world could ever be a better place through one's taking pleasure in a feeling or a look or a gesture, of receiving another person's love or kindness."

"You should never mistake affection for passion.  It can be not good. It can get you into trouble."

"There isn't any way I could be disappointed since I no longer find anything worth looking forward to."

"My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent."

"Is evil something you are?  Or is it something you do?"

"My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone.  In fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape."

"Why not end up with her?  She has a better body than most every other girl I know.  Everyone is interchangeable anyway. It doesn't really matter."