Trigger warning! At least for me. I'm not anorexic in the slightest but I do get bad anxiety whenever I think too long about food, weight, calories, carbs etc., so it was a roller coaster getting through this book. Overall I did think this was a good book, it didn't feel real and talked about the real nitty gritty dangers of anorexic / bulimic behavior. Worth reading if you've enjoyed any of the other "Anonymous" style books.
"Jack is the kind of guy I never had to worry about. This is the boy who wants me to come in and talk to his mom. He's the boy who wants to show me the moon."
"I've been trying to remember a time when my dad arrived at the door with flowers for my mom or me and I simply can't. Typically, when he showed up with a surprise, it was a car of some kind. As I stared at Jack's blue eyes, twinkling over the tops of the roses, I decided that flowers were better than a SUV any day."
^Yeah okay wtf ever
So bizarre that this book references when "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"was in theaters considering when I was in high school there weren't even rumors of a movie. This book was published in 2013.
"'I love you just the way you are. Doesn't that count for anything?'
"All I could do was shrug. He shook his head and took a step backward.
"'I don't understand how that doesn't make everything better. I keep thinking if I love you hard enough, or well enough, that you'll learn how to love yourself the way I do.'"
Friday, December 30, 2016
Sunday, December 25, 2016
Sam Reviews "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" by Anonymous (aka Amy Reed)
I feel like this a poor comparison to the book "Go Ask Alice". Granted, it has been some time since I read that book, I know this book was meant to be "inspired by" Alice, and I feel it feel extremely short. This book didn't read like the true diary of a 17 year old girl who fell into the wrong crowd. Honestly, this book read like novel written by the creators of D.A.R.E. Had I read this in middle school, I probably would have bought it more, but reading it as an adult with similar experiences (nothing stronger than weed), I feel like this book made it seem like doing weed is an instantaneous gateway to pills, cocaine, and shooting up meth and heroin, which makes the story seem ridiculously unrealistic.
In addition to the unrealistically addictive weed the main character was smoking, there was a decent amount of careless remarks about 9/11, especially considering this book was only written a year after the incident happened.
There was also a scene near the end in a public restroom that was super fucking gross, and extremely ridiculous considering the character development up to that point.
"It's so weird sharing a birthday with your county. Always fireworks: never for you."
"I feel like smoking pot used to be this thing that I was like TOTALLY AGAINST because of all the stuff that everybody tells you and because of the people who you see at school do it. ...now I'm different. Probably because I'm making the decision to do what I want. I never realized how much I let everyone else decide what I'm going to do."
"It felt so good to be there with them, to feel like I was a part of something special. "
"You could have knocked me over with a text message." Wtf is that even supposed to mean?!
"There's something about being up in the air like this and seeing the whole city laid out below me that never gets old. It looks beautiful from so far away, like somebody lined up perfect strands of red and white holiday lights in a grid and then plugged in the whole city. When you're driving around down in it, there's so much light, and noise and honking and screaming and laughter and music, but up in the hills, it looks so peaceful and everything is so quiet."
"I just can't. I don't have the energy. I don't need a date. I need a nap."
"I've always thought that the invisible and the imaginary are the same thing."
In addition to the unrealistically addictive weed the main character was smoking, there was a decent amount of careless remarks about 9/11, especially considering this book was only written a year after the incident happened.
There was also a scene near the end in a public restroom that was super fucking gross, and extremely ridiculous considering the character development up to that point.
"It's so weird sharing a birthday with your county. Always fireworks: never for you."
"I feel like smoking pot used to be this thing that I was like TOTALLY AGAINST because of all the stuff that everybody tells you and because of the people who you see at school do it. ...now I'm different. Probably because I'm making the decision to do what I want. I never realized how much I let everyone else decide what I'm going to do."
"It felt so good to be there with them, to feel like I was a part of something special. "
"You could have knocked me over with a text message." Wtf is that even supposed to mean?!
"There's something about being up in the air like this and seeing the whole city laid out below me that never gets old. It looks beautiful from so far away, like somebody lined up perfect strands of red and white holiday lights in a grid and then plugged in the whole city. When you're driving around down in it, there's so much light, and noise and honking and screaming and laughter and music, but up in the hills, it looks so peaceful and everything is so quiet."
"I just can't. I don't have the energy. I don't need a date. I need a nap."
"I've always thought that the invisible and the imaginary are the same thing."
Sunday, December 18, 2016
Sam Reviews "The Lace Reader" by Brunonia Barry
It isn't a bad story, but I had a hard time getting over the feeling that not a whole lot was happening in the first half of the book, which makes it difficult to sit down and commit to story. After the 75% point things took an active turn. I really did love the ending, but I can't see myself re-reading this book because of it's slow build up.
"...one time, we broke into a house and actually cleaned it. That's the kind of thing only a girl would do. Outlaw certainly, but homemaker, too."
"...she is attached to him, as usual. He compensates for it, like someone with a disability does, learning to move with her, forgetting after a while that this isn't the way he has always walked."
"I see people stealing glances at us when they think we're not looking. Maybe that always happens at funerals, those looks, maybe they happen all the time, but families never notice because they're facing forward, looking at the coffin and not the congregation."
"[The witches] are the only ones who are not treating this as a solemn occasion. They talk quietly among themselves, greeting others as they come in. Death isn't the same for the witches ... because they don't attach the prospect of eternal damnation to it."
"People are defined, finally, by the good works they do."
"I realize the selfishness of children. We love them, and we revolve around their universes, but they don't revolve around ours."
"Friendly fire, as if there is any such thing."
"Even three thousand miles away in California, as far as I can get without falling off the edge of the earth, I can still see May's light."
"In this moment he understood the draw of redemption. He understood why people wanted to be born again. Accept Jesus and you get a free ticket to heaven. No matter what you did in the past or would do in the future. When you were saved, you were saved. No penance. No Hail Marys, no moral inventories, no ninth-step amends. The Calvinists preached fire and brimstone, but only to the unsaved: the Catholics, the Jews, the Wiccans. The insiders were protected. A few indulgences and some tithing bought you an insurance policy. Who the hell wouldn't want to join a religion like that?"
"It's bad luck to watch people until they are out of sight."
"You aren't supposed to swim if you fall into 50 degree or colder water. You are supposed to just stay there, using as little energy as possible and wait until someone recuses you. If you start to swim, you'll force all your blood to you extremities and away from your vital organs. You'll die a hell of a lot faster that way."
"Her hair was blowing, and so was the gown. She looked like a goddess from some Greek myth. A wave of jealousy hit me hard. Not just because she was standing there so beautiful, with Jack looking up at her like that, but because the entire scenario seemed so completely staged. She must have been standing there for a while just waiting for us to see her ... it was so calculated it was ludicrous, and I couldn't believe Jack would actually be stupid enough to fall for it."
"'This island doesn't have a name. That sandbar over there has a name - they even named that, but they never named this place. It slipped through the cracks.'
"'Maybe it doesn't really exist. Maybe we're the ones who have slipped through the cracks.'"
"You're an interesting woman. You walk that line. The one between the real world and the world of the possible."
"Sometimes running away was exactly what you should do. Sometimes the only thing you could do was run away and never look back."
"...one time, we broke into a house and actually cleaned it. That's the kind of thing only a girl would do. Outlaw certainly, but homemaker, too."
"...she is attached to him, as usual. He compensates for it, like someone with a disability does, learning to move with her, forgetting after a while that this isn't the way he has always walked."
"I see people stealing glances at us when they think we're not looking. Maybe that always happens at funerals, those looks, maybe they happen all the time, but families never notice because they're facing forward, looking at the coffin and not the congregation."
"[The witches] are the only ones who are not treating this as a solemn occasion. They talk quietly among themselves, greeting others as they come in. Death isn't the same for the witches ... because they don't attach the prospect of eternal damnation to it."
"People are defined, finally, by the good works they do."
"I realize the selfishness of children. We love them, and we revolve around their universes, but they don't revolve around ours."
"Friendly fire, as if there is any such thing."
"Even three thousand miles away in California, as far as I can get without falling off the edge of the earth, I can still see May's light."
"In this moment he understood the draw of redemption. He understood why people wanted to be born again. Accept Jesus and you get a free ticket to heaven. No matter what you did in the past or would do in the future. When you were saved, you were saved. No penance. No Hail Marys, no moral inventories, no ninth-step amends. The Calvinists preached fire and brimstone, but only to the unsaved: the Catholics, the Jews, the Wiccans. The insiders were protected. A few indulgences and some tithing bought you an insurance policy. Who the hell wouldn't want to join a religion like that?"
"It's bad luck to watch people until they are out of sight."
"You aren't supposed to swim if you fall into 50 degree or colder water. You are supposed to just stay there, using as little energy as possible and wait until someone recuses you. If you start to swim, you'll force all your blood to you extremities and away from your vital organs. You'll die a hell of a lot faster that way."
"Her hair was blowing, and so was the gown. She looked like a goddess from some Greek myth. A wave of jealousy hit me hard. Not just because she was standing there so beautiful, with Jack looking up at her like that, but because the entire scenario seemed so completely staged. She must have been standing there for a while just waiting for us to see her ... it was so calculated it was ludicrous, and I couldn't believe Jack would actually be stupid enough to fall for it."
"'This island doesn't have a name. That sandbar over there has a name - they even named that, but they never named this place. It slipped through the cracks.'
"'Maybe it doesn't really exist. Maybe we're the ones who have slipped through the cracks.'"
"You're an interesting woman. You walk that line. The one between the real world and the world of the possible."
"Sometimes running away was exactly what you should do. Sometimes the only thing you could do was run away and never look back."
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