Sam Reviews "Letting Ana Go" by Anonymous

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.'"

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."

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."

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."

Sam Reviews "The Carousel" (The Locket #3) by Richard Paul Evans

I had read The Carousel back in 2009, and even then I jotted down many a quote that I still love to this day.  It took me way too long to finish this because I moved and took a break from reading right in the middle of it, but I still love this book.  I still don't really see how "The Looking Glass" ties into this and "The Locket" so personally I would suggest just reading "The Locket" then "The Carousel" and judge the books based on that.  I think the love story is so great and (mostly) realistic, which is my favorite type.  And while this is more of a "happily ever after" type story, I do find a lot of my personal philosophy of love articulated in this author's story, which is also my favorite type.

"To dream is to hope.  To hope is to live."

"Love cannot exist without forgiveness and faith is more enduring than understanding."

"I do not understand, with so many people on this planet, so many die alone."

"It was no great coincidence that Della died on her birthday, as every day was Della's birthday.  ... Some delusions, even in the clear-minded, are best left unchallenged."

"Hey, baby, ain't it a shame.  All those curves and me with no brakes."

"Summer is a fever of sorts.  Hot and deceptive.  Like falling in love."

"Faye was perennially summer.  More than bronze-skinned and barefoot, she was the warm nights of the sea-son, the hot breeze that caressed my hair, dampened my brow, and filled each breath.  Summer and all its reckless promise."

"We both knew that it would be our last carefree summer together.  We spent those days constructing our dreams of a life together, clinging to each hour as tightly as a mountain climber holds to the rock face of a vertical climb, tethering our dreams and futures to our promises.  But summer always ends.  And in the end, promises weren't enough."

"There's something about standing on the edge of a cliff that takes the words from you."

"Despite our culture's fascination with death, we go to great lengths to conceal it from ourselves, pushing it out the back doors of hospitals in unmarked vans, and into secluded corners where we can safely get on with the business of ignoring our own mortality."

"I anticipated her evening call as the addict anticipates a fix, knowing all the while that just minutes after she hung up, the rush would wear off and the need for her would be all the greater."

"She was mixed up, perhaps no more than every teenager trapped in the adolescent house of mirrors, but she seemed more confused than most."

"What is it they say about college philosophy?  You remember just enough to screw up the rest of your life."

"I don't know why we delude ourselves that life is predictable and safe, when it's really just a carton of eggs - always just one stumble away from being scrambled."

"There are times when doing what is right and avoiding the appearance of evil are not the same thing."

"It was ecstasy being alone with her. I should have known it could not last."

"Depression is a box of lies. The person trapped in this darkness often is unable to see past its murk to future happiness or even past joys.  They believe, erroneously,  that they have always been unhappy and,  therefore, always will be."

"What remained [of Faye] was numb,  bathed in the psychological anesthetic required for emotional survival."

"The sun will rise again. The only question is whether or not we will be there to greet it."

"Though we pay homage to the gods of intellect and reason,  in the end we believe what we want to believe."

"The drowning man is not picky about which lifeboat he climbs into."

"Love is a reaction of the pituitary. Researchers say that when the pituitary is removed,  that person never feels that whirlwind,  head over heels feeling of love. ...  i think i could have used a pituitary- ectomy years ago.   I'm bad at love.  I just throw my heart up like a skeet target to see if anyone wants to blow it into a million pieces."

"I'm not into fatalism. At least i dont think i am.  But sometimes i think there might be something to it.  I don't believe that we're meant to go through this life alone."

"The opposite of love isn't anger. It's indifference."

"One of the sweetest women I had ever known had just walked out of my life. And the only honest and kind thing I could do was let her go."

"Life isn't like any carousel I have ever known. It's not safe or predictable. We never know where or when someone's going to get off.  There are no promises.  The truth is, if we knew what the ride was like we probably would have just saved the ticket."

"We can't promise our time.  It's not ours to give.   The best we can promise is our hearts.  And the most we can hope for is to live each moment so when it's all over,  there are no regrets."

"I don't know who you are anymore. I don't know what you're thinking.  I'm afraid of you."