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The Highly Sensitive Person by Dr. Elaine Aron

Summary:  “Do you have a keen imagination and vivid dreams? Is time alone each day as essential to you as food and water? Are you "too shy" or "too sensitive" according to others? Do noise and confusion quickly overwhelm you? If your answers are yes, you may be a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). Most of us feel overstimulated every once in a while, but for the HSP, it's a way of life. In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Elaine Aron, a clinical psychologist, workshop leader, and an HSP herself, shows you how to identify this trait in yourself and make the most of it in everyday situations. Drawing on her many years of research and hundreds of interviews, she shows how you can better understand yourself and your trait to create a fuller, richer life.”

Narration: Narration was written in first person by Elaine N. Aron, who is a clinical and research psychologist who studies the psychology of love and close relationships.

Theme: The overall message of this books is to teach what being an HSP really means, and helps the reader dissect weather they fit into this personality type.

Genre: Fiction. Very well written and backed up by research. It is obvious Dr. Aaron has studied this topic for years.

Plot: Along Dr. Aron’s career she discovered the Highly Sensitive Personality (HSP) type, and the differences it had to introversion. In this book she focuses on how to tell if you are an HSP,  how being an HSP is different to being an introvert (because they are mixed up so often), and asks the reader many questions to determine how this affects them, what they can tweak in their life for the maximum amount of comfort and efficiency and even how being an HSP can be a positive quality – even when it feels overwhelming.

Opinion: .I loved this book. I initially found out about it when I was reading “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.” I have always struggled with guilt issue that I am not an extrovert, because I was raised to be one. I felt taking time alone was selfish, and I felt I needed to be out doing everything possible. This book allowed me to step back and learn things about myself; that having a mindset of FOMO (“Fear of Missing Out”) will exhaust me and make me feel tired; that I intermittently need time to myself in order to recharge, and that I even need to prioritize carving out time for that; and it even helped my communication, by teaching me to explain my mindset to other people that I spend time with who might not know that a crowded room might overwhelm me. Aron spent a good amount of time explaining how an HSP’s social structure should be integrated, and it made me realize I’ve been meeting all of my extroverted friends and shows or festivals, when I should really be putting more energy into environments that are more low-key, like educational classes, lectures on Jungian psychology and poetry readings.

I also realized while reading this book that all of my senses are very finely tuned, which explained a lot about my life. I lose track of a conversation if a siren drives by. I will enjoy a show more if I scope out the venue early and find a good spot where I’m not too crowded by other people. Understanding that I need to plan ahead has added an extraordinary amount of inner peace to my life.

I also realized while reading this book that all of my senses are very finely tuned, which explained a lot about my life. I lose track of a conversation if a siren drives by. I will enjoy a show more if I scope out the venue early and find a good spot where I’m not too crowded by other people. Understanding that I need to plan ahead has added an extraordinary amount of inner peace to my life.

Favorite Quotes:“Transmarginal inhibition was first discussed around the turn of the century by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, who was convinced that the most basic inherited difference among people was how soon they reach this shutdown point and that the quick-to-shut-down have a fundamentally different type of nervous system.”

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“The Princess Saves Herself in this One” by Amanda Lovelace

Summary: Winner of the 2016 Goodreads Choice Award, the princess saves herself in this one is a collection of poetry about resilience. It is about writing your own ending. From Amanda Lovelace, a poetry collection in four parts: the princess, the damsel, the queen, and you. I felt like treating myself to some poetry today, and this was the first series available under the “Popular” category. I didn’t have high expectations for this one because I made the mistake of reading the author bio first. I generally prefer to allow the writing to speak for itself so the image and bio of the author doesn’t distract from how the writing affects me, but I was curious. When I read the author likes Gilmore Girls and Pumpkin Spice Lattes, paired with the word Princess in the title, I thought I would be rolling my eyes. I also felt the layout was directly ripping off Rupi Karr’s “Milk and Honey,” as a cheap marketing ploy, but it ended up working beautifully. The book started on shallow topics and vague imagery, but the second section evolved into topics that were full of depth and trauma. This is a good read if you want an intimate connection with someone who has taken her trauma and expanded it outward into art.

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“Nine Inches” by Tom Perrotta

“Nine Inches, Tom Perrotta’s first true collection, features ten stories—some sharp and funny, some mordant and surprising, and a few intense and disturbing.   Whether he’s dropping into the lives of two teachers—and their love lost and found—in “Nine Inches”, documenting   the unraveling of a dad at a Little League game in “The Smile on Happy Chang’s Face”, or gently marking the points of connection between an old woman and a benched high school football player in “Senior Season”, Perrotta writes with a sure sense of his characters and their secret longing.” Perrotta has an an ablity to understand his protagonist in every story that he creates, and more importantly, he has a talent to give each one such a clarifying weakness that the reader can’t help but bond with the character. Each character in this book varies drastically - from a high-school student to a man who’s recently divorced and looking back on the last sixty years - but in each story, he brings out a strong personality and self-reflection that will keep you turning pages. With the way that Perrotta writes, it seems that he has experienced everything. He brings the memories of high school back for me, and I also felt that I have lived lifetimes when reading through his characters. You can tell he’s written each story - his voice is there - but each character also has their own personality and backstory that shines through strongly. I feel that each of these stories could easily be expanded to a novel for each character. Everyone he creates has depth, reality and a mind of their own. I’m not sure why I haven’t found Perrotta before, but the next time i restock my bookshelf I’ll be searching for more of his stories. The only criticism I can muster is his narrative style. Every story is written in third person and present tense, but I would love to see him expand into a first person or second person narrative. I hope to find something along these lines when I read more of his work. 

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“The Road to Wonderland: Surviving John Holmes” by Dawn Schiller

Synopsis: Painstakingly honest, this chilling memoir reveals how a teenager became immersed in the bizarre life of legendary porn star John Holmes. Starting with a childhood that molded her perfectly to fall for the seduction of “the king of porn,” this autobiography recounts the perilous road that Dawn Schiller traveled—from drugs and addiction to beatings, arrests, forced prostitution, and being sold to the drug underworld. After living through the horrific Wonderland murders of 1981, she entered protective custody, ran from the FBI, and turned in John Holmes to the police. This is the true story of a young girl’s harrowing escape from one of the most infamous public figures, her struggle to survive, and her recovery from unthinkable abuse.

Admittedly, I haven’t seen the movie that goes hand-in-hand with The Road Through Wonderland  by Dawn Schiller. I’m not normally for child-molesty-my-life-is-terrible books. But damn, this book is good.

I initially chose this book because of my second book I’m writing - I’m having a little trouble with it. When I write, I write gritty and fast-paced, and I need to learn how to slow events down without boring myself. I need to find details.

The Road Through Wonderland details the story of a girl who falls in love with John Holmes, “The King of Porn.” In the beginning, he gently seduces her; by the end, she’s addicted to cocaine and he’s forcing her to prostitute on the streets in order to find more money so they can go on the run again.

The narrative voice in this book really helped me. Much of this book is in one of two environments, which is a change for me. Dawn focused a lot on what going on in a young girl’s mind when she’s slowly falling in love, and it taught me how to write from her perspective. I was able to take notes on what made me realize as the reader that she’s illogically falling in love; around Chapter Five, the protagonist starts to really care about what John thinks. By chapter nine, she’s bending her actions and appearance to what he might approve of, and by chapter eleven she’s afraid to speak out of turn in case he snaps. Not once does the literature explain he’s becoming more angry and irrational, but we’re told about it instead.

Much of this book is internal dialogue which really highlights specific actions to the reader. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a deliberate read into the human psyche.

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Book Review: “Beautiful Boy” by David Sheff

What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family? What did I do wrong? Those are the wrenching questions that haunted every moment of David Sheff’s journey through his son Nic’s addiction to drugs and tentative steps toward recovery. Before Nic Sheff became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole, and lived on the streets. David Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs: the denial, the 3 A.M. phone calls (is it Nic? the police? the hospital?), the rehabs. His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself, and the obsessive worry and stress took a tremendous toll. But as a journalist, he instinctively researched every avenue of treatment that might save his son and refused to give up on Nic. Beautiful Boy is a fiercely candid memoir that brings immediacy to the emotional rollercoaster of loving a child who seems beyond help.

This book would be good as a fiction. As a memoir, it speaks volumes. As Sheff tells the story about his son becoming an addict, you can hear the pain in his voice. The introduction of the book sets a foundation of what it’s like to be in his position. The sentence that stood out to me the most was when he explained that he had developed “an addiction to his son’s addiction.” This statement is backed up with hundreds of facts, research quotes and stats on different rehab centers throughout the U.S. littered through the memoir. The story starts when his son first started taking drugs and ends in his last day in rehab to date, and as we’re taken through the path chronologically, Sheff compares it to the notes and research he has compiled throughout the years. The abundance of research makes it clear that he didn’t just write a book for the attention or for pity. He wrote it because he couldn’t stop trying to fix his son.

Many addiction memoirs I’ve read speak about how painful and heartbreaking their story is. They throw a small little pity party for themselves. Sheff actually shows us, through past actions, how heartbreaking his story is. Instead of telling us that he was disappointed in his son, we can feel his disappointment as he speaks of his son getting arrested: “The arrest is the result of Nic’s failure to appear court after being cited for marijuana possession, an infraction he forgot to tell me about. Still, I bail him out. ‘This is the only time,’ I say. I am confident that the arrest will teach him a lesson.” By this time in the story, we know that it won’t be.

He also has a conversation he has with his wife after finding a list in his son’s bedroom that has written his daily doses of illegal drugs. Sheff never says he was heartbroken, angry, or scared – but you can hear it in that conversation. You can hear the pain in both of their voices through the short sentences and how he used his punctuation in that short conversation.

Besides painting visuals with his words, Sheff also organizes the text into five parts, and the titles – although simple - set your mood for the following scenes before you even began to read them.

This is a book of love and dedication, even when neither of those emotions are returned. If you are a parent, an addict, someone who has ever taken any sort of drug, interested in how drugs affect the human brain and body, or just love a good memoir… you need to read this book.

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Book Review: “The Girl with All the Gifts” by M.R. Carey

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her "our little genius."

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh.

The Girl With All the Gifts is a groundbreaking thriller, emotionally charged and gripping from beginning to end.

If you look for published reviews on this book, they don’t tell you much. They tell you the book is “unique,” “terrifying” and “haunting.”

There’s a reason for this. It’s better to read the story if you are as clueless as the protagonist is. I highly recommend you stop reading this review now and just buy the book.

This book is about a little girl named Melanie who lives in a cell. The only world she knows is her the building she’s in. She only knows her cell, and when she’s strapped to a wheelchair she can be in a classroom. She has cravings that she cannot control, and cannot understand.

Carey used present tense to write this book while switching back and forth between a few protagonists. I’ve read books before where this gets confusing, but Carey was able to juggle the story’s time frame and overlap scenes just enough where it was a smooth transition. It was a nice touch that he gave us a narrative voice for Melanie and for the adults caring for her, but he didn’t for any of the antagonists that come later. Instead, Carey showed us those characters only through the minds of the main characters.

If you’re looking for a basic zombie story, this isn’t it. This is a zombie story, but it’s more than eating brains and killing the undead. It’s about a little girl who is intelligent enough to have a curiosity about what makes her different. She’s intelligent to love another human being, and she’s objective enough to understand the dynamic of human relationships.

“Haunting” doesn’t tell you much, but it’s the perfect word for this book. When we think of zombies we think of primal animals that crave rotting flesh. The last thing we imagine is a little girl, strapped to a wheelchair and wondering where her parents are. It’s scary when you imagine a zombie running towards you. But it’s haunting when you imagine a little girl sitting in the arms of an adult that she loves, and objectively using all of her energy not to eat her alive.

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“Hotel Babylon” by  Anonymous & Imogen Edwards-Jones

The manager of an exclusive boutique hotel (who shall remain nameless) exposes the low-life styles of the rich and famous. And we're not talking just loud all-night bashes... The anonymous author has encountered lavish drug parties, gorgeous call girls, naked guests falling out of windows, $9,000 bottles of wine, astronomical telephone porn bills, bathtubs of Evian, and on more than one occasion, dead sheep. And every dirty word of it is true. This is a trawl through the decadence and debauchery of the ultimate service industry—where money not only talks, but gets guests the best room, the best service, and also entitles them to behave in any way they please.

There are two things that make this book real: the first is that it’s written in first-person narrative. I knew it was a memoir before I began, but there’s still a large difference between reading, “The manager had a big night last night, and he felt like shit,” and “It was a big night last night, and Jesus Christ, do I feel like shit.” The second thing is that the memoir is written by a man who is pulling a 24-hour shift, so the book is split up into 24 chapters.

Each chapter marks one hour where something new has happened in the hotel, and with this format we are allowed minute detail of what is happening in the hotel. We get to know many customers personally. It shows us the personality of the entire staff, as well as what an extravagant hotel is like during the day, and during nighttime. Besides these two touches, the book is entertaining and focuses on the ongoings around the hotel. Just a few include a woman on drugs who walks down to the reception naked, a couple who is caught having sex next to the bar after hours, and perverted men who try and ask the front desk to find them prostitutes. It makes the reader realize that every human has a dark and perverted side – they just need to find a place they feel comfortable letting their secret fetishes fly.

This is a good book if you’ve ever worked a hotel or stayed in an extravagant one, or if human relationships and drama interest you. It makes you think about your own perverted fetishes and weather you’re really able to keep them a secret.

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“Firestarter” by Stephen King

The Department of Scientific Intelligence (aka "The Shop") never anticipated that two participants in their research program would marry and have a child. Charlie McGee inherited pyrokinetic powers from her parents, who had been given a low-grade hallucinogen called "Lot Six" while at college. Now the government is trying to capture young Charlie and harness her powerful firestarting skills as a weapon.

As always, King’s in-depth characterization is what makes this story hard to put down. I am slowly making my way through King’s books, and something always stands out for me - he has a unique writing style that will bring you into a character’s mind, letting you really know his characters. This book is no disappointment in that aspect. He’s mastered characterization so well he has the capability to bring us into an older man’s head as well as his young daughter’s. One scene that stood out to me was when Charlie’s father was give the low-grade hallucinogen and we were taken through his symptoms. King described the visuals so well, I felt I was experiencing them myself.

One of my favorite books is King’s “On Writing.” I distinctly remember one of his quotes was “the road to Hell is paved with adverbs,” but this book is littered with them. It doesn’t distract from the story too much, but it really shows how even a famous writer can grow and learn as he progresses through literature.

This book, with the little girl who can start fires with her mind, is about progress. It’s about learning how to control your own emotions, your own desires and really understanding who you are from an objective standpoint. It’s about knowing who you are and why before you take action.

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Music-Themed Books 

Trigger warning: *This Song will Save Your Life- Self-harm, suicide

*Just Listen- eating disorder, rape 

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“A Pleasure to Burn” by Ray Bradbury

Synopsis: Grandmaster of American Letters Ray Bradbury presents the 16 vintage stories and novellas that informed and prefigured the creation of his dystopian classic, Fahrenheit 451. Collecting rare and unknown tales as well as notable early triumphs,A Pleasure to Burn offers an unparalleled window into Bradbury’s creative process, and a unique glimpse at the evolution of one of the greatest works of 20th century American literature. Absolutely essential for fans of Bradbury books like Dandelion Wine,Something Wicked This Way Comes,The Illustrated Man, and The Martian Chronicles—and for readers of William Golding, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and other titans of speculative fiction—A Pleasure to Burn illuminates the unusual hidden corners of Bradbury’s expansive imagination, revealing a creative force as vivid and powerful as the hottest burning flame.

Read this book.

Read this book if you’ll catch riffs from classic literature.

Read this book if you love literature. Read it if you love Bradbury, if you love poetry, or… actually, read it if you’ve ever enjoyed reading a book at some point in your life. 

A Pleasure to Burn is an exploration of Fahrenheit 451’s origin, which I admit I should have re-read directly before reading this book. It’s been a few years… but I plan to find it, and then read this book directly after.

Ray Bradbury’s style is still as gloriously detailed as ever. He has some strange ways in A Pleasure to Burn – just like he did in Fahrenheit 451. For some reason it took me a minute to realize that while there is one main character that shows up in many of the chapters, there are other chapters that happen with other characters in other parts of Bradbury’s world of book burning. Once I got over that hitch, it flowed smoothly; somehow he’s created an entire world, and that’s what I strive for as a writer.

My favorite part about this book is how Bradbury pulls from Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and other artists. In one chapter many artists sit around a fire and talk about the loss of literature. They speak about their art fading away and eventually disappearing, and as the last copy of each writer’s book is turned to ash, so does their physical body as well. The representation was haunting.

Another chapter creates a scene where a rich man has paid to have The House of Usher built for him. He throws a party where every one of Poe’s horrific scenes are played out. I won’t go into too much detail, but a revisitation to Poe’s poetry will really create a visual here.

This masterpiece makes me want to write a fanfiction (for lack of a better term) of a poet’s world. Bradbury has meshed his world in with classic poets, and it’s not even egotistical to create that pedestal for himself; it’s right.

I never rate books five stars… but I give this book five stars. 

Read it. 

Focus on it. 

Lose yourself in it.

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“Stories for Boys” by Gregory Martin

In this memoir of fathers and sons, Gregory Martin struggles to reconcile the father he thought he knew with a man who has just survived a suicide attempt; a man who had been having anonymous affairs with men throughout his thirty-nine years of marriage; and who now must begin his life as a gay man. At a tipping point in our national conversation about gender and sexuality, rights and acceptance,Stories for Boys is about a father and a son finding a way to build a new relationship with one another after years of suppression and denial are given air and light. Martin’s memoir is quirky and compelling with its amateur photos and grab-bag social science and literary analyses. Gregory Martin explores the impact his father’s lifelong secrets have upon his life now as a husband and father of two young boys with humor and bracing candor. Stories for Boys is resonant with conflicting emotions and the complexities of family sympathy, and asks the questions: How well do we know the people that we think we know the best? And how much do we have to know in order to keep loving them? This is how I knew Stories for Boys was a good fucking book: it hit me hard. I have no experience with child abuse or large family secrets. Part of me is homosexual, but besides that I have no way to relate to this book… but the pages kept turning. It made me really reflect on my relationship with my parents, and with all he’s been through with his, it makes me feel like I hardly know mine at all.  Martin holds nothing back in this memoir, and it’s incredible. It’s clear this man cried multiple times when he wrote this, and I swear I can tell when; when his father told him he was abused as a child. When his parents divorced. When he writes the path of his relationship with his father, and how drastically it changes after his father comes out of the closet and moves to a gay community. As a writer I always struggle with my chapter headings, but he even uses those well; the story is in chronological order, but he does it by sewing little short stories together at the same time. The chapters include occasional emails with his father that are clearly real, and after hearing his father’s backstory it’s a slap in the face to hear the voice of his father who is actually writing to his son.This is a wonderful book to explore a relationship between a man and his father. It’s a wonderful book that reminds how a relationship can change with one sentence, with one secret. It reminds us that honesty is a foundation, and while time can heal any wound, it can never be turned back.

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“The Painter” by Peter Heller

Synopsis: After having shot a man in a Santa Fe bar, the famous artist Jim Stegner served his time and has since struggled to manage the dark impulses that sometimes overtake him.  Now he lives a quiet life… until the day that he comes across a hunting guide beating a small horse, and a brutal act of new violence rips his quiet life right open. Pursued by men dead set on retribution, Jim is left with no choice but to return to New Mexico and the high-profile life he left behind, where he’ll reckon with past deeds and the dark shadows in his own heart. The plot of this book was dark, twisted, and kept me turning pages; I read it in less than four days. I think my only critique of this book was how much the author talked about fly fishing. While I appreciate how it tied in to the story well – it served as the protagonist’s addiction since he had quit drinking, and it was used as a temporary peace of mind from his domino effect of killing men who endangered his life – I’m simply not interested in fishing, and I found myself skimming over paragraphs when it was delved into a little too much.

Otherwise, it was a great story. I constantly wondered what would happen next, and for the life of me I could not figure out what would happen in the ending until the very last page – I’m normally very good at figuring out where the story will logically be headed next. The ending was surprising, logical and really dug into the ethical side of the human psyche, and I loved that.  

My only critique of this book is the way Heller writes. He writes sentences like: “Falling. Falling into her. Like stepping off a cliff and spreading arms and flying downwards. Didn’t matter to where. Because she would swoop me up and carry me down. With Irmina maybe once or twice like this. Maybe not.” (p. 102)

I feel torn about this style.  I’m a writer and an editor, and it’s been carved into my mind to watch my grammar, to watch my sentence structure. Heller has a unique way of shortening his sentences. I faintly wonder if it’s ungrammatical, but it’s also so beautiful I simply don’t care. It works when he speaks in the first-person narrative, and it really brings us closer into the protagonists mind and the way he thinks; it’s less like a dialogue and more like fractured thoughts. It’s a really unique way of writing, but I did notice that he does the same thing during the dialogue of other characters. I feel he could have broken up his voice just a tiny bit more, but it still really drew me in – he is a master of taking away little details and hinting at larger parts of the story. 

For example, the protagonist mentions his daughter dying at sixteen years old, but we don’t find out what happened until halfway through the book through a mesmerizing flashback. Since the protagonist is a painter, the author also takes the initiative to create detail-oriented visuals about the artist’s work, as well as his process.

If you’re an artist, you’ll find a way to relate to the madness that art can create.

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IT'S OUT TODAY HOLY SHIT GUYS

One month until my first book is published!

One month until my first book is available to the public. Just because it’s published, doesn’t mean I feel like a writer. Not even close.

Despite my general confidence, there is always fear.

This isn’t even bravery. Despite the irrational fear [people will laugh], the self-doubt [just because I feel the need to write, doesn’t mean I’m good enough], and the anxiety, I’m too stubborn to drop it. Despite the suffocating fear of failure, and despite the floor dropping out whenever I set those around me on a pedestal. I will continue until I feel I can call myself an established writer.

“The only thing we have to fear is Fear itself…”

…and I am not afraid.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rose-f-freeman/1118941599?ean=9781631600791&itm=1&usri=9781631600791&cm_mmc=AFFILIATES-_-Linkshare-_-wAvrd9TQkOQ-_-10:1&r=1

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Book Review: “Blindness” by Jose Saramago

Synopsis:  A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers-among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears-through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses-and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit. The stunningly powerful novel of man's will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature. Saramago’s description of a population-wide disease is a great allegory to societal and political issues of the 21st century. 

If we are blind, we are helpless. If we are blind, someone else must take care of us.

Saramago is fantastic at paying attention to detail within his story, which is something I need to work on with my books. More than half of his book takes place in one environment - the insane asylum the blind are forced to live in - but it continues to stay interesting. 

While I appreciate Saramago’s well-planned storyline, I have a hard time getting into his writing style. It’s a little Ray Bradbury; the long, run-on sentences make for beautiful prose, but the dialogue without quotations or paragraph breaks began to give me a headache. I would, however, be interested to know why he decided to lay his book out this way.  I still have a few questions about the story. Why did the blindness come about? How was just one woman immune to it (this felt like a cop-out to make the story easier to write)? How did the government pay for the rations of food they brought to the asylum, and at what point did the population die out so much, the asylum was left to fend for themselves? Saramago also touched brieftly on how the Blindness was portrayed to the media, and I think it would add depth if he went more into that aspect.

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IF YOU EVER NEED SOMETHING TO READ READ THIS

OK ARE YOU EVER IN NEED OF BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS BUT DON’T KNOW WHAT TO READ NEXT?

I present to you, straight from the internet, whichbook:

Here’s how it works: You click the link, and choose four categories and the extent to which these categories matter:

Then click “go” and it’ll come up with a number of books you might like.

DON’T LIKE THE CATEGORIES? NO PROBLEM - see this little thing:

THIS LITTLE THING WILL TAKE YOU TO THIS SLIGHTLY LARGER THING WHERE YOU CAN CHOOSE A BOOK BASED ON THE FOLLOWING:

YOU NOW HAVE NO EXCUSE TO NOT BE READING SOMETHING BECAUSE WHATEVER YOU WANT THIS SITE WILL COME UP WITH IT.

… Apart from bisexual retired alien dudes. No books on that. Yet.

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Book Review: The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon

This story is created around a nineteen-year-old, sudden deaths in a small town, a hundred-year-old diary, and a rumor that the buried can come back from the dead with the right sort of magic. I feel this is the kind of story where I shouldn’t give anything from the plot away, but I will tell you the author is incredible at switching her narrative form at the drop of a hat, which as an author, I deeply appreciate. I felt that I was inside the head of every character. Although the story was slightly hard to keep track of at first as it bounced around between different eras, it settled in nicely once it was strung together in the middle of the book.

McMahon is incredible at showcasing the motivations of her protagonists, and the visuals are so spot on I couldn’t read next to any closed doors for fear that the dead would began to scratch at them from the other side.

This is the sort of book you want to read on a rainy day with a cup of hot chocolate, when you simply need to lose yourself in someone else’s story for a while.

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Book Review: The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan

This book is a story, but it’s also poetry that flirts with word play. It’s obvious the author has put a lot of work into selecting specific words that form the meaning of love for him. Underneath every word he’s chosen, he relates it to his last relationship through a small story or sentence.

While love is probably one of the most subjective words in the history of English, he has somehow chosen words that are always relatable. Every relationship is different, but he’s brought the feeling of union to an emotion we’ve all felt as some point. The reader can relate to snippets that he chooses from that relationship; the intimacy of moving in together, the heartbreak of the first argument, his need to fill the silences with chatter for fear that they’ll suddenly have nothing left to say. His idea of choosing specific words in relation is intoxicating, and I read the entire book in one sitting. I loved that I was expanding my vocabulary as I was reading, and I was excited to find out that the story was chronological, except for one specific part that was only expanded, sentence by sentence, throughout the story.

 I wanted to know more. I wanted to feel more of what the author is feeling. My only regret is that the story was not longer. I’m really looking forward to reading more from this author in the future.