These books made me sad, and that’s why you should read them
Reading can be an excellent source of company as we travel through the rollercoaster that is our lives. While reading books, we relate to some parts of it and it can make us understand that we are not alone in the world. There are so many people going through what we are and just talking about it can help us understand situations better. Books are like friends who can't listen to you and yet, understand you.
These books are an excellent read for anyone who would like to be self-aware and empathetic towards others.
Manic - Terri Cheney
"If you nurture it long enough, a lie can become a life" - Terri Cheney
Manic is a memoir by Terri Cheney, a beautiful and successful entertainment lawyer with a secret. A secret well hidden behind a bold exterior and lots and lots of flowers on the office table.
Written in an unflinching way, she takes the readers to her bipolar world with giddy mania and the lowest depression. Reading this book helps you understand people better.
It is an excellent read and the book takes a grip of you at page one and only lets you go when it ends.
"Stories don't always have to end happily... Sometimes it's just enough that they end"
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Esther's (Sylvia Plath) descent into depression can be predicted from the beginning of the book - with all her negative thoughts, expectations, perfectionism, and demands of a woman in a patriarchal world. She is brilliant, and beautiful and sets out to conquer the world but the reality catches up with her.
The journal article "The Feminist Discourse of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar" describes that the Bell Jar is an "attempt to heal the fracture between inner self and false self - so that a real and viable identity can come into existence".
This book was banned as it goes on at length about feminism and doesn't accept the idea of the "ideal" woman.
This review definitely doesn't do justice to the depth of the book. I highly recommend giving this a read.
Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain - Portia de Rossi
Amanda Lee Rogers (Portia de Rossi) is a model/actress whose book "Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain" is a memoir in which she wrote about the turmoil she faced battling anorexia. At the age of 15, she learned the art of vomiting everything she ate to fit into the body image that was expected of a model. Maintaining a 300-calorie diet alternating between starving herself and binging, she maintained her illness hidden by lying to everyone around her about her condition.
One scene in the book that shocked me was when she sits in her car and binges on some snacks, feels guilty, and walks up and down the stairs tiring herself and convincing herself that she was helping lose those calories. It educated me about how cruel a person can be to themselves.
The catcher in the rye - J. D. Salinger
According to my understanding, a person's opinion of this book is very binary. You either love it or it's a one-star material. Holden Caulfield is a 16-year-old teenage boy who battles the child's voice and adult voices in his head. He longs to be a normal kid but finds himself feeling lonely, unable to express his sensitive heart, and solves all his problems by running away (literally) and living all by himself in the city. There's the expected teenage phase of experimenting with drugs, drinking, and sex, and also the other side of a teenage boy - a longing for connection and true friendships. You spend half your time reading the mixed-up running thoughts in his head and trying to make sense of the "phony" world around him.
If you'd like to be amused by the very diverse opinions of this book, head over to Goodreads review and read through the comments posted.
I'd like to know your opinion about this book and would love to have a discussion with you.
All the Bright Places - Jennifer Niven
He was a "freak" and was fascinated by death. And she just wanted an escape. Where did they meet? - "on the ledge six stories above the ground at the Bell Tower in their high school on a rainy day". Theodore Finch and Violet discover that they can enjoy the tiniest thing around them. How did they do that? By living in the moment.
All he wanted was to keep the bad away from her and save up only the good for her.
The book does have a sad ending - Theodore Finch could not stop himself from searching the bottom of the blue hole. No, this is not a love story. It is much more than that.