A few Tuesday memes, #8

February 24, 2015

This pug is how I felt this week. Courtesy of Unsplash/Matthew Wiebe.
My oh my, it's been a week. I'm about to hop on the caboose of the #truthtrain, so strap yourselves in.

I spent most of last week chugging toward the weekend, only to have it arrive and not be able to turn off my ever-buzzing brain enough to enjoy it. (Yay, GAD!) I didn't even have lofty plans: visiting a new coffee shop, baking some cookies, getting some reading done. And not one of those things happened (EDIT: lies, I did read A Wizard of Earthsea and will soon be posting about how much I loved it). Instead, I sat on the corner of my couch and fretted. My boyfriend was feeling a bit antsy himself, so we had trouble with our stress feeding into each other. Even the thing that calms us both down (getting some exercise) didn't work its usual magic.

I also did stuff like this:

That's not to say that doing that was bad; I'd been meaning to reflect on this question for a while, and lists help me settle my thoughts down into more manageable chunks. Unfortunately, this one just made me even more obsessive, and not in a way I could channel into productivity (researching programs, reading publications, etc.).

I finally started feeling calm on Saturday evening... only to have a moderate-to-severe allergy attack on Sunday afternoon. A faucet for a nose and hot, itchy skin aren't conducive to tranquility.

ANYWAY. It's a new week, and I'm going to treat it that way.

I was going to share the opening of In Cold Blood by Truman Capote with you all for Bibliophile by the Sea's First Chapter, First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, but it just deleted itself from my Kindle. *shakes fist at library lending periods*

Also, I'm not into today's Top Ten Tuesday topic, so I'm going to make up my own listicle. HA. Take THAT, Broke and Bookish.

Four Books I Read WAY Too Young



I read The Valley of the Dolls at some point late in high school. I guess I wasn't necessarily *too* young to be reading it, but as someone who'd barely had a sip of alcohol before college, I couldn't exactly relate to their level of partying. This goes in the same category as Less Than Zero, which I read around the same time. I was just so ~edgy~, you guys.

I know I found my mom's copy of She's Come Undone while we still lived in my childhood home, so this was a pre-14 read... I was probably around the same age as the protagonist, Dolores, when we first meet her. I scarcely remember the story now, but I do know there was plenty of disordered eating, body hatred, and weird sex.

I took The Bell Jar with me to summer camp when I was thirteen, because nothing says summer fun like existential crises and suicidal tendencies in New York City, am I right? I'm pretty sure I read this one multiple times, but I still don't remember it. It's one of those books I sometimes think about re-reading, but honestly, I think I got the gist well enough the first few times.

Really, this one could be "any Chuck Palahniuk at all," but Haunted takes the cake. I think this one came around late high school as well, and it's another example of how alternative and out there I was as a teenager. I distinctly remember stealing one of the nastier plot points for my own short stories. Oops. "Guts" will forever haunt (hehe) my dreams (and those of some unwitting bookstore patrons). Why did I do this to myself?

What are some books you probably should have waited to read? Or, ahem, not read at all?

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6 comments

  1. Love it!!! I know the PhD decision can be so hard. I'm not surprised there was fretting! And Haunted is one of those books I've long wanted to read, but I'm just terrified to. I know it'll scar me for life.

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    1. It so is! Especially because sometimes I deviate even further and think I just want to devote 6-8 years of my life to an English doctorate. AHH, the choices!

      I don't think I'll ever recover. Read at your own risk!

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  2. Valley of the Dolls and Haunted sound like just my kind of books! I need to read them!
    My time to decided whether I want to pursue a PhD hasn't come yet but I'm terrified lol Great post! :D

    Cristian @ http://thebookishgod.wordpress.com

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    1. Yes, they're really good! Just not for teens, necessarily. :P

      And ah, avoid that kind of decision for as long as possible, haha.

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  3. I read The Bell Jar at exactly the right time, when I was 20 years old and in a time when I felt much like the narrator about my life. Same deal with The Awakening, which I read when I had three young children home with me as a stay at home mom, and felt like I was suffocating. I'm sure there are others I read at the wrong time (I doubt I'll ever like Catcher in the Rye, for instance, and I can't even remember To Kill A Mockingbird), but I do love it when I come across something at exactly the perfect time.

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    1. Oof, yeah, I really was not into Catcher either (though most of my class was—reverse the opinions for Beloved).

      It is really satisfying when you read a book at the right moment! I do wonder how many books I've rated as mediocre or so-so that might have been five stars at the right time.

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