Depression, books, valentines day, and answers

This is a post about multiple things. About why I haven’t been posting, about books I’ve been reading, and about valentine’s day.

Why I haven’t been posting

I mostly don’t like to fill my blog with depressed rants. Sometimes, if I do feel depressed, I avoid my blog along with my email and my phone. I am sure I have been somewhat rude to some people. I don’t exactly know what to do about it.

It started, perhaps because of all the things I realized that I could not do. Perhaps because I am going nowhere in life, and perhaps because I still have no future.

Part of it is an attack, I think.

I am scheduled to speak at a woman’s retreat in PA in a couple weeks. Deciding what to speak on has been a constant source of frustration.

The solution? For the first time in my life, I am fasting. From food.

There you have it. A brief summary of recent pain which drives me from posting on my blog.

Books I’ve been reading

If you remember, I posted once about how I (generally) hated romance novels, and a reader of this blog suggested I read books by Sarah Dessen.

So I borrowed a book called “That Summer” from the library and ended up loving it. Since then, I’ve borrowed three more Sarah Dessen books, and I didn’t like them nearly as much. One called “This Lullaby” was just…gross. I didn’t read much of it. “Just Listen” was ok. “Keeping the moon” had these two really interesting secondary characters named Morgan and Isabel. But I couldn’t really love either of the books because of…well…

We’d spent almost a month on it, Norman slowly constructing me on canvas as i memorized each part of him: the arch of his eyebrow, the way his shoulder blade jutted out when he stretched, the smell of turpentine on his skin whenever he crossed the room to adjust my position.

I’m sorry, but memorizing the smell of his skin? Does this not creep you out? I think if it weren’t for the romance I could really like Sarah Dessen. After all, I loved the un-romantic “That Summer.”

I love newbery winners. Most of my favorite authors were discovered because I read a newbery winner or honor book by that author and then picked up other works by them. Jerry Spinelli, Lous Sachar, Gail Carson Levine, Shannon Hale, Sharon Creech, etc.

So I recently picked up “The Whipping Boy,” and “The Wednesday Wars,” specifically because of their shiny sticker. “The Whipping Boy” was a cute little story, made much more interesting by the fact that I looked up “Whipping Boy” on wikipedia and learned that some nobility in ancient days did have whipping boys to be whipped whenever the prince did something bad. The reasoning behind this was that kings were thought to be appointed by God, which somehow implied that the only one worthy of punishing the prince was the king himself, who was often too busy to do it.

So they had whipping boys to take the punishment instead. The whipping boys were usually of high birth and basically did everything with the prince, so that they were usually very close and it actually was a punishment for the prince to see his friend getting whipped.

“The Wednesday Wars” is a good book. Interesting. But ultimately it’s just about this boy’s life and a lot like a whole bunch of books I’ve already read.

Oh, and btw, you should check out “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” The main character is bratty and selfish and the quintessential modern kid. Oh, and did I mention hilarious? Me and all my younger siblings read the first book and now we have all kinds of jokes about it. I’m telling you, it doesn’t teach any amazing life lessons, but it has some kind of unique charm I’ve never seen in any other book.

Enough about books. Only I will say this: I love discovering new authors, so I’d be pumped if you would suggest some to me, like Heather did with Sarah Dessen. Even if I end up hating the author, I’d still think it was cool. Or you could suggest a specific book.

Valentine’s Day

I love valentine’s day. I have officially decided that it is impossible to be depressed on valentines day, because I felt depressed about life the day before and the day after, but not the day of.

Then I realized how stupid that official decision was, because to a lot of people, valentine’s day is the most depressing holiday of all, if you are single.

But I love it, and for the past two years I’ve done a post on valentine’s day and how much I love it. So why stop now?

I got a valentine from my Aunt and Uncle’s church for helping out with their children’s ministries. My Aunt Rebecca gave me these marshmallow frogs with little crowns on their heads and hearts in their hands. Then in the evening we all watched this hilarious movie called “Harvey” about a guy and his giant invisible rabbit friend. Oh, and then we watched olympic pairs figure skating.

A few days later, three red roses arrived in the mail from my dad.

I’m trying to remember all my valentine’s days. I don’t know why, just a weird project. I can remember what I did on every valentine’s day since I was 14, which is 6 in all.

Every one of them was interesting and memorable and wonderful.

Now this is the end of the blog post.

E. L. Konigsburg. I forgot her from my list of favorite newbery-winning authors. Oh, and Kate DiCamillo. And Robin McKinley. Wow there are a lot of them. Lloyd Alexander. Avi. Beverly Cleary. By the way, one of my dream jobs is working as a children’s librarian.