Confessions of an Angry Girl

Confessions of an Angry Girl is a debut novel by Louise Rozett, and the first book in her Confessions series.  Rose Zarelli is starting her freshman year at Union High School, and if you thought your high school days sucked, there is a good chance Rose's freshman year tops that.  Practically the whole town is walking on eggshells and the faculty at school are treating her like she's fragile because her dad died over the summer; he was an engineer, and when he lost his job, he went to Iraq on a contract with the military.  He was riding in a convoy when they went over an IED.

Her mother has been in shock since she got the call, and is completely distant.  Her brother is off at college and he seems to have changed, too.  Rose is angry.  She's cynical, irritable, and everything seems to be going completely wrong this year.  It's not just her family, either - her best friend, Tracy, is a fashion-conscious cheerleader on a quest to be popular.  Rose doesn't really give a shit whether or not she's one of the "cool kids."  She doesn't understand Tracy's new obsessions with partying and losing her virginity to her jerk jock boyfriend, Matt.  She doesn't seem to understand anything that any of her classmates find interesting or cool or fun.  But whatever.

And then, there is Jamie Forta.  She used to have a crush on him, back when he played hockey with her brother.  Seeing him again, maybe she still likes him.  He seems interested in talking to her, maybe being friends, but there's no way he could be into her - she's not pretty, and she's pretty much his complete opposite.  I mean, she's an AP student, and he's in remedial English.  He got kicked out of hockey for high-sticking another kid, and he's still apparently kind of a badass.  Nope, no way a guy like that would be interested in a girl like her.  Oh, and there's also the fact that he's dating a cheerleader - Regina.  One of her ex-best-friend's new best friends.  Regina's psychotically jealous and kind of a bitch, and has convinced herself there is something going on between Rose and Jamie; so of course she makes it her singular ambition to make Rose's life hell.

Things kind of spiral way out of control, as you may have guessed.  So yeah, Rose is angry.  She's sorta pissed, actually.  How can you not become completely irate, enraged, furious...when your life is falling to pieces all around you?

Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen is a memoir of the almost two years Kaysen spent at McLean Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Belmont, Massachusetts.  A short read, the book is set up more like a series of vignettes than as a straight read, as the chapters are not really set up in any particular chronological order.  It feels a little disjointed at times, disorganized in an organized way, which I think is fitting for a memoir about mental illness.  She also includes some scanned pages from her hospital files.  As this is a memoir, the people and events in the book are of course true, but names and some identifying characteristics have been changed for the book.

Maybe this is telling of me, but I really love this book.  I loved it the first time I read it, and I loved it again in re-reading.  I've gone through multiple periods of depression myself, and I think a lot of people have moments in their lives where they wonder if they are going crazy.  I know I have those moments.  Sometimes when I'm feeling that way, I like to revisit books like this - in part to remind myself that other people have gone through similar rough times, so I'm not as alone as I might feel.  Also partly to reassure myself that things could probably be worse, and at least I haven't gone so far off the edge that I've needed "a rest."

A Separate Peace

A Separate Peace by John Knowles takes place during the second World War at Devon School, a boys' preparatory academy in New England. Here on the homefront, the war doesn't seem very real. Sure, there are rations, and the seniors are being scheduled for physical training regimens to prepare them for enlistment after graduation - but in the lazy, carefree Summer session, the idea of war seems very distant to the other students. Especially to Phineas.

Finny is athletic and charming - he can talk his way out of any potential trouble, even when he doesn't really make any sense. His friend and roommate (and our narrator), Gene, is booksmart and reserved - he tries to be a good student and to follow the rules, but Finny always seems to get his way. There is something about him that is impossible to resist. That's what started it - just a tiny spark of jealousy, of resentment - and an accident in a tree on the school grounds changes everything.

Or was it an accident?

Either way, things will never be the same again - for any of them.

Coming of Age in Samoa

When my professor for Anthropological Theory passed out a list of books to choose from for an essay we had to write, I snatched up Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa the moment I saw it listed as an option; I'd been wanting to read it almost since I started becoming seriously interested in studying anthropology. Really, I don't think an introductory level class exists that does not bring up Mead and the controversy surrounding this book. So what's it about, and why is it so controversial?

Coming of Age in Samoa is an ethnography Mead wrote after her first fieldwork in the village of Taū in American Samoa (conducted in the 1920s). People in the United States tended to assume that with adolescence comes unavoidable awkwardness, angst, and a possible myriad of other grievances. Mead (supported by Our Father of American Anthropology, Franz Boas) believed that this is not necessarily universal - that the problems we associate with this stage of life is culturally created by demands and expectations placed on adolescents by our society. She therefore set out to compare the experience of adolescents in a rather different culture than our own, to determine whether they were very different or not. She used traditional ethnographic research methods of participant observation and conducting interviews, which she supplemented with surveys and questionnaires.