Molly over at Ten Block Walk has started a great discussion about the books we'd go back in time to give our younger selves if we could. If it were me, I think I'd stealth stalk my teenage self, leaving single books in unmarked, brown paper wrapped parcels. One on the back step, one on my pillow, one in my locker on that first day of high school...And the deliveries would have to start with Honey, Baby, Sweetheart by Deb Caletti. I read that book a couple of years ago and just could not get over how I wish every teenage girl could read it. Like if they did it would help them know who they are and avoid a fair chunk of unnecessary pain. It's a beautiful book and one I highly recommend. Follow-up dropoffs would include The Road Home by Ellen Emerson White (because EEW books rock), Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher (because it would have made me think about things I wasn't thinking about then but should have been), An Abundance of Katherines by John Green (because 14-year-old Angie was in desperate need of a good laugh), and the complete Harry Potter series (because I would have thought I'd died and gone to heaven). What books would you love to have read then? Go check out the discussion and leave a comment!
If I'm being perfectly honest with myself, I've done a shamefully poor job of addressing my love for Cat Sebastian 's books around these parts. I've certainly noted each time her beautiful stories have appeared on my end-of-the-year best of lists, see: The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes , basically every book in The Cabots series , and of course We Could Be So Good . And the pull is, quite simply, this: nobody is as kind and gentle with their characters and with their hearts than Cat Sebastian. Nobody. I haven't always been one for the gentler stories, but I cannot overstate the absolute gift it is sinking into one of Sebastian's exquisitely crafted historicals knowing that I get to spend the next however many pages watching two idiots pine and deny that feelings exist and just take care of each other as they fall in love. I wouldn't trade that experience for the world. Not this one or any other. Only two things in the world people count b...
How cool. I have a Deb Caletti book at home that I should read - I've never read any of her stuff!
ReplyDeleteThis is something thats crossed my mind more than once. Strangly, in my late teenage years I had a little Angie-Fairy that would drop books of every kind off in different areas of my life in accordance with what was going at the time. So in a way, you were probably doing for me, what you wished you could do for yourself years ago... How lucky am I?
ReplyDeleteJanssen, I really love her stuff. She writes with such humor and insight. Not just fluff.
ReplyDeleteElisa, I re-live vicariously through your reading, don't I? Lol. You put up with my book pushing like no other.
The Outsiders. It's been a very very long time.
ReplyDeleteStay golden Ponyboy.
Jenny Girl, ooh, good call. Such a wonderful book. Stay cool, Sodapop.
ReplyDelete