A Dog Named Beautiful

"I loved a dog with all my heart once."

That quote sums up this entire book.

I was 15 pages in and sobbing into my pup's fur about unconditional love.

I have never loved anything as much as I love my girl, Sophie.

We've been together almost 4 years now and I would give anything to keep her in my life forever.

Rob Kugler and his furbaby Bella set off on a 3-6 month road trip to soak up the time they had left together. It all happened right after Bella was diagnosed with cancer....in her lungs that spread to her leg. The best option to give her a little more time was to amputate her leg. That's right, Rob had a 3-legged pup with more gusto than any other dog he'd ever seen. I mean, sure he was out almost 2 grand, but it was worth it to spend some more time with his girl.

It's such a touching story about a man and his dog.

But for Rob, it was more than that. He was lost for a very long time but he found himself learning life lessons from Bella. He found himself through her. He spent countless days wondering if he was giving her the best life imaginable, especially with everyone asking him if her quality of life diminished after losing her leg. But honestly, it made her stronger. Which in turn made him stronger.

Everything in this book made me cry.

Everything in this book made me hug my dog.

Everything in this book was so relatable.

In January, we had a run in with our pup.

Sophie woke up and could barely stand. 

I carried her outside for her morning potty break and she got sick and just collapsed. 

I ran inside stressed, telling my husband to grab the keys. We needed a vet.

Mind you, we live in South Korea, with vets who barely spoke our language.

The first vet we could find said "Heart failure, emergency. Go to this vet for surgery, immediately." 

The next vet said, "Emergency surgery. Her uterus exploded."

They set to work on my baby while we sat in the waiting room, covered in poop and vomit, and just cried. Within the hour, we were told there was a 30% chance she would survive the surgery given her age (she's 10ish).

A week later, we got to take her home.

She made it.

Sure, we were out 2 grand, just like Rob...

But we knew our pup needed us and we jumped on the chance to help her. 

Speak

It is insane to me that a book written 20 years ago is telling a story that happens in today's world.

We meet Melinda as she's starting high school and follow her to the end of her freshman year.

High school is hard, but it's even harder when everyone is against you. Yes, I know, this sounds like every other kid thinking the world hates them, but for Melinda is was kind of true. Everyone knew she called the cops and broke up their house party...they just didn't know why.

 

Melinda struggles, a lot. She skipped classes, she stayed quiet, she found herself wandering through the halls of life. But she finds her voice at the end, which is incredibly badass because not everyone gets that chance or has the courage to do what she did. She stands up to her attacker, her rapist, and makes sure everyone knows what happened.

It kind of breaks my heart that things like this are still happening 20 years later.

But it blows my mind how strong the Melinda's of this world are.

 

 I rarely use the word "groundbreaking" when describing books, but I'm definitely marking Speak as groundbreaking. Not only did it capture the teenage image of 1999 but of 2019, as well. This book is absolutely going to stand the test of time and I'm beyond glad that I had the opportunity to read it and pass it along to all the other kids who might be trying to cope with their own struggles.

 

Looking for other books by Laurie Halse Anderson?

Wintergirls

Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian

When you find yourself at a wedding, telling people you write obituaries for the paper.....you start wondering what you're actually doing with your life. For Avi Steinberg, that's exactly how he ended up applying for the prison librarian + creative writing teacher position.

I honestly think Avi wrote this book more for himself than for anyone else.

It felt like he kind of lost himself for awhile and needed a very drastic change of pace, which apparently meant walking up to the menacing door of "The Bay" in Boston for an interview he wasn't even sure he qualified for.

Throughout the book, we meet all sorts of people from all walks of life. Avi regularly spent his days with murderers, rapists, drug dealers, prostitutes and pimps. But to him, these were just his library patrons and students in class. He eventually realized that not all criminals are bad people and some of them he even looked at as friends. Sometimes it was hard to find the line between the two. Regardless, this book is filled with "kites" found around the library, life lessons he's learned from inmates, but most importantly what he found for himself. Honestly, I'm not sure what he discovered from working in prison. 

One of my dreams is to work with inmates, whether it be in a prison or a juvenile detention center...I want to be there. I want to help these people get their life back on track like Avi tried with Jessica, a mother who found her 18 year old son on the prison basketball court. How he helped Chudney find recipes for his fictional cooking show, Thug Sizzle. How he proofread and wrote a prologue to C.C. Too Sweet's book "Memoirs of a Pimp." I hope to make a change in inmate culture and life and give them someone from the system they can view without contempt, someone they can trust.

Out of Orange

You might know Cleary Wolters as Alex Vause in the hit Netflix series, Orange is the New Black or as Nora Jansen in Piper Kerman's book with the same name.

Personally, I enjoyed reading this book more than Orange is the New Black. Cleary's story is more personal than Piper's. She gets us into the deep into the African drug smuggling ring. She gives us details of how they were under the impression they were smuggling diamonds, which soon turned to heroin, which then turned to $50k sewn into suitcases. They never expected to be in so deep with a drug lord, yet here they were carrying loaded luggage through airports and living to tell the tale. 

Piper got involved when Cleary started crushing on her. She thought maybe, just maybe, Piper could be a stand in on one of their runs. They could start an international love affair with suitcases full of money. Which is exactly what they tried to do, before Piper realized she didn't want to be a part of that life. Cleary was already in way too deep to call it quits and head back to San Fran with her.

It details how they got into this business, how they got out, how they got caught, and how they made their prison time worthwhile. It deals with love, loss, and growth. Cleary never expected for this to be her life and she really never expected to turn on the tv one day and a blonde girl hop out of a van and say, "Hello. My name is Piper Chapman, and this is my story."  

Looking for Piper Kerman's book?

Orange is the New Black

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

Imagine this scenario:

It's 1936, you live with your Pa in the Kentucky mountains; Troublesome Creek to be exact. But you're colored. Not white, not black, but...blue.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek follows the story of Cussy Mary, better known as Bluet. She one of the last surviving members of her bloodline. Many years ago, living deep in the mountainside, desperate family members made their own family... if you get what I'm saying.

Bluet and her Pa both have what appears to be blue skin. Which means they don't get the same treatment as the white folks in town, but instead have to follow the same rules as the other colored folks. They get looked at as sickly, disgusting, not quite human. It's a hard life, but that doesn't stop Cussy Mary and her pa from living and working with everyone else. 

Bluet becomes a Pack Librarian for Troublesome Creek.

Pack librarians became essential when people in poor areas and off the beaten track, wanted some reading materials. Newspapers, magazines, scrapbooks, you name it, Bluet had it in her satchel. She would ride miles upon miles a week to deliver books to her patrons. They all called her Book Woman. But some of them still had to open their minds to a colored bringing them reading material. But over the course of a year, they come to love her. School children, young mothers, uptight fathers, they all wait patiently to see what the Book Woman has brought for them this week.

I absolutely loved this book.

I made a promise to myself to start reading more historical fiction this year, and I'm beyond glad I picked this up. It's a unique story, that I'm fairly certain hasn't been told before!

 

Looking for the rest of the series?

The Book Woman's Daughter

Life Inside My Mind

I personally think all books on mental health should be written in this format.

Life Inside My Mind is a collection of essays written by various authors who either have mental illnesses of their own or are close to people who do. Each author delves into what their struggles are and how they began helping themselves to a life they actually wanted and not one defined by their mental illness. Each author tackles a different mental health aspect, though some are repeated, their coping mechanisms and other things that specifically helped them differ from some of the other authors.

What I loved most about this was how raw, real, and groundbreaking this book is. There is such a stigma when it comes to mental illnesses. To quote Melissa Marr's essay, "How to Deal with Me... And My PTSD," "The fact that you read as far as that last sentence, that you read this essay, that you picked up this anthology tells me that we can go out in public without apology on my part or worry on yours. It says that you won't think me impossible if I say not this restaurant or ask you to walk a few blocks or maybe switch seats with me so I can stay here and talk to you. It says we can find a way to deal with my PTSD."

I think that is how we break the stigma. We begin understanding, we ask questions, we don't judge. If we can share our stories with the world, the world just might turn a little easier, especially knowing we aren't the only ones dealing with an illness.

Below I'll be sharing a few resources for those who may need them along with personal recommendations of mental health books and books with mentally ill characters.

Resources:

NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness)

Mental Health America

US Department of Health and Human Services

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or call 800-273-TALK (8255)

Looking for authors in this anthology?
Ellen Hopkins (Crank Trilogy + more)
Dan Wells (I Am Not a Serial Killer Series)
Cyn Balog (Unnatural Deeds)

Personal Recommendations:
John Green's Turtles All the Way Down (anxiety)
Brandon Novak's Dreamseller (addiction)
Ned Vizzini's It's Kind of a Funny Story (suicidal thoughts)
Demi Lovato's Staying Strong (addiction, self harm, eating disorders)
Nic Sheff's Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines (addiction)
JJ Johnson's Believarexic (eating disorders)
Flora Rheta Shreiber's Sybil (multiple personality disorder)
Jessica Pan's Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come (anxiety)
Jane Alvey Harris's Riven Trilogy (addiction, depression, PTSD)
Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak (depression)

Laurie Halse Anderson's Wintergirls (eating disorders, self harm)

Kathleen Glasgow's You'd Be Home Now (addiction) 

Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come

When I was a junior, my high school offered a poetry writing contest.I entered and didn't tell a soul. No one knew until it was announced over the loud speaker that I had won first place. Teachers, friends, classmates, my parents.... were SHOCKED.

The even bigger catch....

I had to read my poem (which also had a visual aspect) in front of the school board, along with all the other winners.

I wanted to throw up. I cried on the drive there. I was so thankful I included my visual aspect (I wrote my poem in the shape of a question mark and only included questions in the poem). Which they displayed on the big screen at the front of the room. I thought, "Good, people will be looking at that and not me."

I got up there, I read my poem, got off stage and asked my mom how I did and if you could tell my face was covered in bright red fire up there.... and her response?

"I didn't look at you because I thought it'd make you more nervous."

 LOL THANKS MOM.

But honestly, I'm glad I did it. I've given countless presentations since then and I think that was the first one that kicked me in the ass. That being said, Jessica Pan struggled with a lot of the same issues and she set out on a year of extroversion. She was determined to make her friends, better herself, and even got a few fun stories out of it.

Now I could never imagine doing some of the stuff she did, ex. see chapters "Everest or Stand Up Comedy" and "La-La-Land or Traveling Solo."

But I see a lot of myself in her and finally understand why I hate small talk...it's because I want the meat of what makes people tick. I want to know intimate details about their lives and understand who they were when they were living through it. I don't care how the weather is, I don't care that traffic was bad. I want to know WHY you love/hate this weather or what was really bothering you when that guy cut you off in traffic.

Her year of extroverting gave her a new sense of what it means to be an introvert.

She found a happy medium between the two and I think we could all use a little help finding that line.

Huge thank you to NetGalley, Andrew McNeels Publishing, and to Jessica Pan for providing me with a copy of Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come. 

I am so glad I found this book!