15 Day Book Blogger Challenge | Day 4 and 5 | Ragefire and Sorrowfits

YESTERDAY’S CHALLENGE:

Day 4: What's the last book you flung across the room?

Are you seriously asking me if I've ever...



....



Come on, guys, I thought you were paying attention. You could at least pretend. I mentioned in my first post of the challenge, in which confessions were made blogosphere-wide, I can't do that. Like, if I seriously went to try and fling a book I'd find myself throwing it out of my left hand and the book would end up NOT on the other side of the room but in my right hand. A puzzle for the physics professors surely, but it simply can't be done. I cannot commit such an act against a piece of literature.

And are you forgetting I've already broken two kindles? Do you want my mother to kill me for the demolishing of a third which is actually hers and I'm borrowing?

Half of the books I read are e-books. But the other half? You see how worked up and bothered I get over covers, and you want me to purposely damage one?

So no. I've never flung a book across the room (just WHAT WHY?). But that isn't to say I've never experienced the hatefire and rage that must accompany such destructive behavior. I mean, I'm an emotional person. Do you think I don't know what it is to feel helpless rage? Right now I'm imagining your silence, because you should be cluing into the fact that rage isn't outside of my realm of normal behavior.

There is... one book I feel... compelled to mention. A book that has left me so uncontrollably enraged and so helpless against the catastrophic events played out in the book that I distinctly remember going down to get a glass of cooling, soothing water when a spider had the balls to go near me. I walked out of that kitchen feeling only a little mollified and slightly empowered by the stain its little body left on my floor.

I am not, generally speaking, a very scary young woman. I can be, but I'm often not. But this book. Oh, THIS BOOK. I know I terrified people.



Part of what infuriates me so bad about Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan is the fact that I fucking love this book. With a kind of violence and twistedness that has made this a very long-spanning obsession. This love should not be when you consider how it brutally massacres your emotions. And I hate that I love it and the power Sarah has.

Regardless, I want to string Sarah Rees Brennan up by her toes, only after soaking her in raw meat, and wait for the werewolves to get her.


TODAY'S CHALLENGE:

inspires much less violence and questionable behavior.

Day 5: Recommend a tearjerker.

Surprisingly, tearjerkers are my favorite kind of books. Or one of. Because they can be found in any number of genres, and, frankly, if it's not OVERWHELMING you to the point of sobbing from a hiccuping heart, how can you really be sure it truly touched you?

I know the challenge says recommend a tearjerker, but when has it ever been in me to list just the implied one? So.

Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta and The Sky Is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson are the reigning champions when it comes to tearjerkers. Not only was there crying and sobbing involved, but my heart felt like it had been hit by a truck. And then you know how when you get a stomach bug and you're puking up your guts and begging for it to be over, and you know it won't be over and it'll only be a few more minutes before you're at it again, before it starts up from your belly up to your throat again?

That's what it is to read these books. You're practically choking on your own tears and you can barely swallow and you're mentally begging whatever deity it is you're loyal to to please make it stop, make these horrible body functions, those horrible jagged noises, that horrible pain in your heart to stop. Because it's too much for you to take, not just these characters and their story but the idea that there are people out there who go through the exact same thing, that the world can be that heartless and unbearable. And then you're crying all over again when you see these characters triumph against that grief, wrestle it into a box where it can't torment them as frequently and they can live.

That's the shit I'm down for, you guys.

The only Sarah Ockler book I've ever deeply loved and the only Gayle Forman series I've ever read. They both write impeccable tragic beauty with a hint of hope.

Both so unexpected and underestimated. And how I love them. God, I don't even have all the words. Just read them, please.

I think the main point of sadness for these two is the bitter reality of the lives the characters' lead and memories past. Things have happened to them that no one should have to recover from.

Poignancy and bittersweetness. Typically, these are my enemies because they leave me feeling dissatisfied. These two books are the only ones I can safely say didn't leave me in that state. They filled me and hurt me all at once.

Irrevocable mistakes are made and life happens for the characters afterward, and you wonder how you would feel if things were different. If someone had done something differently. Would you be more or less satisfied? I draw tears from both of them because certain characters have left the respective world of each, they will only be remembered by a small few and there's a sort of injustice to that when you think on how extraordinary each person in both books are. There're obviously tons of points where it's impossible to be anything other than sad, maybe even to the point of tears, but for me, I cry because they're over and so are the people in them.

How does one cope with that?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We've had the sad and the mad, here's hoping we'll get some happy in the challenges to come. Hell, I was getting emotional by the end, and gazing fondly at the works who moved me to love reading deeper than I ever expected that fateful day when a twelve-year-old me had a teen book nearly shoved down my throat by my equally booksessed mother. Who'd've thunk that I could ever get this mad and this sad over something that isn't really real?

Something I've learned though is that reading a book is something you really do so why can't the story they carry be just as real? They always are, when you feel it this way. What about you? When's the last time you've ever felt emotionally...imbalanced over a book? Which one was it?