All the Bright Places — Jennifer Niven

We alternate choosing places to go, but we also have to be willing to go where the road takes us.  This means the grand, the small, the bizarre, the poetic, the beautiful, the ugly, the surprising. Just like life.  But absolutely, unconditionally, resolutely, nothing ordinary. (43)

You have been in very way all that anyone could be…. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. (106)

It’s like I’ve got this angry little person inside me, and I can feel him trying to get out.  He’s running out of room because he’s growing bigger and bigger, and so he starts rising up, into my lungs, chest, throat, and I just push him right back down.  I don’t want him to come out.  I can’t let him out…. Because I hate him, because he’s not me, but he’s in there and he won’t leave me alone, and all I can think is that I want to go up to someone, anyone, and just knock them into space because I’m angry at all of them. (226)

We do not remember days, we remember moments. (315)

I don’t need to worry that Finch and I never filmed our wanderings.  It’s okay that we didn’t collect souvenirs or that we never had time to pull it all together in a way that made sense to anyone else but us.
The thing I realize is that it’s not what you take, it’s what you leave. (376)

Theodore Finch–I was alive.  I burned brightly.  And then I died, but not really.  Because someone like me cannot, will not, die like everyone else.  I linger like the legends of the Blue Hole.  I will always be here, in the offerings and people I left behind.
       I tread water on the surface under the wide, open sky and the sun and all that blue, which reminds me of Theodore Finch, just like everything else reminds me of him, and I think of my own epitaph, still to be written, and all the places I’ll wander.  No longer rooted, but gold, flowing.  I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. (378)

Highlights: Beautifully written, broken but perfect characters, amazing portrayal of a person with bipolar disorder, an enduring portrait of teen love similar to the work of Mr. John Green.

Lowlights: It shattered my heart to pieces.  Have tissues for the reading.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks — E. Lockhart

It is better to be alone, she figures, than to be with someone who can’t see who you are.  It is better to lead than to follow.  It is better to speak up than stay silent.  It is better to open doors than to shut them on people. (342)

Pros: Intriguing plot; interesting characters; intense plot.

Cons: It was a little too intense and a little too weird.  All in all, it was a bit much for me.

We’ll Always Have Paris — Jennifer Coburn

My mother’s crowd subscribed to the believe that they needed to bolster children’s self-esteem by telling them they were the sining center of the universe.  We were told we could do anything or be anything we wanted.  We weren’t just smart; we were the smartest.  We weren’t just great- we were the greatest.  And we weren’t just pretty; we were the most beautiful in the entire world.  What our parents didn’t realize is that some of us would grow dependent on this steady stream of compliments.  I was one of the superlative junkies in desperate, constant search of a fix. (169)

“Sweetheart, I love that you are open to things,” William said. “I know this was a disappointment, but look at all of the things you try that work out well.  Sometimes you’re open to things that don’t pan out, but that’s part of the package.” (270)

Highlights: The scenery was amazing; the writing was personal and poignant; it was laugh-out-loud funny in parts; it made me want to hug my momma a little tighter.

Lowlights: Sometimes she was a little too neurotic and I just could not.

Not That Kind of Girl — Lena Dunham

I am not a mother of three or the owner of a successful hosiery franchise.  But I am a girl with a keen interest in having it all, and what follows are hopeful dispatches from the frontlines of that struggle. (xvii)

My reputation was preceding me, and not in the way I had always dreamed of. (Example: Have you met Lena?  I have never met a more simultaneously creative and sexual woman.  Her hips are so flexible she could join the circus, but she’s too smart.) But I had standards, and I wouldn’t share a bed with just anyone. (16)

I was a working woman.  I deserved kisses.  I deserved to be treated like a piece of meat but also respected for my intellect. (20)

I would be a horrible girlfriend at this point in my life because I’m both needy and unavailable. (35)

Romance was the best way I knew to forget my obligations, to obliterate the self and pretend to be someone else. (71)

I have written sentences about how the first time we made love it felt like dropping my keys on the table after a long trip, and about wearing his sneakers as we ran across the park toward my house, which would someday be our house. (76-77)

“You will find,” she says, “that there is a certain grace to having your heart broken.”  I will use this line many times in the years to come, giving it as a gift to anyone who needs it. (144)

I’d never had a teacher talk to me like that.  Like I was a person, whose ideas and feelings mattered.  He wasn’t just nice.  He saw me for who I felt I was: achingly brilliant, misunderstood, full of novellas and poems and well-timed jokes.  He told me that popular kids never grow up to be interesting and that interesting kids are never popular.  For the first time, I looked forward to school. (167)

It will be a look back at an era when women in Hollywood were treated like the paper thingies that protect glasses in hotel bathrooms — necessary but infinitely disposable. (197)

Throughout the day I often ask myself, Could I fall asleep right now? and the answer is always a resounding yes. (235)

Highlights: It was so funny; I wanted to be her best friend; Dunham made me feel like she truly understood me on so many levels; I loved that she was just as awkward as me (!!).

Lowlights: That it ended.  Seriously.

Redeployment — Phil Klay

“I’m an Iraqi,” she’d said on my previous visit. “I am used to promises that are good but not real.” (109)

Unlike your average American citizen, Vockler could locate who had died for him in a particular human being.  A particular human being he’d known and loved with the sort of passion Marines have for good combat leaders. Even most marriages can’t compare with that (245)

Highlights: The writing was interesting; I felt like I had a much deeper understanding of the way that war effects our soldiers; the stories showed so many different ways that the battle stays with you long after you come home.

Lowlights: There are points in which the stories hurt so much to read/made me want to punch something/made me feel like I needed to vomit that I just wanted to quit.

The Secret Lives of Men and Women — Frank Warren

Highlights: It’s PostSecret, so some of the secrets spoke directly to my soul.

Lowlights: It’s PostSecret, so some of the secrets were incredibly hard to read and made me want to cry.

The World of PostSecret – Frank Warren

Favorite secrets include:

I’ve gone from a full, furnished house to a backpack full of belongings.  I’ve found home.  It was with me the whole time.

I try to be a good person, but there’s a side of me that’s just a mean little bitch.  I keep her at bay with cookies.

Am I the only one who feels like there is a lot of sexual tension in libraries?

I miss you while I’m looking for myself out here.

The best love affairs are those we never had.

Highlights: It’s PostSecret, so it was emotionally charged and made me want to cry.  Also the one-liners scattered throughout, such as “One way to hear your children’s secrets is to tell them one of yours first,” are great.

Lowlights: It’s PostSecret, so sometimes it’s really hard to read.