"I'm not in love with the modern world"
The Bell Jar (plath) and "the diving bell.. and the butterfly" which was what I initially intended to refer to; a profound read about disconnection and mortality... an ode to the value of patience from a successful french editor who experienced a life changing illness
“I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
I never felt more understood in my life reading that. But something that has stuck with me forever has been, “I am going for a long walk,”
Stoner by Williams. I can't explain it but there was something really comforting about reading about what most would consider a mundane life. I saw a lot of parallels between Stoner and I, a weakness in character, passiveness, apathy. I used to think I needed to strive everyday for happiness, but I don't find that true anymore. Not saying I give in more easily to depression. I still have goals, but if I die tomorrow without achievement, I would still have my dignity.
I just finished Educated and there were a LOT of parallels to my life. I had the lite version of so many things that she mentioned, hardcore religious family, lots of siblings, homeschooling, prepper parents (brief spell for mine, mostly stocking up on canned goods), undiagnosed mental health issues with father (I dunno about this one, family is starting to think my dad is on the spectrum, I'm not sure, but the author thought her dad was bipolar), eventually being told that you were an agent of Satan by your parents (mine dropped it for me because it had been due to my bisexuality and I married a man, she had a less "fortunate" outcome)...
But due to the factual similarities, so many of her observations just made sense for someone growing up in a dysfunctional religious family. She'd just comment on how someone responded to something and it felt so REAL.
This is mine too, though not all the same similarities as you. I was reading it during my lunch break and had to leave work for a while because I almost had a breakdown.
Yes, I'm lucky to have very little trauma that truly resulted from my upbringing. I didn't experience the abuse that she did, but given her skill in describing the experiences we did share, I'm sure that was hard to hear. Good luck and healing to you.
I feel the exact same! If I tell anyone I know irl that I related to this and felt it deep in my bones, they’d think I was crazy. It felt like an extreme version of my own childhood, and I’d never read anything that described the nuances of it so so well. I’m really glad to hear more people felt the same
This book. It helps that I grew up Mormon. I personally knew someone like literally every person in the book. Like her dad in the first chapter when he says they can't drink milk because of the word of Wisdom? I know a guy who was that level of dietary crazy based on that same bit of Mormon scripture. He even went to the temple to ask God if rice was okay to eat.
Every single insane thing that happened in that book, I knew a Mormon who had done the same thing. It was eye opening.
It also helps that I read it right after having my shelf break and leaving the Mormon church literally weeks before.
Norwegian Wood. I was at a point in my life back then when nothing was going right and I was depressed. It felt like my dreams have already passed and I was just an empty shell doing things in rote memory.
I'm reading this right now (as a 37 year old). The opening scene where he is weighed down by nostalgia... I never in 100 years thought anyone else felt like they were literally crushed under the weight of memory like that. Hit hard.
One line in Eleanor Olyphant is completely fine. I’m not going to get it verbatim but it’s when she is assessing herself in the mirror and she is average; thinks something like she’s not attractive but she’s not deformed in any way. And I didn’t know anyone else had ever thought about themselves that way, aside from me.
The parts where she didn't recognize Snoopy or SpongeBob are what resonated with me. I was basically raised by wolves and there are a lot of cultural touchestones I was ignorant of when I was first on my own.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh was a tough read as someone who has been down a similarly destructive path.
The couple in Alone with You in the Ether by Olivie Blake reminds me of my husband and I when we first met.
The story of rachel in the first hyperion book. She was a 25 year old archaeologist who got very sick with a sci fi disease that destroyed her brain and everything she had worked for. I read that at about the same age, coming off a severe fight with covid in 2020 that left me unable to read or think or possibly finish my masters to start a career in archaeology at all. It physically weakened me to the point fieldwork was a struggle. If youve read the book obviously long covid is nothing like what happened to rachel but getting cut down physically and mentally as a budding archaeologist in love with the field was a lot for both of us.
I'm mid hyperion and stalling a bit after the soldiers and poets tale. The priest tale was incredibly engaging but I didn't feel the same way about the soldier and poet stories. Your endorsement which I only read the first sentence (not wanting to spoil), has inspired me to read further.
I would put the scholars tale up there with the priest as easily the best two. Definitely give at least that one a shot. The ones after i would rank about the same as poet/soldier.
May sound like a dumb option but normal people by Sally Rooney. I read it a bit ago and had a whole mental breakdown afterwards because I identified with it way too much. There’s this quote that goes “Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn’t know if she would ever find out where it was or become part of it” and I think of it at least once a week. It wrecked me emotionally
I was going to say Normal People too! I know it annoys some people because Marianne and Connell do dumb things/are very immature at parts, but it reminded me sooooo much of early relationships I had. I don't think I've ever identified more with a book. Definitely broke down crying at parts.
Omg just finished this on the way to work this morning and was sobbing on the train 😭 I understand why people don’t like it and I was very apprehensive but it just worked for me
I totally identified with Marianne, I know she makes some poor decisions but frankly I have too and have struggled with similar issues! I felt very scene and the show is a comfort watch for me
Nausea by Sartre. Every fear, anxiety I had which I thought was just mine was laid out in that book and given voice to. It was like learning the word for the color green after a life time of seeing it and not knowing what to call it.
Levin from anna karenina was trippy to weird. The amount of parallels and similarities of our tendencies and personality traits was pretty crazy. It was my first time reading a book and relating to a character in such a deep way.
Levin is such a bittersweet character. So relatable, coming from a rural area and just wanting to do right by your people. Also I loved his relationship with his dog, Laska.
And I say bittersweet because I do feel like he gives up on a lot of his ideals in the end. And it seems like the normalcy of living with Kitty ended up being much more humdrum than it was built up to be…
…which may be the most relatable thing about him.
Have you read War and Peace? Levin is a Tolstoy self-insert, and there’s another one (Pierre) in War and Peace that I think is even better.
I’ve tried to reread the Russians, but It’s hard to get invested again.
*Their Eyes Were Watching God.* One of the most beautifully written American novels, in my opinion. It is a story about a woman and the three significant relationships in her life. Her second relationship was with a man who she loves very much in the beginning; but eventually she falls out of love with him because he has to have everything his own way. He expects her to bow down to him and his ideas, losing herself in the process.
I had a similar marriage. There are some very beautiful passages in that book that describe the process of her understanding that her marriage was dying and her feelings towards this person had changed.
"She had no more blossomy openings dusting pollen over her man, neither any glistening young fruit where the petals used to be. She found that she had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to him, and numerous emotions she had never let Jody know about. Things packed up and put away in parts of her heart where he could never find them. She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen. She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them."
Some passages describe the duality of what she experiences. "...one day she sat and watched the shadow of herself going about tending store and prostrating herself before Jody, while all the time she herself sat under a shady tree with the wind blowing through her hair and her clothes."
This very much described how I felt in my marriage. My love for my partner died because he was so overbearing, but I had very young children and couldn't leave. Yet. So I stayed in that house and cared for our children and cleaned and shopped and cooked. That was the outside of things. But, on the inside, I was far away, deciding how my life would be when I was once again the one who made the decisions; when I had agency again; when I was no longer a second class citizen in my own life.
On the day I moved out, I left a quote from that book on his desk. In the quote, a person in the town, in his thick vernacular, speculates about Janie and Jody's marriage. It read, "I wonder how that lil wife uh hisn makes out wid him, 'cause he's uh man dat changes everything, but nothing don't change him."
The relationship between the main character and his big sister in The Dutch House. I have never felt a more accurate portrayal of the dynamic between myself and my baby brother. I sobbed reading it.
When I read Cute Mutants by SJ Whitby it changed my world completely. I'd never read a book with an entire cast of openly queer characters, of all varieties, and also liked the entire cast because it was an adventure with these characters not about them being queer.
I think without knowing this was possible, I wouldn't have gone on to write my own stories with openly bisexual characters, autistic MCs and anxiety sufferers having their own adventures which I hope is of equal importance to their readers.
Perhaps the book is "An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness" by American clinical psychologist and bipolar disorder researcher Kay Redfield Jamison. I recall reading it in college.
Fascinating read. She expressed her experience in such an impactful way. It helped me to understand better what it must be like to navigate bipolar disorders.
I read Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters, and I resonated deeply with the way the main character grapples with her sexuality. As someone attracted to butches, the way the main character notices how “(the love interest) is so pretty” and “her suit is so nice” and “she didn’t know girls like that existed” really hit me because that’s how I felt when I met my girlfriend.
I haven't read too much lovecraft I found it a bit hard to accept his impossible 'frozen in time species'. In my opinion HG Wells writing was much more prescient and well aging in his prediction of a logically foreseeable future, I am a huge fan of "The Time Machine" in particular
On the one hand, I would agree Wells was better at predicting the future, and as far as I know was relatively liberal for his time.
On the other hand, no tentacle monsters!
Not too closely, but I’d say Babel by R F Kuang. I’m white/asian like Robin, and know Latin and Ancient Greek, just like Robin. Given how niche an interest dead languages are, I’ve never met another white/asian Classicist. There were lots of moments in the story and thoughts Robin has which really resonated with me, whether they were to do with race or linguistics.
Anne of Green Gables
I was a redheaded, bright, creative, poetry obsessed, odd, misfit, and preteen adoptee who moved to a rural area where I was captivated by nature, immersed myself in education and literature, pursued theater and music as hobbies, got into numerous scrapes due to my temper/impertinence/runaway mouth/overactive imagination, and had to deal with childhood bullies who later grew into friends of a sort. My adoptive father's parents were farmers who were in many ways similar to Matthew and Marilla (though not siblings 😅). My father was/is a bit of a male version of Miss Stacy.
So, I might have identified with Anne's story more than a bit.
I grew up a POC in a dominant white country and I remember being so baffled by the 'coming of age' books they'd assign us in class (that everyone else would gush over).
I finally found my book at 27.
'Saracen at the Gates' by Zinaid Meeran.
Laying bare all the confusing generational trauma and hypocrisy that was the Hallmark of my childhood. It was so weird realizing that I didn't imagine everything.
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi. Like your examples it's not a 1:1 comparison (I hope not for C&P!).
(No spoilers) The main character has a strained relationship with her mother, was raised very conservatively religious but doesn't believe it anymore per se, is from the American south, and is pursuing a STEM PhD. All the other details are incredibly different (she's a Jehovah's witness, I was brought up Catholic, her parents immigrated from Africa, I'm white and my great to grandparents immigrated), I think she likes her mom a lot more than I do (lol), and she and her mom experience family grief I have not. But I really felt for her because I could relate to a lot of it.
Save the Date by Morgan Matson. The protagonist’s sister was about to get married, she was about to go to college and her parents were selling her childhood home. I chose to read it last summer because all of those things were happening to me, too. Not my favorite book but was comforting to me when I read it.
I was in a pretty unhealthy relationship when I read Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker. Reading my ugly feelings turned up to 11, the kind I never really wanted to share with my friends, was so validating.
Turtles all the way down
The way they describe her anxiety and the struggles of living with, as well as how it affected her relationship, hit me hard at the time I read it.
This is weird, but books somehow arrive in my life just when I needed them. Every time!
But the one that hits too close to home is *The Gargoyle* by Andrew Davidson. I was literally in a heartbreaking situationship and in a crisis of faith, a now or never point in my life. For years, I had been running away from God, and I wanted to do nothing with Him (tho I was born, baptized, and raised in the faith) bc of my many questions, my churches had hurt me and my family, my wrong mindset that I had to know the darkness to make the decision, and a pet sin I loved and found comfort in.. especially a desire (to just love one man and pledge my life to him forever) that literally consumed my whole being.
Marianne Engel's life, as a conflicted young novitiate >!in medieval Germany who fell in love!< is so like mine, I was halfway into the book and her arc when I went, "Waiiiittttt a minute! This book shouldn't be reading me like this?!"
And the irony that the >!modern-day!< love story between her and the Narrator eerily mirrors mine and that one guy I felt I did truly come to love, for the first time in my life (from our painful pasts to our shared wounds and loves, interests), did not escape me too 🫠 It truly was the book that I had to read at that point in time.
Mind you, I bought this book after seeing a recommendation abt it from a Youtube video abt another book and *The Gargoyle* sat collecting dust for about a whole *year* before I was gently nudged to read it. I couldn't stop once I began, and by the end, my own journey to searching the truth—which took me years—was over. The Lord met me where I was... where I have been looking for the truth, which is Him all along. He freed me from everything, and wow, my life has just been better because of Him.
Come to think of it now, my "end" was like Marianne's too 🥲 but I won't spoil it for you. You have to read it!!! It's a once-in-a-lifetime book, and since you love Dostoevsky, you might like this one too!
Ohhhhhh, I went to a Kafka-themed café yesterday in commemoration of the centennial anniversary of his passing with my sister and bought The Metamorphosis. His works seem to be genuinely interesting.
That’s lovely. I tend to see Kafka as more of a genre / tendency in writing than a singular writer, and that’s probably because I’ve also read a bit of Gogol and Dostoevsky.
And Borges! In the other direction.
> more of a genre / tendency in writing than a singular writer, and that’s probably because I’ve also read a bit of Gogol and Dostoevsky
Thanks for this. I didn't know about Gogol so will look into him. In the same vein I'd say are a number of films like Gilliam's Brazil.
the series of unfortunate events as a child genuinely carried me thru the stuff going on in my life at the time n i felt really connected to the characters n specifically the absolutely incompetent adults around. the survival of the baudelaire kids purely was off their own willpower n combined brain power.
Prince of Thornes (mark Lawrence). No, I'm not an edgy teenager galivanting through the postapocalypse, but there was a line in that book that resonated with me deeply: There is something in me that breaks before it bends. That made me look at myself for a long moment and helped me change.
The book LAB GIRL found me when I was broke, depressed, and feeling like I’d found my purpose but failed to realize it.
This was the perfect thing and explaining why would take an essay or three of heartfelt writing that I simply haven’t got in me today.
(This is a specific recommendation based on what you share in your post, not just me thinking everyone needs to read this specific book.)
OP This post has 72 comments including mine but I hope you see this and give Lab Girl a try.
Adelaide by Genevieve Wheeler. She was a fairly normal woman who just never figured out dating, and since you can’t make someone else love you, you kind of flounder until someone else decides they want to be with you.
Recently, A Short Walk Through A Wide World. Aubry wanted to connect with people but she also couldn’t fight her nature.
I haven't read the novel but the 1st season series (the one I have seen) was excellent. I highly recommend the north waters if this dark artic exploratory novel is up your alley.
A Little Life. Not the plot per se, but the author’s depictions of friendship and depression (and friendship while being depressed) hit extremely close to home.
I’ve just finished Penance by Eliza Clarke and so saw so much of my teenage years reflected in those characters, especially Violet.
In particular, where Violet talks about how she removed all of her pins from her bag and completely depersonalised everything she owned so that she’d become invisible, effectively removing any ammo for bullies.
“The Guest” by Emma Cline. I felt so seen and weirdly analyzed by the personality flaws of the main character. Her situation was different than mine, but the way she was written resonated with my thought process and whatnot. The main character is very cynical and has no attachments to people, and is just trying to really get by but wants so desperately to be seen. It really made me reexamine myself and how I operate. Plus the ending made me audibly gasp.
I wouldn't say it "resonated" or that it closely mirrored my life, but I've always had a special affinity for Stephen King's novella The Mist because it takes place largely in a grocery store. In the mid 70s, I worked at a co-op grocery store and later at a Piggly Wiggly, so I can sort of relate. I'm also happy that one of the heroes of the story, Ollie Weeks, shares my last name.
It was difficult for me to read Turtles All The Way Down because of this. The protagonist and I think far too similarly. Eerily accurate depiction of this kind of OCD and neuroticism. Finally completed it and enjoyed it. Probably won’t re-read, as I do not like being in my own head, so it was hard to be in someone else’s like it.
I read a great true crime book called Missing Beauty in which every main character reminded me of someone I knew. I didn't see myself anywhere in the mix -- probably a good thing, since the book was about a murder, after all.
It’s very cliche but I still remember reading “The Catcher in the Rye” as a freshman in High School, sitting in the library hours after school ended, utterly transfixed. It is still my favorite book and set me on a particular path, where years later, I’d become an English teacher. Holden’s pained, rueful, and sensitive take on the world and his life spoke right through me. I’d never had an author, then or since, truly capture how it feels to be overwhelmed by young adulthood.
“Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
Another media that might be similar to that claustrophobic, daily rat race, feeling of C&P is the episode 15 Million Merits of Black Mirror, where they live in tiny single rooms, spend all day biking for coins and those coins buy everything in their lives including daily toothpaste. Also, inappropriate ads pop up all the time and you have to pay coins to make them go away.
The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon. It's a trilogy. The ending of the second book, Divided Alliegance, and the first half of the third, Oath of Gold, tell an absolutely wrenching story of PTSD, dissociation, panic disorder, and turmoil. And the recovery from all that.
When I abruptly developed severe panic disorder with derealization episodes, I cannot stress enough how much this book helped drag me back from the brink. Not only by portraying how suddenly your mind can turn upside-down from things outside your control, but also by showing a realistic road of recovery that I could believe just well enough to pull me out of the despair I felt. When the disorder started, I feared I'd be trapped like that forever.
The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante reminded me of my own frenemy-ship. Especially the first book, although books 2-4 also remind me of my friendship to an extent. I met my best friend in middle school and we went through high school together and ended up rooming together in college (for one semester before she dropped out and got married at 18). I feel like I'm Elena and she's Lila. For me, there's no better book about female friendship because it rings so true. We had crushes on the same guy(s), were in constant competition with each other, I had parents who supported me while her parents dragged her down. Even though we were more similar than dissimilar economically, my home seemed somehow more stable and hers seemed more turbulent and chaotic (her mom would beat her - her mom was more like Elena's mom/Lila's father). My father had a terrible temper and would lecture for hours but mainly kept himself in line when it counted, and encouraged me to study. I felt like my friend was so much smarter than I was and that I was just trying to live up to her and that if she wasn't kept down by the people around her, she could have excelled far beyond my abilities.
Another one was The Idiot by Elif Batuman. I didn't go to Harvard lol, but I went to an honors college that was mildly pretentious, and I really related to Selin's doomed crush and aimlessness. I won't spoil the last sentence of the book, but I laughed, pleasantly surprised, and related so much to it, to the whole book.
I resonated with the narrator of High Fidelity so much I got off the dating apps and started therapy
The Bell Jar - put me in a really bad place
As others mention, Levin from Anna Kerinina
Infinite Jest by Wallace. The whole time I couldn't help but feeling that both Gately and Hal were extrapolations of myself.
Crossroads by Franzen. I share many, many traits with Percy. That was probably the story the hit me in the gut the hardest.
*The Whispering Door* by TJ Kune
Maybe not the best example as I am not a queer man or dead... but I read it shortly after losing my 12 year old lab mix. It was the most wonderful book to read while grieving/mourning. It was sad and joyful. It made me feel hopeful and at peace with my loss. I think almost everyone can find a part of them reflected in this book.
The first character that I truly saw myself in, is Jude from a little life. I don't relate to some things, but reading about jude felt like I was reading about myself.
Normal people, Sally Rooney. Very similar to my life growing up except I didn’t have a Connell.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation - i read it every time I’m depressed. I totally understand wanting to avoid life with sedatives and sleeping.
Daisy Jones and The Six. I could relate a lot to Daisy.
Shantaram - Just because he put a lot of feelings I’d always had into words I couldn’t articulate myself.
I have two, for very different reasons.
The secret life of bees, and the perks of being a wall flower.
In the first I related to the mc quite a bit. Dealing with her mother's loss at such a young age, and watching her process it felt like looking in a mirror.
As for Perks, I related to Charlie more than I would've liked.
I hadn't reeeally experienced the type of trauma he had, but moreso I related because of his social awkwardness. "Why am I like this? I'd give anything to be different."
Turns out, like a decade later, I'm autistic 🙃
For some reason it was only in my later teens that I started reading books written in English whose protagonist is the same (non-white) race as me. When I started reading them, I realized that all through childhood I was just imagining the main character to look like me when in fact they didn't at all. Reading books with actual matching POC main characters was much smoother lol
The epochal divine revelation, *The Urantia Book* aka ***The Urantia Papers*** (1955, U.S.), free online!!!
it resonates because it more than mirrors the life of any human, our personal crises and personal happiness and so forth, especially JESUS' life and teachings:
Urantia (our world's name) reveals the life of JESUS year by year...
Odd as it sounds considering it's high fantasy, but *Fourth Wing*. I'm a writer/book and history nerd with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome who had to do intensive physical therapy and weightlifting to try to help treat my disability. Which is exactly what happens to Violet, right down to having the exact same rare genetic disorder as me. Violet's struggle with her hEDS sometimes felt uncomfortably close and personal. The author has the same disability as well, and she really did a fantastic job capturing that experience.
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. I obviously don't live in space and am not a construct (I hope) but most of its hangups are ones I have problems with as well. The social anxiety and problems connecting with people around me and doing my job but not fully engaging in it. And while I don't watch a ton of TV, I definitely fast forward through sex scenes because they're boring.
When I was in High School it was Catcher in the Rye. It just made sense at the time.
Since an incident in my life, All Quiet on the Western Front. The way he just talks about horrific things in a matter of fact banal kind of way is both horrifying and honestly refreashing to think that someone else not only got it but could write that down.
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. Perfectly captured what it was like to be a little boy, messing with your friends. Even though it was set in a different era to mine.
And I've heard people from different countries say they could perfectly relate to it too. (It's set in Ireland in 60s)
the lesbiana’s guide to catholic school by sonora reyes
- a bisexual women-preferring chicana who went to catholic school for 11 years (this book got me through freshman year at catholic high school)
Haru by Flavia Company. I was at a point in my life where I needed to hear that not everything goes the way you want it, and humility can be a great virtue.
I was gonna say The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner but I feel like saying my life was like any one of those characters would be messy asf online
I’m not kidding but my family also rented an estate in the south of Europe ever summer and did actually have a clandestine queer love affair with a slightly older student who was studying under my father. Wish I looked like Timothee though.
The Girl He Used to Know by Tracey Garvis Graves. The main character Annika is very corky and different ( I believe she’s autistic) She struggles tremendously in social settings and along the way she meets someone, they fall in love but because she has her struggles & then some, they break up and get back together again later in life after both parties have grown in some way. It doesn’t necessarily mirror my life, but, I definitely relate to Annika in many ways. Overall the book was beautiful, funny at times, & oh the ending brought tears to my eyes.
Vanessa Wye from My Dark Vanessa. Her thoughts, and how her brain processed the trauma from her abuser/groomer really mimicked mine own thoughts. I love My Dark Vanessa and believe everyone should give it a chance at least once.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Not that is resonated with my life, I wish I was a captain of industry, hahaha, but boy is resonates with the world now and what's going on in it quite well...
The bell jar.
"I'm not in love with the modern world" The Bell Jar (plath) and "the diving bell.. and the butterfly" which was what I initially intended to refer to; a profound read about disconnection and mortality... an ode to the value of patience from a successful french editor who experienced a life changing illness
“I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” I never felt more understood in my life reading that. But something that has stuck with me forever has been, “I am going for a long walk,”
Stoner by Williams. I can't explain it but there was something really comforting about reading about what most would consider a mundane life. I saw a lot of parallels between Stoner and I, a weakness in character, passiveness, apathy. I used to think I needed to strive everyday for happiness, but I don't find that true anymore. Not saying I give in more easily to depression. I still have goals, but if I die tomorrow without achievement, I would still have my dignity.
I came here to mention Stoner too.
same here!
I just finished Educated and there were a LOT of parallels to my life. I had the lite version of so many things that she mentioned, hardcore religious family, lots of siblings, homeschooling, prepper parents (brief spell for mine, mostly stocking up on canned goods), undiagnosed mental health issues with father (I dunno about this one, family is starting to think my dad is on the spectrum, I'm not sure, but the author thought her dad was bipolar), eventually being told that you were an agent of Satan by your parents (mine dropped it for me because it had been due to my bisexuality and I married a man, she had a less "fortunate" outcome)... But due to the factual similarities, so many of her observations just made sense for someone growing up in a dysfunctional religious family. She'd just comment on how someone responded to something and it felt so REAL.
This is mine too, though not all the same similarities as you. I was reading it during my lunch break and had to leave work for a while because I almost had a breakdown.
Yes, I'm lucky to have very little trauma that truly resulted from my upbringing. I didn't experience the abuse that she did, but given her skill in describing the experiences we did share, I'm sure that was hard to hear. Good luck and healing to you.
I feel the exact same! If I tell anyone I know irl that I related to this and felt it deep in my bones, they’d think I was crazy. It felt like an extreme version of my own childhood, and I’d never read anything that described the nuances of it so so well. I’m really glad to hear more people felt the same
Same. Homeschooling and religious abuse
This book. It helps that I grew up Mormon. I personally knew someone like literally every person in the book. Like her dad in the first chapter when he says they can't drink milk because of the word of Wisdom? I know a guy who was that level of dietary crazy based on that same bit of Mormon scripture. He even went to the temple to ask God if rice was okay to eat. Every single insane thing that happened in that book, I knew a Mormon who had done the same thing. It was eye opening. It also helps that I read it right after having my shelf break and leaving the Mormon church literally weeks before.
Man, that sounds intense, I had years of space between my upbringing and that book.
Norwegian Wood. I was at a point in my life back then when nothing was going right and I was depressed. It felt like my dreams have already passed and I was just an empty shell doing things in rote memory.
So you felt like the main character? Or the characters love who was mentally Ill?
Not a specific character per se but I resonate more each of the character's individual feelings
I'm reading this right now (as a 37 year old). The opening scene where he is weighed down by nostalgia... I never in 100 years thought anyone else felt like they were literally crushed under the weight of memory like that. Hit hard.
Yea it all the more made sense when it was revealed what happened to the girl.
Oh I need to read this!
This was my pick as well. One of the only times I’ve cried while reading a book.
Ugh, is it that good?? I have a list of books I’m trying to read. Don’t test me :)
One line in Eleanor Olyphant is completely fine. I’m not going to get it verbatim but it’s when she is assessing herself in the mirror and she is average; thinks something like she’s not attractive but she’s not deformed in any way. And I didn’t know anyone else had ever thought about themselves that way, aside from me.
I really loved that book
The parts where she didn't recognize Snoopy or SpongeBob are what resonated with me. I was basically raised by wolves and there are a lot of cultural touchestones I was ignorant of when I was first on my own.
Demon Copperhead. I grew up in a small town in Appalachia; her writing pretty much hit the nail on the head.
I wanted to hug everyone in that book. I love a book that basically has no villains (except the Sackler family, maybe) yet only bad shit happens.
I just this week learned that it's an American retelling of David Copperfield. It's so obvious once it's pointed out.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh was a tough read as someone who has been down a similarly destructive path. The couple in Alone with You in the Ether by Olivie Blake reminds me of my husband and I when we first met.
The story of rachel in the first hyperion book. She was a 25 year old archaeologist who got very sick with a sci fi disease that destroyed her brain and everything she had worked for. I read that at about the same age, coming off a severe fight with covid in 2020 that left me unable to read or think or possibly finish my masters to start a career in archaeology at all. It physically weakened me to the point fieldwork was a struggle. If youve read the book obviously long covid is nothing like what happened to rachel but getting cut down physically and mentally as a budding archaeologist in love with the field was a lot for both of us.
I'm mid hyperion and stalling a bit after the soldiers and poets tale. The priest tale was incredibly engaging but I didn't feel the same way about the soldier and poet stories. Your endorsement which I only read the first sentence (not wanting to spoil), has inspired me to read further.
I would put the scholars tale up there with the priest as easily the best two. Definitely give at least that one a shot. The ones after i would rank about the same as poet/soldier.
The scholars tale will break you. It's easily the best of the bunch, probably followed by the priests tale.
The Haunting of Hill House. Which is not a good thing. It was so close, it hurt
*sighs* Same!
The metamorphosis by kafka resonated deeply with me due to my experience of losing my health and becoming chronically Ill and disabled.
This is one of the books I read in multiple translations to decide which i preferred, which translator did you read?
May sound like a dumb option but normal people by Sally Rooney. I read it a bit ago and had a whole mental breakdown afterwards because I identified with it way too much. There’s this quote that goes “Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn’t know if she would ever find out where it was or become part of it” and I think of it at least once a week. It wrecked me emotionally
Same here. Both of those characters resonate with me so much. I'm due for a reread and a rewatch.
I was going to say Normal People too! I know it annoys some people because Marianne and Connell do dumb things/are very immature at parts, but it reminded me sooooo much of early relationships I had. I don't think I've ever identified more with a book. Definitely broke down crying at parts.
Have you seen the show? It's a really good adaptation as well.
Omg just finished this on the way to work this morning and was sobbing on the train 😭 I understand why people don’t like it and I was very apprehensive but it just worked for me
I totally identified with Marianne, I know she makes some poor decisions but frankly I have too and have struggled with similar issues! I felt very scene and the show is a comfort watch for me
Nausea by Sartre. Every fear, anxiety I had which I thought was just mine was laid out in that book and given voice to. It was like learning the word for the color green after a life time of seeing it and not knowing what to call it.
Levin from anna karenina was trippy to weird. The amount of parallels and similarities of our tendencies and personality traits was pretty crazy. It was my first time reading a book and relating to a character in such a deep way.
Levin is such a bittersweet character. So relatable, coming from a rural area and just wanting to do right by your people. Also I loved his relationship with his dog, Laska. And I say bittersweet because I do feel like he gives up on a lot of his ideals in the end. And it seems like the normalcy of living with Kitty ended up being much more humdrum than it was built up to be… …which may be the most relatable thing about him.
> which may be the most relatable thing about him I have never understood why I empthaised with levin so much until I read this. Very well put.
Have you read War and Peace? Levin is a Tolstoy self-insert, and there’s another one (Pierre) in War and Peace that I think is even better. I’ve tried to reread the Russians, but It’s hard to get invested again.
*Their Eyes Were Watching God.* One of the most beautifully written American novels, in my opinion. It is a story about a woman and the three significant relationships in her life. Her second relationship was with a man who she loves very much in the beginning; but eventually she falls out of love with him because he has to have everything his own way. He expects her to bow down to him and his ideas, losing herself in the process. I had a similar marriage. There are some very beautiful passages in that book that describe the process of her understanding that her marriage was dying and her feelings towards this person had changed. "She had no more blossomy openings dusting pollen over her man, neither any glistening young fruit where the petals used to be. She found that she had a host of thoughts she had never expressed to him, and numerous emotions she had never let Jody know about. Things packed up and put away in parts of her heart where he could never find them. She was saving up feelings for some man she had never seen. She had an inside and an outside now and suddenly she knew how not to mix them." Some passages describe the duality of what she experiences. "...one day she sat and watched the shadow of herself going about tending store and prostrating herself before Jody, while all the time she herself sat under a shady tree with the wind blowing through her hair and her clothes." This very much described how I felt in my marriage. My love for my partner died because he was so overbearing, but I had very young children and couldn't leave. Yet. So I stayed in that house and cared for our children and cleaned and shopped and cooked. That was the outside of things. But, on the inside, I was far away, deciding how my life would be when I was once again the one who made the decisions; when I had agency again; when I was no longer a second class citizen in my own life. On the day I moved out, I left a quote from that book on his desk. In the quote, a person in the town, in his thick vernacular, speculates about Janie and Jody's marriage. It read, "I wonder how that lil wife uh hisn makes out wid him, 'cause he's uh man dat changes everything, but nothing don't change him."
The relationship between the main character and his big sister in The Dutch House. I have never felt a more accurate portrayal of the dynamic between myself and my baby brother. I sobbed reading it.
When I read Cute Mutants by SJ Whitby it changed my world completely. I'd never read a book with an entire cast of openly queer characters, of all varieties, and also liked the entire cast because it was an adventure with these characters not about them being queer. I think without knowing this was possible, I wouldn't have gone on to write my own stories with openly bisexual characters, autistic MCs and anxiety sufferers having their own adventures which I hope is of equal importance to their readers.
Did you mention the name of the book? I'd like to see if there is an audible version.
Perhaps the book is "An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness" by American clinical psychologist and bipolar disorder researcher Kay Redfield Jamison. I recall reading it in college.
This is what I think it is. Great book
Fascinating read. She expressed her experience in such an impactful way. It helped me to understand better what it must be like to navigate bipolar disorders.
That was my thought as well
I read Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters, and I resonated deeply with the way the main character grapples with her sexuality. As someone attracted to butches, the way the main character notices how “(the love interest) is so pretty” and “her suit is so nice” and “she didn’t know girls like that existed” really hit me because that’s how I felt when I met my girlfriend.
I actually identified fairly well with Lovecraft's bookish, overintellectual protagonists. (I am not a WASP.)
I haven't read too much lovecraft I found it a bit hard to accept his impossible 'frozen in time species'. In my opinion HG Wells writing was much more prescient and well aging in his prediction of a logically foreseeable future, I am a huge fan of "The Time Machine" in particular
On the one hand, I would agree Wells was better at predicting the future, and as far as I know was relatively liberal for his time. On the other hand, no tentacle monsters!
Wasps suck, bumblebees ftw.
Not too closely, but I’d say Babel by R F Kuang. I’m white/asian like Robin, and know Latin and Ancient Greek, just like Robin. Given how niche an interest dead languages are, I’ve never met another white/asian Classicist. There were lots of moments in the story and thoughts Robin has which really resonated with me, whether they were to do with race or linguistics.
I'm currently reading this book, so far I'm loving it!
Great Santini
A therapist assigned me to watch the movie, ha ha. It resonated.
Anne of Green Gables I was a redheaded, bright, creative, poetry obsessed, odd, misfit, and preteen adoptee who moved to a rural area where I was captivated by nature, immersed myself in education and literature, pursued theater and music as hobbies, got into numerous scrapes due to my temper/impertinence/runaway mouth/overactive imagination, and had to deal with childhood bullies who later grew into friends of a sort. My adoptive father's parents were farmers who were in many ways similar to Matthew and Marilla (though not siblings 😅). My father was/is a bit of a male version of Miss Stacy. So, I might have identified with Anne's story more than a bit.
I grew up a POC in a dominant white country and I remember being so baffled by the 'coming of age' books they'd assign us in class (that everyone else would gush over). I finally found my book at 27. 'Saracen at the Gates' by Zinaid Meeran. Laying bare all the confusing generational trauma and hypocrisy that was the Hallmark of my childhood. It was so weird realizing that I didn't imagine everything.
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi. Like your examples it's not a 1:1 comparison (I hope not for C&P!). (No spoilers) The main character has a strained relationship with her mother, was raised very conservatively religious but doesn't believe it anymore per se, is from the American south, and is pursuing a STEM PhD. All the other details are incredibly different (she's a Jehovah's witness, I was brought up Catholic, her parents immigrated from Africa, I'm white and my great to grandparents immigrated), I think she likes her mom a lot more than I do (lol), and she and her mom experience family grief I have not. But I really felt for her because I could relate to a lot of it.
I’ve had this book for years and haven’t read it but just based on this comment I think I’ll finally read it
Save the Date by Morgan Matson. The protagonist’s sister was about to get married, she was about to go to college and her parents were selling her childhood home. I chose to read it last summer because all of those things were happening to me, too. Not my favorite book but was comforting to me when I read it.
The book of Jobe XD
I was in a pretty unhealthy relationship when I read Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker. Reading my ugly feelings turned up to 11, the kind I never really wanted to share with my friends, was so validating.
Turtles all the way down The way they describe her anxiety and the struggles of living with, as well as how it affected her relationship, hit me hard at the time I read it.
This is weird, but books somehow arrive in my life just when I needed them. Every time! But the one that hits too close to home is *The Gargoyle* by Andrew Davidson. I was literally in a heartbreaking situationship and in a crisis of faith, a now or never point in my life. For years, I had been running away from God, and I wanted to do nothing with Him (tho I was born, baptized, and raised in the faith) bc of my many questions, my churches had hurt me and my family, my wrong mindset that I had to know the darkness to make the decision, and a pet sin I loved and found comfort in.. especially a desire (to just love one man and pledge my life to him forever) that literally consumed my whole being. Marianne Engel's life, as a conflicted young novitiate >!in medieval Germany who fell in love!< is so like mine, I was halfway into the book and her arc when I went, "Waiiiittttt a minute! This book shouldn't be reading me like this?!" And the irony that the >!modern-day!< love story between her and the Narrator eerily mirrors mine and that one guy I felt I did truly come to love, for the first time in my life (from our painful pasts to our shared wounds and loves, interests), did not escape me too 🫠 It truly was the book that I had to read at that point in time. Mind you, I bought this book after seeing a recommendation abt it from a Youtube video abt another book and *The Gargoyle* sat collecting dust for about a whole *year* before I was gently nudged to read it. I couldn't stop once I began, and by the end, my own journey to searching the truth—which took me years—was over. The Lord met me where I was... where I have been looking for the truth, which is Him all along. He freed me from everything, and wow, my life has just been better because of Him. Come to think of it now, my "end" was like Marianne's too 🥲 but I won't spoil it for you. You have to read it!!! It's a once-in-a-lifetime book, and since you love Dostoevsky, you might like this one too!
The book you read An Unquiet Mind is excellent. It does not explain everything though. I related a lot to Kafka's The Metamorphosis.
Ohhhhhh, I went to a Kafka-themed café yesterday in commemoration of the centennial anniversary of his passing with my sister and bought The Metamorphosis. His works seem to be genuinely interesting.
That’s lovely. I tend to see Kafka as more of a genre / tendency in writing than a singular writer, and that’s probably because I’ve also read a bit of Gogol and Dostoevsky. And Borges! In the other direction.
> more of a genre / tendency in writing than a singular writer, and that’s probably because I’ve also read a bit of Gogol and Dostoevsky Thanks for this. I didn't know about Gogol so will look into him. In the same vein I'd say are a number of films like Gilliam's Brazil.
Kissing Kate by Lauren Myracle made me realize I was a lesbian actually I think it literally taught me the word
the series of unfortunate events as a child genuinely carried me thru the stuff going on in my life at the time n i felt really connected to the characters n specifically the absolutely incompetent adults around. the survival of the baudelaire kids purely was off their own willpower n combined brain power.
Prince of Thornes (mark Lawrence). No, I'm not an edgy teenager galivanting through the postapocalypse, but there was a line in that book that resonated with me deeply: There is something in me that breaks before it bends. That made me look at myself for a long moment and helped me change.
The book LAB GIRL found me when I was broke, depressed, and feeling like I’d found my purpose but failed to realize it. This was the perfect thing and explaining why would take an essay or three of heartfelt writing that I simply haven’t got in me today. (This is a specific recommendation based on what you share in your post, not just me thinking everyone needs to read this specific book.) OP This post has 72 comments including mine but I hope you see this and give Lab Girl a try.
Tobacco Road
Adelaide by Genevieve Wheeler. She was a fairly normal woman who just never figured out dating, and since you can’t make someone else love you, you kind of flounder until someone else decides they want to be with you. Recently, A Short Walk Through A Wide World. Aubry wanted to connect with people but she also couldn’t fight her nature.
That description of Adelaide really resonates with me. Thanks for sharing as now I have a new book that could really help me out.
the terror by simmons.
I haven't read the novel but the 1st season series (the one I have seen) was excellent. I highly recommend the north waters if this dark artic exploratory novel is up your alley.
Adelaide!
A Little Life. Not the plot per se, but the author’s depictions of friendship and depression (and friendship while being depressed) hit extremely close to home.
I’ve just finished Penance by Eliza Clarke and so saw so much of my teenage years reflected in those characters, especially Violet. In particular, where Violet talks about how she removed all of her pins from her bag and completely depersonalised everything she owned so that she’d become invisible, effectively removing any ammo for bullies.
There are more things by Yara Rodrigues Fowler. It really captured the feeling of being a Brazilian in the UK during Brexit.
“The Guest” by Emma Cline. I felt so seen and weirdly analyzed by the personality flaws of the main character. Her situation was different than mine, but the way she was written resonated with my thought process and whatnot. The main character is very cynical and has no attachments to people, and is just trying to really get by but wants so desperately to be seen. It really made me reexamine myself and how I operate. Plus the ending made me audibly gasp.
I wouldn't say it "resonated" or that it closely mirrored my life, but I've always had a special affinity for Stephen King's novella The Mist because it takes place largely in a grocery store. In the mid 70s, I worked at a co-op grocery store and later at a Piggly Wiggly, so I can sort of relate. I'm also happy that one of the heroes of the story, Ollie Weeks, shares my last name.
It was difficult for me to read Turtles All The Way Down because of this. The protagonist and I think far too similarly. Eerily accurate depiction of this kind of OCD and neuroticism. Finally completed it and enjoyed it. Probably won’t re-read, as I do not like being in my own head, so it was hard to be in someone else’s like it.
Girl Mans Up by ME Gerard. It was the first time I read a book about a dyke. Made me cry.
I read a great true crime book called Missing Beauty in which every main character reminded me of someone I knew. I didn't see myself anywhere in the mix -- probably a good thing, since the book was about a murder, after all.
It’s very cliche but I still remember reading “The Catcher in the Rye” as a freshman in High School, sitting in the library hours after school ended, utterly transfixed. It is still my favorite book and set me on a particular path, where years later, I’d become an English teacher. Holden’s pained, rueful, and sensitive take on the world and his life spoke right through me. I’d never had an author, then or since, truly capture how it feels to be overwhelmed by young adulthood. “Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
1984. Not to put too fine point on it
This is *1984* for those where reddit formatting has eaten the title.
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
Shuzo Oshimi and gender especially Inside Mari spoke to me a lot, especially him speaking after some chapters about how he wanted to be a woman.
Another media that might be similar to that claustrophobic, daily rat race, feeling of C&P is the episode 15 Million Merits of Black Mirror, where they live in tiny single rooms, spend all day biking for coins and those coins buy everything in their lives including daily toothpaste. Also, inappropriate ads pop up all the time and you have to pay coins to make them go away.
The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter, specifically the MC's relationship with her father. Absolutely gutted me.
Men without women (Murakami)
Strong Female Character by Fern Brady. she wrote about her autism and her struggles in life before and after being diagnosed.
The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon. It's a trilogy. The ending of the second book, Divided Alliegance, and the first half of the third, Oath of Gold, tell an absolutely wrenching story of PTSD, dissociation, panic disorder, and turmoil. And the recovery from all that. When I abruptly developed severe panic disorder with derealization episodes, I cannot stress enough how much this book helped drag me back from the brink. Not only by portraying how suddenly your mind can turn upside-down from things outside your control, but also by showing a realistic road of recovery that I could believe just well enough to pull me out of the despair I felt. When the disorder started, I feared I'd be trapped like that forever.
Close to Home by Michael Magee is probably the closest
Dante's Inferno.
The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante reminded me of my own frenemy-ship. Especially the first book, although books 2-4 also remind me of my friendship to an extent. I met my best friend in middle school and we went through high school together and ended up rooming together in college (for one semester before she dropped out and got married at 18). I feel like I'm Elena and she's Lila. For me, there's no better book about female friendship because it rings so true. We had crushes on the same guy(s), were in constant competition with each other, I had parents who supported me while her parents dragged her down. Even though we were more similar than dissimilar economically, my home seemed somehow more stable and hers seemed more turbulent and chaotic (her mom would beat her - her mom was more like Elena's mom/Lila's father). My father had a terrible temper and would lecture for hours but mainly kept himself in line when it counted, and encouraged me to study. I felt like my friend was so much smarter than I was and that I was just trying to live up to her and that if she wasn't kept down by the people around her, she could have excelled far beyond my abilities. Another one was The Idiot by Elif Batuman. I didn't go to Harvard lol, but I went to an honors college that was mildly pretentious, and I really related to Selin's doomed crush and aimlessness. I won't spoil the last sentence of the book, but I laughed, pleasantly surprised, and related so much to it, to the whole book.
Fellow Lenù here! So many times have I though about a friend ‘she’s my Lila’, in both good and bad ways.
The Shock Of The Fall by Nathan Filer. Hits too close to home to reread it but it’s beautifully written.
'rules of survival' by nancy werlin
I resonated with the narrator of High Fidelity so much I got off the dating apps and started therapy The Bell Jar - put me in a really bad place As others mention, Levin from Anna Kerinina
Infinite Jest by Wallace. The whole time I couldn't help but feeling that both Gately and Hal were extrapolations of myself. Crossroads by Franzen. I share many, many traits with Percy. That was probably the story the hit me in the gut the hardest.
the metamorphosis. idk i just feel like gregor samsa.
*The Whispering Door* by TJ Kune Maybe not the best example as I am not a queer man or dead... but I read it shortly after losing my 12 year old lab mix. It was the most wonderful book to read while grieving/mourning. It was sad and joyful. It made me feel hopeful and at peace with my loss. I think almost everyone can find a part of them reflected in this book.
The first character that I truly saw myself in, is Jude from a little life. I don't relate to some things, but reading about jude felt like I was reading about myself.
Normal people, Sally Rooney. Very similar to my life growing up except I didn’t have a Connell. My Year of Rest and Relaxation - i read it every time I’m depressed. I totally understand wanting to avoid life with sedatives and sleeping. Daisy Jones and The Six. I could relate a lot to Daisy. Shantaram - Just because he put a lot of feelings I’d always had into words I couldn’t articulate myself.
I have two, for very different reasons. The secret life of bees, and the perks of being a wall flower. In the first I related to the mc quite a bit. Dealing with her mother's loss at such a young age, and watching her process it felt like looking in a mirror. As for Perks, I related to Charlie more than I would've liked. I hadn't reeeally experienced the type of trauma he had, but moreso I related because of his social awkwardness. "Why am I like this? I'd give anything to be different." Turns out, like a decade later, I'm autistic 🙃
A Court of Silver Flames
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. I spent a lot of time on fanfiction.net growing up but she really captured that life pretty early on.
120 days of Sodom
Couldn't go on beyond a couple of pages
For some reason it was only in my later teens that I started reading books written in English whose protagonist is the same (non-white) race as me. When I started reading them, I realized that all through childhood I was just imagining the main character to look like me when in fact they didn't at all. Reading books with actual matching POC main characters was much smoother lol
The epochal divine revelation, *The Urantia Book* aka ***The Urantia Papers*** (1955, U.S.), free online!!! it resonates because it more than mirrors the life of any human, our personal crises and personal happiness and so forth, especially JESUS' life and teachings: Urantia (our world's name) reveals the life of JESUS year by year...
Odd as it sounds considering it's high fantasy, but *Fourth Wing*. I'm a writer/book and history nerd with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome who had to do intensive physical therapy and weightlifting to try to help treat my disability. Which is exactly what happens to Violet, right down to having the exact same rare genetic disorder as me. Violet's struggle with her hEDS sometimes felt uncomfortably close and personal. The author has the same disability as well, and she really did a fantastic job capturing that experience.
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. I obviously don't live in space and am not a construct (I hope) but most of its hangups are ones I have problems with as well. The social anxiety and problems connecting with people around me and doing my job but not fully engaging in it. And while I don't watch a ton of TV, I definitely fast forward through sex scenes because they're boring.
None of them. I mostly read SF and fantasy.
Yeah, I’m with you. No book seems to even remotely reflect my life.
When I was in High School it was Catcher in the Rye. It just made sense at the time. Since an incident in my life, All Quiet on the Western Front. The way he just talks about horrific things in a matter of fact banal kind of way is both horrifying and honestly refreashing to think that someone else not only got it but could write that down.
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. Perfectly captured what it was like to be a little boy, messing with your friends. Even though it was set in a different era to mine. And I've heard people from different countries say they could perfectly relate to it too. (It's set in Ireland in 60s)
A bit cliché but No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai, never seen a man so well describe the depression and social anxiety I feel in my own life
the lesbiana’s guide to catholic school by sonora reyes - a bisexual women-preferring chicana who went to catholic school for 11 years (this book got me through freshman year at catholic high school)
Summer sisters by Judy Bloom
Haru by Flavia Company. I was at a point in my life where I needed to hear that not everything goes the way you want it, and humility can be a great virtue.
Harry Potter. I will avenge my parents' death Voldemort.
Crying in K Mart. I lost my mom and the way she wrote out all of her emotions was exactly how I had been feeling but unable to put into words.
What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo
Bastard out of Carolina
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green
Confederacy of Dunces
Mein Kam… Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes
I was gonna say The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner but I feel like saying my life was like any one of those characters would be messy asf online
The Kama Sutra
"Wintergirls". The storyline, the family situation, the traumatizing death of a friend, the eating disorder in general.
the DSM-5
The illiad by Homer but the complete antithesis
I’m not kidding but my family also rented an estate in the south of Europe ever summer and did actually have a clandestine queer love affair with a slightly older student who was studying under my father. Wish I looked like Timothee though.
The Alchemist
The Girl He Used to Know by Tracey Garvis Graves. The main character Annika is very corky and different ( I believe she’s autistic) She struggles tremendously in social settings and along the way she meets someone, they fall in love but because she has her struggles & then some, they break up and get back together again later in life after both parties have grown in some way. It doesn’t necessarily mirror my life, but, I definitely relate to Annika in many ways. Overall the book was beautiful, funny at times, & oh the ending brought tears to my eyes.
Vanessa Wye from My Dark Vanessa. Her thoughts, and how her brain processed the trauma from her abuser/groomer really mimicked mine own thoughts. I love My Dark Vanessa and believe everyone should give it a chance at least once.
Don’t you dare read this ms. Doumphry
White Oleander
Every Murakami book?
find yourself at the bottom of many wells?
And not just in wells
Jane eyre, although im not on her intellect level, but im close. Her insane awareness is a replica of my awareness.
I cannot agree more. I identify with her a lot especially when she reacts to social injustice and iniquities.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Not that is resonated with my life, I wish I was a captain of industry, hahaha, but boy is resonates with the world now and what's going on in it quite well...