Things I've Read, May 2015: Stuck and um, stuck
Dear reader,
I've been a little bit stuck. So stuck that I completely missed last month's letter, and for that I apologise.
I have no shame in saying that I have depression. No shame in saying that sometimes it feels like being trapped in a prison of silencing walls, and that sometimes no matter how hard you try to break them, you end up getting broken. And I guess, because I'm me, I've been thinking about how sometimes stories will lead you out—will remind you that your story is not in the singular; that you are not alone.
But there is some shame in promising something and not delivering, and so for that: I apologise.
In the interim, I rambled across the United States with my family, I am continuing to work on a project that feels bigger than I am (just don't look down), and I wonder.
In the interim, I also read Growing Yourself Up by Jenny Brown. Jenny is a counsellor based in Sydney, that I did some seminars with (on mental health) last year. But more importantly, it's a book that explores family systems theory and its practical effect on all your life—a reminder that growing yourself up, as in the title, is really the only job worth doing. Really the only reason that you'd read this is if you want to improve relationships with your family, whatever its permutation, with your friends, with yourself. Thoroughly recommended.
I also finished Black Dove, White Raven by Elizabeth Wein which I pre-recommended and now can post-recommend. If you haven't read Code Name: Verity yet, then I don't know what to do with you. If you have, then this is more of the same, and by more of the same I mean: incredibly gripping, astonishingly researched, beautifully written, dramatic YA which carries the plot of teenage pilots in WW2-era Ethiopia with the resonant theme of going where you didn't think you could ever go. As an aside, I don't know how anyone writes into another country's history with such aplomb.
I am also continuing my way through Earthsea, was reminded by Kaley of this beautiful essay about age from Roger Angell (a reminder that sometimes young writer isn't a compliment), and fascinated by The Divinity Student, which is, as far as I can tell, Hunter S. Thompson wired through a fantasy universe and an inverse fable—it's delightfully weird.
That's it from me, for now. But maybe you could tell me what you're reading this winter?
Yours,
Guan