Rainbow List of Must-Reads: Green - How To Be a Woman

This is the Rainbow List of Must-Reads: Where I review a different one of my favourite books each week! Fourth on our list we have a green book with a green cover:

How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

    

        I’ve finally worked out what I want to be when I get older. When I grow up I want to be Caitlin Moran. She is my idol; the woman is wonderfully witty with a wicked sense of humour; she’s met countless of my favourite musicians and celebrities; she had this brilliant outlook on life; and she is the author of my current favourite book – ‘How to Be a Woman’

   

         Having read everything Waterstones’ Teen Fiction section had to offer, I was wandering round the shop in search of something to fill my empty holiday hours with. I’m generally reluctant to pick up fiction from the main adult section as in previous experiences the books I have picked up have been heavy, complicated or rife with sex scenes, but after a good twenty minutes of dragging my family around every section in the shop I realise that if I don’t pick something soon they would physically remove me from the building with no book with whatsoever.

  

         Taking Caitlin Moran’s ‘How to be a Woman’ off of the shelves I was a little bit apprehensive. I don’t usually read non-fiction, it’s never been something I really enjoyed, but as I rushed for time I remembered all the people who had recommended the book to me and decided that it was going to have to do.

  

          I opened the book as soon as I got home and within the first few chapters had fallen head-over-heels in love with it. I’ll admit menstruation and pubic hair aren’t usually the kind of topics that float my boat, but when Caitlin Moran spoke of her own experiences with them I found myself actually laughing out loud at the wonderful honesty.  She somehow manages to speak about them without making the reader feel uncomfortable. Moran is rude – but she isn’t disgusting.

  

          The theme of the book is feminism and woman’s issues. Usually a heavy topic tackled by the more fierce women and in a slightly aggressive tone, Moran manages to use light-hearted chat and humour to teach us women that really we should all call ourselves feminists – whether we like it or not. Moran teaches us that feminism isn’t really anything to do with man-hating or aggression – as is the stereotype – but more just basic common sense. In fact, Moran was so persuasive in her argument that I suddenly found myself standing on a chair yelling ‘I AM A FEMINIST!’ at my poor mum as if in a Moran-induced trance.

           Her charming way of taking the piss out of everything managed to change my mind on quite a few things actually. I will admit that I used to be slightly wary of Lady Gaga and her extravagant outfits, but after reading about Moran’s time in a sex club with the lady in question, I was playing ‘Bad Romance’ on repeat and googling pictures of the infamous meat dress.

I have even drawn a picture of the woman in question

The book is brilliant; I loved every bit of it. I honestly cannot fault it. There’s something quite relatable about Caitlin Moran. She’s impossibly cool and she’s led this amazing life talking to amazing people, but when reading the book you kind of feel like she’s just down the road and you could pop round for a cup of tea. She just seems so genuine.

The book uncovered this womanly pride in me that I never really knew was there. After reading ‘How to Be a Woman’ a woman seemed the very best thing that one could possibly be. Feminism no longer seemed like the angry, un-attractive thing that its stereotype once presented it as. With Caitlin Moran, if you’re a feminist, you pretty damn kickass!

Caitlin Moran is the kind of author I want to be my best friend for life and her book, ‘How to Be a Woman’ gave me this new kind of self-confidence I never really knew I was missing. There were really no other comparable candidates for this spot on the list.

You can find out more about Caitlin Moran here!

You can read the other reviews in the Rainbow List of Must-Reads here: Red, Orange, Yellow

Rainbow List of Must-Reads: Yellow - It's Kind of a Funny Story

This is the Rainbow List of Must-Reads: Where I review a different one of my favourite books each week! Third on our list we have a yellow book with a yellow cover:

It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini

           ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ is a book I picked up in the teen fiction section last year as an interesting summer read. If I’m quite honest with myself one of the main reasons I lifted it off the shelf was because I absolutely loved the quirky cover-art and there was nothing on the blurb that I found entirely unappealing. When I finally got round to opening the book up a week later as I lounged lazily on my deck chair in my garden, I was met with a pleasantly unpleasant surprise.

  

          ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ is not the kind of book you would usually find amongst the brightly coloured stories of the teen fiction section, to say the least. The book did not give me that bright and happy feeling I would usually get when reading something of such a high standard, but instead would leave me feeling low and foggy when I emerged from between its pages. This is because ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ is about depression.

           Depression books don’t usually find their way to my shelf. In the general I find them overly-dramatic and clichéd with transparent plotlines. However, when reading this book I found I connected with the main character, Craig Gilner, in a big way. When Craig sits in his friend Aaron’s house, smoking pot, his brain hazing with misery I could feel my own mind cloud over. When he stands on the Brooklyn Bridge, crazed by an erratic sort of desperation, I felt painfully desperate as well.

  

          I won’t lie to you. ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ is dark. Really dark. You follow Craig as the pressure from his prestigious school becomes unbearable and he spirals into a deep state of extreme self-loathing. The book is a brutally honest depiction of what depression is really like. Not glorified in the way of a dark romantic interest or cool like the troubled rock star, but a pure, raw, awful emotion. ‘It’s Kind of Funny Story’ is a book that finally shows depression as what it is – depressing.

           And how can we trust that Vizzini’s illustration of depression is not some exaggerated, over-the-top, version created for the sake of good fiction? How do we know that when Craig eventually finds himself in the adult ward of a psychiatric hospital that this isn’t just the psych ward of Vizzini’s imagination? We know because the author has experienced all this himself. ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ is a memoir of Vizzini’s life. He has felt like this; gone through this; been to these places. Through Craig, Vizzini shows us his own experiences with depression. He has shown us how frightening and all-consuming depression really is.

           But he has also shown us that it can get better – and that I believe is the most important thing about ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’. Yes, in the first half of the book we are shown how trapped and lonely depression can make you feel, but in the second half we are shown that you are never truly alone. Only when Craig finally seeks help can he begin to climb back out of the dark pit that is his life. Only upon dealing with his feelings does he realise that every single reason he wanted to kill himself could be quite easily fixed. I believe that ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ exists not only to acknowledge that there are people with these feelings in the world, but also to help these people break away from their lonely situation.

           Ned Vizzini dealt with a lot in his life. On December 19^th 2013, after an on-going struggle with depression, he committed suicide, leaving behind his wife and two-year-old child. When I read about Vizzini’s death it really hit home. Not only because his book was able to move me to tears, but because it made everything written inside ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ all the more true. Because of Vizzini I will never undermine the feelings of anyone battling with depression. I will never see depression as anything other than unbearable, isolating and completely serious. Vizzini has more than earned his spot on this list, I only regret that I couldn’t honour him in a bigger way than this blog post.

            I opened ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ with a light heart and an empty head, and I close it knowing profoundly more about the world around me than I had before.   


You can find out more about Ned Vizzini here!
You can read the other reviews in the Rainbow List of Must-Reads here: Red, Orange