Commitment Issues

I would like to think that ‘Prescription Fiction’ is a very friendly blog. I am extremely open to all your comments, tweets and suggestions and in fact encourage them! I am more than happy to answer almost any question or query that you may have and I would love to think of my blog as a small community. However, as a particularly passionate breed of bookworm, one of the worst questions anyone could ever ask me is this:

“What is your favourite book?”

       

     With those five simple words, every book I have ever read will fall out of my head and into a puddle around my feet. I will squirm and wriggle and say ‘Um…’ a lot, before finally shuffling away with an extremely anti-climactic ‘I don’t know’.

   

         The pressure of that question is too much to bear. The asker will always stare at you with a certain amount of expectation in their eyes, as if whatever it is that bursts out of your mouth next will determine their opinion of you for many years to come. If I say something like ‘The Lord of the Flies’ then they will probably give me an impressed nod and invite me to eat lunch with them, however, if I panic and say ‘Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging’ (I do love that book) then they will probably wrinkle their nose in disgust before exiling me from their life entirely. Probably.

            I don’t see why I should have to choose a favourite book at all. I simply cannot commit to one when there is so much choice out there. It is simply ridiculous that I should have to let you make a snap decision about me based on whether I prefer Classics or Sci-Fi; romance or horror; ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ or ‘Winnie the Pooh’. I am not married to a single novel; I am having off-again, on-again affairs with more than twelve at once.

            My favourite book can be different every single day of the week. It entirely depends on what kind of mood I’m in. If I’m in quite an emotional mood, I’ll probably name ‘Anna and the French Kiss’ as my favourite and start endlessly chattering about boarding school in Paris. If I want to feel cool and mysterious, I might tell you that I love the symbolism in ‘The Catcher in the Rye'. If on a particularly reminiscent Tuesday, I am overtaken by nostalgia, I will tearfully tell you all about my mother’s beaten old copy of ‘Nancy and Plum’ that she was given in Sunday school as a child and ignore your confused expression when you don’t know what the hell I’m on about.

            In reality though, none of these books are my favourite. Or maybe they all are? I don’t really know and I don’t really think I should have to. When you think of me, I don’t want you to think of a miniscule 300 pages – I want you to think of an entire library!

            This is why I think that in the UK we should have a law that prohibits everyone from ever asking that dreaded question. I want David Cameron and stand up in the House of Commons and say that if one wants to enquire about another person’s taste in reading, then we must say ‘So what kinda books are you into, chum?’ or something of that variety.  I guarantee you that by doing this everyone in the UK will probably be invited to 70% more sleepovers. Probably.

            No more shall we have to stand sweating in front of a new acquaintance, wracking our brains for that one answer that will lead to a strong and beautiful friendship. No more will we fail to come up with that answer and instead try to avoid that person for the next month out of embarrassment. No more shall we have to run into them at our friend Keith’s party and awkwardly stand making our ridiculous excuses! No more, I say, no more!

            I do not have a favourite book. I have commitment issues.

           

           

            

Do you know your favourite book? Am I the only one with this issue?! Tell me down in the comments, I'd love to know! 

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