Book Review: Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Happy weekend everyone!  To celebrate the end of this long, long, week, I decided to review a book I've recently re-read and absolutely fallen in love with--Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.

Anderson is known for her wonderfully realistic fiction novels about common teenage problems, such as Wintergirls, about anorexia, and several historical fictions featuring teenage girls as the main character.

Here is Speak's synopsis as it is written on the back of the book:
"Melinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so her old friends won't talk to her, and people she doesn't know hate her from a distance.  It's no use explaining to her parents; they've never known what her life is really like.  The safest place for Melinda to be is alone, inside her own head.  But even that's not safe.  Because there's something she's trying not to think about, something about the night of the party that, if she admitted it and let it in, would blow her carefully constructed disguise to smithereens.  And then she would have no choice.  Melinda would have to speak the truth."

Melinda is a 15-year-old girl who has just entered her freshman year in high school.  Having called the cops to a popular end-of-summer party for an "unknown" reason.  Melinda faces humiliation, hate, and the wrath of most of the school.  She tries and fails to succeed in many aspects of her life, but draws into herself.

The most amazing part of this book is Anderson's innate capability to perfectly capture the emotions and language of teenagers.  She effectively communicates Melinda's distress and drawing back from society in ways that I.... I don't know.  To be perfectly honest with you guys, there are no words to adequately describe the perfection that this book is.  If you don't believe me, please, read the book.  It could change your life, or it just might be another book, but whatever it is, I think you should definitely read it.

I hope you guys enjoyed this review, and I really really hope that you will take me up on this suggestion, find this book, and read it!

xx

Must-Buy-Everything-In-Sight Disease

Is it just me, or does this happen to anyone else too?

It seems like every time I'm supposed to be saving my money, and only buying things for other people or that are absolutely necessary, every single thing I see looks perfect and I just want everything I see.  This is unhealthy, right?

Saving money = rose colored glasses--for me at least. I'm pretty sure that if I saw a giant sweater with reindeer antlers, christmas lights, and pom-pom balls on it, I would buy it.

Gah!

So I went to the Naval Exchange yesterday  (For those of you not familiar with this, it's basically just a giant store with pretty much everything in it at discounted prices for military/Navy families) and I just was shopping for my pretty much immediate family.

But I went into the makeup/fragrance section to find the Calvin Klein perfume and Bare Minerals foundation, which by the way, they were out of the shade my step-sister needs, so... boo.  And I've been watching a ton of beauty videos on youtube recently.

i.e.
leighannsays
arose186
grav3yardgirl
AllThatGlitters21
MsBrittanybrat
and
eleventhgorgeous

I love them all so much... just saying.

Anyway, I've been accumulating a giant product list of things I want to try (though it didn't make my last blog post) from their videos, but I haven't been able to get to Ulta lately, and I haven't found the Benefit brand anywhere.  So I walk into this giant cosmetics section, and there are these ENORMOUS shelves of Smashbox, Benefit, Bare Escentuals/Bare Minerals...  I was in cosmetic love.  Would that be lust?

So you can imagine how hard it was for me to control this crazy, seasonal impulse buying disease.

Do you guys have any crazy Christmas shopping quirks?  Tell me about them, because man, I would love to feel a little less crazy!

Youtube: www.youtube.com/sarahnova52844
Polyvore: www.summerlove-sarah.polyvore.com

xx
Sarah