That feeling of not being able to wait to get back to your book is the absolute best, as far as I am concerned, and I hadn't even heard about Frankly in Love, and will look it up at once.

There is definitely a moral, and I am glad you went to a public college, where you were happier. And never fear, I will tell you FAR more about what bothered me in an upcoming post, Novels by Poets, which is fulminating in the back of my mind.

Thanks. I hope your fiction reading is working for you.

Thanks for the comments, I can't somehow reply to specific ones due to my...lack of understanding of the interface but still, good luck on getting back into the swing, and the terrible 2008 book I have already finished, and it was truly astounding in its moral hollowness. I may need to write about it anyway. It's a relic.

Aw, thanks!

Yes, yes, yes. I am rooting for this girl, and I hope every book that could help her—any book at all—finds its way to her and that she reads it.

Oh this sounds so good! I will let her know right away.

oh! Also Riding Freedom, by Pam Munoz Ryan, who also wrote Becoming Naomi Leon. The first one is about a girl who is pretty and surrounded by boys but wants only to be a stagecoach rider (I guess, this is what Chestnut is saying). The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates (a series) by Caroline Carlson. Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott. And Mars Evacuees by Sophia McDougall about some girls who are evacuated to Mars, described by Chestnut as "a very pro-dork book." Huh. Maybe the Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett, which has a powerful girl, or Equal Rites. OK, last idea has to bee considered carefully, because it's kind of grown up, but...Beauty Queens, about a bunch of Beauty Queens who get stranded on an island. It's more about the commodification of beauty and sexuality, and it's got sex in it, which is not ideal

OK, talking to Chestnut, who is struggling with this as well. She's against Protector of the Small, but she does think the Alanna series (also Tamora Pierce) would be good, because the lead is explicitly ugly. Maybe, she says, Tortal and Other Lands, short stories by Tamora Pierce (everything but the last two stories).

Thank you both, it's a tricky one to talk about how to let yourself feel like a kid, in kid-friendly terms, when the world is talking about you in a different way. I'm close to somehow remembering something, a girl who is running off to do something at the end, but I cannot think what it is.

Thank you, all. You are so kind and it is lovely to hear from you again, you were all what made writing this blog fun, with your amazing thoughts and books and presence, I will miss you all, too, and will just hope that there is some other way that we will all reconnect, somewhere, somehow, on some other wonderful thing.

Oh thank you both! I love to see your names in the comments, and Elizabeth, your blog continues to be a place I go to connect more deeply with the world. Blogs may die, but connections born of them don't, I think.

Yes! This is an excellent idea.

Mysteries are almost universally comforting when one is sick, I wonder why that is.

I hope you stay healthy, and yes, cheesy and 70s is the way to go, V.C. Andrews might be just right. Though Laura Ingalls Wilder also provides strange comfort.

YES to Nancy Drew, especially the Brass-Bound Trunk.

Chestnut is healthy now, leaving me reading Hill House and constantly terrified.

I hope you don't have to get sick to do it!

Oh! It's on the mixtape, when his verse comes on (2/3 of the way through the song) he name-checks Maurice Sendak: High speed, dubbin' these rhymes in my dual cassette deck Runnin' out of time like I'm Jonathan Larson's rent check My mind is where the wild things are, Maurice Sendak In withdrawal, I want it all, please give me that pen back Y'all, I caught my first beatin' from the other kids when I was caught readin' "Oh, you think you smart? Blah! Start bleedin'" My pops tried in vain to get me to fight back Sister tapped my brains, said, pssh, you'll get 'em right back Oversensitive, defenseless, I made sense of it, I pencil in The lengths to which I'd go to learn my strengths and knock 'em senseless These sentences are endless, so what if they leave me friendless?

Not like "I'm afraid to go into the kitchen because there is a monster there," more like "Oh my god oh my god I have to put this book down for a minute and walk around the room because my heart hurts." You have to really trust that the writer has a good heart, because you can't see how any of this is tolerable, but then he does? Does that make as much sense as possible without being too full of spoilers?

Yes, I feel like you might like it especially.

Thank you! I feel now that I am not just a voice in the wilderness. Doesn't this seem like a huge and common misunderstanding? Also...vital?

Yes, reaching for a book instead of one's phone, with its endless stream of terrifying news, is an amazing and wonderful thing. That was such an engrossing book! And truly, you should read The Changeling, except that it will melt your brain. But it is amazing.

Oooh! Yes! And also, maybe, The Round House, by Louise Erdrich? And I apologize for my "wait, Native American fiction!" reflex, but The Round House is excellent and so much about the difficulties of friendship.

Ooh, thank you! I almost forgot I asked that, and now I will request it at the library.