Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone

Every Last Word tells the story of high schooler Samantha McAllister and her secret battle with Purely-Obsessional Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Tamara Ireland Stone delves into the stream of uncontrollable dark thoughts that Samantha is unable to turn off, and the compulsions that Samantha finds herself unable to avoid doing. Unable to ever feel truly happy despite her popularity and seemingly perfect life, Samantha's life changes when she meets Caroline, a new friend who shows her Poet's Corner, a hidden room and club of misfits who share poetry with one another. 

I loved how Sam was able to find solace through art (writing in her case) as so many are able to do in their lives. Although not necessarily the most realistic story, Stone tackled a lot of difficult concepts without holding back and told a beautiful story. Additionally the poetry included in this book was beautiful and I definitely didn't expect Stone's surprising twist towards the end of the book!

Quotes:

• "After you left I sat in silence. Missing you in a way I didn't quiet understand. Wondering if you'd come back."
• "I didn't go there look for you. I went looking for me...but now, here you are, and somehow, in finding you, I think I've found myself"
• "Everyone's got something. Some people are just better actors than others."
• "Look around at the people in your life, one by one, choosing to hold on to the ones who make you stronger and better, and letting go of the ones who don't."
• "Embrace who you are and surround yourself with people who do the same"

Poems:

Over You 

It only took two hundred and forty days

     seven hours

     twenty-six minutes

     and eighteen seconds

But I can finally say it:

     I'm over you.

I no longer think about

     the way your hips move when you walk

     the way your lips move when you read

     the way you always took your glove off

     before you held my hand so you could feel me.

I've completely forgotten about

     texts in the middle of the night, saying you love me, miss me

     inside jokes no one else thinks are funny

     songs that made you want to pull your car over and kiss me immediately.

I can't remember

     how your voice sounds

     how your mouth tastes

     how your bedroom looks when the sun first comes up.

I can't recall

     exactly what you said that day

     what I was wearing

     how long it took me to start crying.

It only took two hundred and forty days

     seven hours

     twenty-six minutes

     and eighteen seconds

     to wipe you from my memory

But if you said you wanted me again today

     or tomorrow

     or two hundred and forty days

     seven hours

     and eighteen minutes from now,

I'm sure it would all come back to me.

Untitled

I like it when you're here.

Everything is quiet.

     Peaceful.

          So silent, I almost feel sane.

You take my mind off my mind.

Stay.

     Just one more page.

Please?

Untitled

I'm not allowed to want you,

And you're not allowed to want me.

So I'll just wait here patiently,

Hoping you'll break the rules.

          

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson

I was immediately intrigued upon hearing about The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson, which is probably fitting seeing as I was a psychology major during my undergrad years at UCLA. 

People use the word "psychopath" flippantly in every day life to excuse the somewhat offbeat things that others do. But what is a psychopath? I turned to Ronson and The Psychopath Test to find out more. The statistics mentioned in the overview are baffling: "They say one out of every hundred people in a psychopath. You probably passed one on the street today." How is that possible? It's a statistic that's difficult to wrap your mind around. It's a fact that suggests that many of the people we interact with on a day-to-day basis could very well be psychopaths. 

I found Ronson's personal experience in The Psychopath Test to be fascinating. He tells what he has recently learned about psychopaths and how at a chemical level their brains are wired differently. It is a condition that is incurable causing their brains to be unable to experience empathy, leaving them to be "manipulative, deceitful, charming, seductive, and delusional."

During the course of the novel, Ronson meets an influential and well respected psychologist who strongly believes that many of the business leaders and politicians in our world are in fact high-functioning psychopaths who have managed to use their condition in order to succeed in the professional world. 

I found The Psychopath Test to be a fascinating read and loved accompanying Ronson on his "journey through the madness industry".


Quotes

• "There is no evidence that we've been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things."
• "Feeling no remorse must be a blessing when all you have are your memories"
• "If you're beginning to feel worried that you may be a psychopath, if you recognize some of these traits in yourself, if you're feeling a creeping anxiety about it, that means you are not one."