My Summer Reading Project :) by Megan Carnegie

Turtles All the Way Down

megan_carnegie37 — 2018-08-27 16:49:30 UTC

The main theme in this book is identity and how in hard times we lose ourselves. In my book Aza is trying to figure out the death of Mr. Pickett. She opens the book by questioning time and throughout the book you get to know her and how she questions existence itself and she doesn't feel in control of her body but claims it's run by her inner demons and bacteria. She struggles with anxiety and depression and sees herself to have multiple identities and calls them by name. She fell in love with Mr. Pickett's son and was trying to figure out where Mr. Pickett was and through it all she made good friends but lost herself mentally and had to get help.

Life is a movie, but not your movie

megan_carnegie37 — 2018-08-27 17:02:06 UTC

In this quote i found i decided to use it and contect it to when Aza felt like an outsider in her own body. When she said that one some days “it felt like I was watching the whole thing from somewhere else, like I was watching a movie about my life instead of living it.” and that connects to this poem because on some days she felt okay and more herself and on others she felt like she was drowning her her thoughts and inside her head and how she didn’t know what to do about it.

Loving someone isn’t always easy

megan_carnegie37 — 2018-08-27 17:02:10 UTC

There are two sides to this story. You and someone else can be broken in the same places but in some cases that isn’t love, but the need for someone else. But on the other hand in certain cases it can be love. My connect is the book “The Fault in our Stars” by John Green. This situation can happen to anyone but has two outcomes. In The Fault in our Stars the boy and the girl fall in love after meeting in a cancer support group but end up meeting during hard times but fall in love with each other unconditionally. I don’t know why this situation can go both ways but they can. This is the quote from when Aza was with Davis and was explaining how she “(I) took his hand, and part of me wanted to tell him I loved him, but I wasn't sure if I really did. Our hearts were broken in the same places. That's something like love, but maybe not quite the thing itself."

Broken to Whole

megan_carnegie37 — 2018-08-27 17:02:12 UTC

You don’t always have to be someone’s success story. Aza realized that whenever she started drinking hand sanitizer and had to take time off of school. She realized she needed to focus on her and her identity as a person and being whole so she shut off her phone for 2 weeks and focused on getting better. Throughout that time she said that for her” everyone wanted me to feed them that story—darkness to light, weakness to strength, broken to whole. I wanted it, too.”
I made this connect to a song called “Beautifully Broken” by Plumb. I connected it to how even though you may be broken it doesn’t mean you’re bad a thing. We all have our own paces we go at and eventually we all get there at being whole again. The lyrics are:
”You're beautifully broken
And You can be whole again
Even a million scars
Doesn't change whose you are
You're worthy
Beautifully broken”

How people can affect you and change you

megan_carnegie37 — 2018-08-27 17:02:15 UTC

In Turtles All the Way Down Aza and Davis fall in love but they never tell each other. The book was written to her therapist as a way to understand her mental health and why she is the way she is because she never thought she would get better. While writing her story she realizes that he was her first love and he helped shape her into who she is today, she says "you remember your first love because they show you, prove to you, that you can love and be loved, that nothing in this world is deserved except for love, that love is both how and you become a person and why.” And i made this connection to a song called
This is the first thing by You Me at Six
"This is the first thing I thought
This is the last thing I want
You were the first love I loved
You were the first love I lost"

Illness is not only represented on the outside

megan_carnegie37 — 2018-08-27 17:02:18 UTC

Aza starts to believe that if people can't see that she's sick then maybe she isn't. In the middle of the book Aza is caught drinking hand sanitizer and that maybe she wasn't sick until then. She didn't know if that was true or not but she did know that she felt trapped inside her body.
In the book Aza talks about how she wanted an escape, how "imagine being actually stuck inside my head with no way out, with no way to ever take a break from it, because that’s my life.”

Thoughts are only thoughts

megan_carnegie37 — 2018-08-27 17:02:20 UTC

In this poem it talks about not limiting yourself but controlling your mind. Being strong minded is something Aza was lacking so her therapist while talking to her told her that ”thoughts are only thoughts. They are not you. You do belong to yourself, even when your thoughts don't.”

All the kids are depressed By: Jeremy Zucker

megan_carnegie37 — 2018-08-27 17:02:25 UTC

In the book Aza's therapist tells her that everyone now days has problems among teenagers, she says “Well, everyone's crazy these days, Dr. Singh. Adolescent sanity is so twentieth century.”
And this has a connection to a song called "All the Kids are Depressed" by Jeremy Zucker about how everyone these days is depressed and sanity isn't a common thing, these are the lyrics:
"'Cause all the kids are depressed
Nothing ever makes sense
I'm not feeling alright
Staying up 'til sunrise
And hoping things are okay
Pretending we know things
I don't know what happened
My natural reaction is that we're scared
So I guess we're scared"

Being Alone

megan_carnegie37 — 2018-08-27 17:02:28 UTC

In my book Aza feels like she wants to be left alone and to be alone and whenever she did she realized that she wasn't good company to herself and how she wasn't helping herself in being alone. And in this poem called "Oh, Yes" this author talks about how everyone at one point wants to be alone but you will always regret that, the exact quote from the book is “The worst part of being truly alone is you think about all the times you wished that everyone would just leave you be. Then they do, and you are left being, and you turn out to be terrible company.”

Happy Ending By: Elvis Presley

megan_carnegie37 — 2018-08-27 17:02:32 UTC

Happy ending, happy ending
Give me a story with a, happy ending
When boy meets girl and then
They never part again
But live forever happily, like you and me

In the book Aza and Davis never get there happy ending because she had to focus on herself and because they both had to figure out there own identities. In the book they had to part ways but Aza says that "no one ever says good-bye unless they want to see you again" so maybe in this book they didn't get it but maybe someday they would

Two Fridas

megan_carnegie37 — 2018-08-27 17:02:35 UTC

In this painting Frida was going through her divorce from her husband Diego, the two twins represent her during a time of struggling and self doubt and this is connected to my book because of how Aza sees herself as multiple identities during her time of crisis.