WHITE OLEANDER by Janet Fitch
I read it when I was 17, which is exactly when I needed it. It was probably the only thing that resonated with me during those years. Really helped me stay half afloat. I read it again a billion times and I’m actually considering making a page that’s solely dedicated to it.
The best thing it gave me was a sense of comfort by describing the same loneliness and confusion and just emptiness I was feeling. Quote: “How many children had this happened to? How many children were like me, floating like plankton in the wide ocean?”
CATHERINE by Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp
I think I found this mini series like 1 or 2 years ago, and at first I used to watch it once or even twice every single day, for maybe one month. I don’t know why, but I love it so much. Here are two quotes by Jenny from an interview about it:
“Dean and I were talking about the idea of “what is normal and what is neutral.” Not trying to be being boring and not trying to not be funny, but what is exactly straight down the middle? What is it when you’re not trying to do anything? You’re not trying to be boring; you’re not necessarily trying to be funny. You’re just existing somewhere in the middle”
”Yeah. Well, you know what? I was also watching a lot of Twin Peaks at the time. I’m kind of reluctant [to mention it] because it’s not a Lynch spoof. To us, we were really motivated by wanting to do a new kind of thing, but at the time, I was watching a lot of Twin Peaks. It’s just so eerie, but sometimes it’s so funny and sometimes it’s really, really scary and it all exists in that one world. Yeah, I’m sure that was really in the front of my mind”
CHUNGKING EXPRESS (重慶森林) by Wong Kar-wai
Shot in Hong Kong, 1994, starring Faye Wong
All of my friends hate me because I don’t watch films. I made an exception with this one because I was totally mesmerised by the stills I saw around tumblr. And thank god I did, because it totally STOLE my heart. I don’t think I will ever stop thinking about it.
It’s so bittersweet and perfect. It’s exactly what I’d make if I were able to shoot and write a film.
DEPRESSION CHERRY by Beach House
No one will ever get me like Beach House's music. Everything that I've ever felt in my life is literally inside their music.
I spent the first half of 2017 being totally obsessed with Depression Cherry, then me, my best friend and my family went to my summer house, which is in a tiny village, and uhm. They had a concert date there. The venue was a place where I used to go sea gaze to when I was a child. I don't think anything will ever top that. I'm still recovering from it.
REAPPEAR by Chris Zabriskie
Right below Beach House there's Chris Zabriskie, especially this album. It reminds me of the rainy evenings at my grandma's, and the walks me and my best friends used to have in the outskirts of our city, and in a way, of London (which is one of my very, very favourite places in the whole world).
SWEET YEARS OF DISCIPLINE by Fleur Jaeggy
My favourite book to this day and probably forever. The story itself has little (almost nothing) to do with me, but in a way it's the most similar thing to myself I've ever read. Quote: “deformed, glorious, cruel ravens used to fly on the steep meadows. You compared them to our teenagehood, as they looked around the school’s yard for a spot where to place their claws.”
PANDORA BRAITHWAITE, a charachter in the book series of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend (pics from tv adaptation; I think the actress is a perfect choice, it's exactly how I imagined Pandora while reading the book)
My one and only 
CATHY'S BOOK by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman and illustrated by Cathy Brigg
I read this when I was really young (like 12?) and I immediately loved it. I felt really connected to Cathy, and somehow to Emma as well, which is weird (they’re best friends but very, very different from each other, I think what the authors were going for here was to have those “you’re my opposite” kind of friendships). Cathy’s life is very messy, and that’s how I foresaw my teenage years- too bad Cathy’s type of messy was cool, interesting and adventurous, while my messy was just depressing, lol. I related to Emma because she was very severe on herself and very ambitious (in a way that’s not insufferable), and in a way I admired her. Also, I’m still in love with Victor. The three of them will always have their own little space in my heart forever.
UNKNOWN "LOLITA" BLOGSPOT
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One of my favourite things about my generation is that a part of us (me included) grew up on the internet. So I have a vaste array of bizarre and shapeless memories of things I saw and read on the web. Kids have a very cryptic way to be online and I’m 100% convinced they find rabbit holes way easier than the rest of us. I remember one of my favourite pastimes was finding glitches in the video games I played on my computer, something I could never do now, due to a lack of time and not having anymore a mind so flexible to recognise and predict every single movement of the game’s world. My online experience was similar: I dug aimlessly in the vast web trying to find something, anything. One day I found this “lolita” blog, very simple, made by a teenager from eastern Europe. Everything about it was astonishing basic and.. cheap. She wasn’t even a real lolita, she just bought stuff from Primark and Tesco(!) and called it a day. Her makeup was messy and totally unflattering, and she often complained about her high school classmates. I really liked blogs like those, where the authors didn’t seem to care (or know how?) to show a filtered image of themselves and their life. I was shocked at how uncaringly she posed in her messy room, I had no idea you could show that. It was like peeping through her bedroom door. I wasn’t supposed to see her bad makeup and to hear how unpopular she was. On the brighter side of fashion blogs, everything was obsessively curated and artificial, and I saw that as the right thing to do. I followed this girl in kind of a morbid way, not understanding why she was letting her guard down right then and there on the internet. It was cool. Made me feel weird. Wish I could find her blog again.
Jacqueline Wilson's books
Jacqueline Wilson’s books were my world when I was in elementary school middle school. I had my best friend, and these books. Reading them again as an adult, it’s crazy how intelligent and delicate Jacqueline is. I always had the impression of finding a deeper meaning in her stories because I wanted to see it, but now I realise she just wrote cool stories that every girl could have enjoyed, in a way that could have also related to young girls who weren’t having very typical childhoods without the other readers notice. Moreover, inserting these sort of invisible plots in popular and seemingly “normal” books makes it easier for young girls to find them in the first place, as they’re probably not fully aware what they’re experiencing isn’t normal, even if it makes them feel bad. Finding them in regular books always felt extremely soothing to me. The picture on the left is from my very favourite book of hers, Midnight. My very favourite characters from her books were Violet and Will (Midnight) and Prue (Love Lessons), and then also Nadine (the Girls series) and Garnet (Double Act). My very favourite books were obviously Midnight and Love Lessons, but also Secrets, Lola Rose, the Girls series, Vicky Angel, The Suitcase Kid and Lizzie Zipmouth
ALWAYS ADDING STUFF :-) stay tuned and please lmk if you also love any of these things!!!!!! xxxxxx
