17 Of The Best BuzzFeed Books Essays We Published In 2014

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Exploring subjects from skateboarding to Sylvia Plath, and attempting to write your first novel to jumping into the sea, these are some of our favorite essays we published this year. *Ranked in no particular order*

Chris Ritter / BuzzFeed

This Is What Happens To Your Heart When You Dive Into The Sea — James Nestor

James Nestor, author of DEEP: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves, takes us on a transformative journey into the ocean.

Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed

Try To Leave Me If You Can — Katherine Faw Morris

Katherine Faw Morris, author of Young God, on returning to her impoverished home in Wilkes County, North Carolina.

Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed

Not Here to Make Friends — Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay, author of An Untamed State and Bad Feminist, on the importance of unlikable female protagonists.

Via covers.openlibrary.org

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The Fictional Suicidal Girls I Loved, But Had To Let Go

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“There was something familiar about wanting to haunt a story rather than tell it.”

Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed

There exists a photo of me as a teenager kneeling on my friend's living room floor wearing a white nightgown, holding a kitchen knife with the sharp end halfway in my mouth. A coral bra is visible under the nightgown and I look into the camera trying to be both provocative and frightening, but not managing to pull off either one entirely. I was at a The Virgin Suicides–themed party, one of many offbeat parties my friends and I would host in our late teens, each theme an attempt to one-up our last party's strangeness. It was a time when I was both a virgin and, for the first time in my life, suicidal.

While I spent my entire childhood entertaining generally self-destructive thoughts, this was a decided turn from thoughts to impulses. Hypothetical escape routes from my life emerged in my mind as I entered the early phases of adulthood. Peculiarly, my literary fascinations regressed from the melancholy adult women I had admired as a child to a very particular kind of suicidal teenage girl. While literature is awash in young women who end their own lives in dramatic final chapters, my preoccupation was with girls who committed suicide early on in their respective stories. To end one's life at the end of a story is usually because all other options have been exhausted. To commit suicide in the beginning or the middle of a story was to radically refuse to participate in the narrative as anything but a ghost. There was something familiar about wanting to haunt a story rather than tell it.

BuzzFeed

My first fixation on this character type was Cecilia, the youngest of the five Lisbon sisters in Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides. Though the book brims with dark moments, there was something especially enticing about a 13-year-old that only successfully commits suicide when she tries a second time. Because suicide is often attempted by young women but most often completed by men of middle age, there was a decidedly grim adult conviction to her suicide. When Cecilia succeeds in ending her life with the assistance of an open window and an iron fence, it means that she meant it all along. In the sickness of suicidal ideation that was only beginning to wander to that place, I saw a resoluteness in Cecilia's despair at the world that I lacked. As the mind betrays itself so cruelly, there is a brutal kind of comfort in comparing yourself to a child who is better at misery than you.

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43 Of The Most Romantic Lines From Literature

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“My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.” —Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice.

Suggested by susiem424348d09.

Frau Böb (buuusyyyy) / Flickr: frauboeb

2. "He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking."

—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina. Suggested by Vivi Hyacinthe on Facebook.

3. "Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same...If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger."

—Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights. Suggested by Alex Zrenner on Facebook.

4. "You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever."

—Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice. Suggested by Giovana Draghi on Facebook.

5. "You and I, it's as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught."

—Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago. Suggested by TXBluebonnet.

Suggested by Rajina Shrestha on Facebook.

Kevin Dooley / Flickr: pagedooley

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16 Hilarious One-Star Reviews Of Children's Books

Posted by Unknown at 4:32 AM 0 comments

“Dr. Seuss was an evil genius, bent on traumatising children.”

One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss

"It is like this book was written for a baby or something. Anybody looking for enlightened literature should look elsewhere." (source)

Random House / Via amazon.com

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

"The description included a pair of bunny slippers which it did not come with. The book was cheesy and so not worth it without the slippers" (source)

HarperCollins / Via amazon.com

Are You My Mother? by Dr. Seuss

"A CURSE! AN UTTER CURSE!"

"Many of you, 'Parents', have exposed this book unto your families. Same thing with my mother. She exposed this story to me. But you know what I see in this book of evil? Scary images and ideas. Look at the dog for instance. Does he look like a 'nice' dog to you? He didn't to me. He scarred [sic] the buttons of [sic] my shirt. Everytime I look at his eyes I fill with fear." (source)

Random House / Via amazon.com

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

"Ruined My Life"

"I purchased this book for my little brother because this was my favorite book as a kid. He makes me read it to him no less than 20 times a day. We took a 3 hour road trip and he had me read it over and over again nonstop the entire time, I want to burn it, but he would probably set the house on fire to spite me." (source)

Philomel / Via amazon.com

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