My Favorite Book?

So I took this silly little internet quiz just the other day saying that it could guess what my favorite book is.  Normally I ignore these sorts of things, but I was bored, had nothing better to do, and it was really the only thing left on my Pinterest feed that I hadn't looked at yet.  So I took it.

The result I got was a book that I had never actually heard of before.  "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath.  I was intrigued.  How was it that I had never heard of this book before, yet the quiz said it was my favorite book?

( Now the obvious answer to this is the fact that it is a silly little internet quiz that doesn't know me at all and has only a limited number of books to chose from based off of the choices of whoever made the quiz, and all paths are predetermined by the small number of questions there are, of which were also chosen by the person who made the quiz, who we can assume is not in fact a psychologist or a master at 20 Questions. )

I decided to check the book out from my library and read it for myself, to see if it really did turn out to be my Favorite book, or at least one of my favorite books.  I have lots of favorites, you see, but there is only one Favorite.

Now you'll have to wait to find out if it ends up being one of my favorite books, because I haven't actually started reading it yet.   I know, I know, but you can't be too mad at me.  I was busy reading my first Egypt book ( which I've finished now ) for my myths and legends study, and I had some important catching up to do on "A Darker Shade of Magic" by V. E. Schwab that I sadly had not gotten around to reading yet until this week, even though it's been out for over a year ( don't worry, I won't take so long to read the second one ).

Sylvia Plath, though, is a name that I have heard before, even if I've never read any of her work.  She was a poet in the 1900's, who tragically committed suicide in 1963 at the age of 30.  After divorcing her husband and moving to London with her two children, she had some issues getting this book published.  But it finally was, just a few weeks before her death, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, though everyone in London knew she was the real author.

"The Bell Jar" is an American classic about a woman descending into a mental breakdown, and I can't wait to read it.  There's something about mental health stories that I can't seem to get enough of.  Sylvia's story makes me want to read it even more, because of how the plot of the story ( at first glance ) appears to be an insight as to what happened to her, in her mind.  It is said that her first suicide attempt is chronicled in the summer mentioned in this book.

So now I read, and maybe you will, too.  I think it's important, in a way, to try to understand what it's like for people who are hurt in this way, so that maybe one day there will be a better chance of helping them to save themselves.

Em