Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly link-up hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.
This week’s list is the Top Ten Books I Read on Recommendations. There are so many books that have been recommended to me, especially since I began this blog. I’m just going to list the six I can think of right now (though I am sure there are more) in no particular order.
Note: I debated writing and posting this for some time. It can be very hard to openly speak of mental illness, particularly when the people in my life don’t always acknowledge that mine even exists. Please remember this is only my own experiences and my own opinions. I am not a doctor nor any type of health professional. I am only a crazy, young woman who likes to pray and read books.
My first post on my mental illness has been my most visited post since I published it. I hope that it has been able to help some people and I hope that this post can do the same.
As those of your who follow my blog already know, I am currently taking online grad school classes as I work towards my Master’s degree. Anyone in grad school can tell you that this is super-stressful. I feel that I am especially affected thanks to my high-functioning depression and anxiety. Grad school makes me crazy busy and, every day, I question my sanity on pursuing higher education.
Anyway, here are five things I do to deal with my high-functioning depression and anxiety during grad school. These are probably applicable to anyone that is in grad school or even college, but I can only speak for myself on that matter.
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell CATH IS A SIMON SNOW FAN. Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan... But for Cath, being a fan is her life--and she's really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it's what got them through their mother leaving.
Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fanfiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.
Cath's sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can't let go. She doesn't want to.
Now that they're going to college, Wren has told Cath that she doesn't want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She's got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend; a fiction-writing professor who thinks fanfiction is the end of the civilized world; a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words...and she can't stop worrying about her dad, who's loving and fragile and has never really been alone
For Cath, the question is: Can she do this? Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?
Find the book: Goodreads, Amazon, Book Depository
I did not mean to wait this long between my last World Youth Day post and this one, but grad school kind of got in the way. Anyhow, I’m writing this now.
Our plane from New York City landed in Prague, Czech Republic around 11am Czech time (this means 3am Mountain Time) and we were all exhausted. I have so much trouble sleeping on planes that I barely got any rest on the transatlantic flight and now we were off again.
The Charles Bridge in Prague, Czech Republic.
Prayer in the Catholic Tradition by Robert Wicks Within the Catholic tradition, there are many ways to pray. Yet, while there are smaller books, books on praying with saints and contemporary figures, volumes assembling groups of individual prayers, or prayer within one particular strand of Catholic spirituality, there is no truly comprehensive work available on how to learn, practice, and teach ways of prayer in the broad Roman Catholic tradition. This handbook breaks new ground, offering forty important voices on forty essential topics for a comprehensive look at the learning, practice, and teaching of all that it means to pray in the Catholic tradition. Topics include:
• Types of spirituality (including Carmelite, Franciscan, Ignatian, Dominican and other major schools) and how they frame prayer and prayerfulness
• Liturgical prayer
• New Testament scriptural approaches to prayer
• Praying with the Psalms
• Contemplation
• Liturgy of the Hours
• Conversational prayer
• Resistances to prayer
• Journaling as prayer
• Enhancing a spirit of prayerfulness
• Praying in Ordinary Time
• Praying through grief, suffering, loss and pain
• Dealing with distractions in prayer
• The essentials of Catholic prayer; and much more.
Find the book: Goodreads, Amazon, Book Depository