if you don't read then we can't be friends.

interesting tidbit you may not know about me: i love books.  and loving them may be the understatement of the century.  because i am constantly buying them.  which is constantly annoying shitler.  like one month he got extra annoyed because i easily dropped over $100 on various books.  but i feel like he can't even get mad because HELLO I'M EXERCISING MY BRAIN.  at any given point in time i typically have two books in my purse, books scattered on my desk at work, and books strewn about all over the house.  i can't help it.
when i was little my parents used to buy me a book each and every time we were at the store and at one point it got so bad that i would throw fits if whoever i was at the store with didn't buy me a book.   and if you ever need to find the kid that wasn't angry when their parents grounded them and banished them to their room then look no further because i used to be all "ha, joke is on you mom there's books in that room.  good punishment.  not."  until she eventually figured it out and i just got grounded from books.  which, whatever that's rude, because i'm just trying to expand my mind so thanks a lot MOM. one of the only grudges i'm actually still holding onto stems from book reading.  one time in the first grade my elementary school decided to hold a week-long contest in which if you were reading between the hours of 5PM and 8PM and the principal called you it meant you won and you got a giant gift certificate to the scholastic book club flyers and you could basically pick out whatever you wanted.  enter tiny me and i was in heaven.  i would force dinner to be had early in order to get it out of the way so that my parents would sit down with me and read.
if my tiny brother nickolas needed anything i was all "you better get your requests in before 5PM because after that you're SOL bro."  so religiously, monday through thursday, i read and to no avail because nothing happened and the principal NEVER called and while i was obviously not happy about it i wasn't technically that unhinged.
until friday morning rolled around and i was hanging out with my then-best friend sarah and she told me a tale full of lies and deception.
guess who hadn't read at all that week?  SARAH. guess who the principal called on thursday night?  SARAH. guess who wasn't reading at the time the principal called?  SARAH. guess who's parents lied and said she was reading so she could win the contest?  SARAH'S.
it's been like twenty-two years and i still haven't forgiven that bitch. and honestly my blood pressure for sure spiked just writing about that story.
but for all intents and purposes the reason i mention my love of books is that while i typically read and enjoy (for the most part) everything i read there are certain points where you come across certain books and you're convinced they've changed your entire existence.  this happened last summer when samm and i read invisible monsters and honestly all i could think was #GameChanger and then i "wrote" about it.  now it's one year later and i devoured the book the fault in our stars and it's all i can think about, tweet about, write about, and cry about it.  it's a rare occurrence when a book makes you feel like the biggest piece of ungrateful shit about your entire life but you have no qualms about opening said book right from the beginning and starting it all over again.  THAT, kids, is a great book.  and that is exactly this book.  i have never ugly cried more inside at 3PM on a beautiful summer day with the shades drawn than when i read this book.  it's everything you don't want to be confronted with but it will throat punch you into awareness nonetheless.  

talk about reading just one declaration of love and bursting into an embarrassing amount of tears and thanking the heavens that shitler isn't around to judge the shit out of you.

and it's terrible because it's about cancer and i'm pretty sure that each and every one of us has had to endure the grief that is watching someone you love suffer from that but this book is still one of the most beautiful books i have ever read.

so do yourself a favor and order it, read it, love it.  just do it right fucking now so we can all talk about it together.
p.s. i'm too remedial to even write a review of any type of book so don't think this was my attempt at doing a book review.  but just know that i will forcefully cram this book down everyone's throat until they read it and love it as much as i do.