The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting, Evanna Lynch

 What’s it about:

‘The actor and activist delivers a raw yet intensely thoughtful memoir detailing her recovery from anorexia and how the conflict between the comfort of self-destruction and the liberation of creativity still rages inside of her.’ (From the Waterstones Website)

What Lynn learned:

• There is beauty in the frank and bold truth of what recovery from a coping mechanism actually looks like. Day in, day out. Beyond Instagram quotes that tell you to ‘Be Strong!’, there is a world of hurting people trying their best every day.

• That focusing on a greater cause is a way to see beyond current pain and channel energies.

• Even the most unthinkable-to-some behaviours can be understood when explained through personal experience and the function that said behaviours have.

 Fave quotes:

“For me, recovery from recovery was probably the most confusing time – the most lonely, frustrating and psychologically challenging time. It did not feel heroic and it was also incredibly tedious.”

‘‘It will get easier’ is not a helpful thing to say to someone for whom only the present moment can exist, so vivid, so intense that it’s not possible to imagine a moment beyond it. The future doesn’t matter to someone enduring an unimaginable pain, so let’s not entertain that childish fantasy….Sometimes things are just unremittingly shit and the only respectful thing to do is to stand next to the person going through it and scream along with them.”

“But creativity, she doesn’t fit in a box. She’s a wild, fluid, uncontrollable energy that spreads out sensuously from a curious, wide open mind in large expanses of aimless time on dreamy liminal train journeys or in subtle moments between waking and sleep.. where before, I was just scribbling, writing, moving for the mere joy of it, now I tried to commodify my creativity. I tried to squeeze it out and make it do something worthwhile, be special, be important, be good. I could no longer see the point of art if it wasn’t good.

But that’s the tricky thing about art, it’s never strictly good or bad, it’s just expression, or excretion. It couldn’t be measure by scales or charts, or contained in small manageable segments in the day. It was always, by its very nature, so imperfect.’

Why relevant right now:

COVID really screwed people who experience eating disorders – ‘The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the burden of eating disorders and simultaneously has highlighted the urgent need to raise awareness of these disorders. While the pandemic has impaired population mental health globally, it seems to have had particularly detrimental effects on people with or at risk of eating disorders. Multiple reports from different countries, in Europe, Australia, and North America, have shown an increase in the incidence of eating disorder behaviours or diagnoses in the community, or deterioration of eating disorders in patient populations, often with more severe symptoms and comorbidities since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic’ (Psychiatry Journal)

Interest factor: 4/5

Coffee table cred: 3/5

Ignorance of external world while reading: 5/5

Book cover design: 3/5

Help the existential crisis: 5/5

Scotland’s Stories, Book Week Scotland Edition

What’s it about:

This is a collection of stories from the Scottish Book Trust’s annual writing project – Your Stories –where they ask people all over Scotland to submit true stories inspired by a theme, ‘Scotland's Stories’.

What Lynn learned:

• I don’t really like short stories. I like plot-driven, fast-paced, characterful fiction, or non-fiction that I can speed-read. Short stories take a lot of attention switching and focus.

• There is something wonderful in other people summing up your own experiences of your own country that you resonate with.

Fave quotes:

• ‘My Scotland is not a single place. It is a quilt of experiences and memories that have woven themselves into the fabric of my being and added yet another layer to my already eclectic sense of identity… it is fun and playtime, running through dark passages and spiral staircases…. Is the excitement of sitting in the car and beginning a new adventure to an unknown place… It is moments playing on sandy beaches..’ - p. 28, Diana Monteiro Toombs

• ‘Author’s note: As a child I was always a bit of everything and not quite enough of anything specific. This fundamentally shaped my experience of life and made me more open to difference in the word – I have since learned that this ‘not quite belonging’ is a defining part of many of the stories of Scotland’ - p. 63, Angela Logan

• About ceilidhs, ‘Here, time has no bearing. It’s just us, the room, the music and all the ones who came before, connected through a shared moment of culture and jubilance.’ – p. 74, Jacqueline Munro

• ‘I realised how Scotland had healed me. It’s all about scale. The sense of being one tiny part of a much bigger thing. When you stand by a loch, or on a mountainside, or in the highlands, or on a beach in Scotland, there is peace. There is peace because nature has been preserved there, protected, loved. Nature is at the top of the agenda.’ - p.88 Helen Fields

Why relevant right now:

It was Book Week Scotland, 14th-20th November!

Note about the below ratings: These are really low scores and in no way reflect the amazing Scottish Book Trust and the excellent writing. It’s just personal taste and where I’m at.

Interest factor: 2/5

Coffee table cred: 3/5

Ignorance of external world while reading: 2/5

Book cover design: 3/5

Help the existential crisis: 2/5