If I'd Known Then: Women in Their 20s and 30s Write Letters to Their Younger Selves (What I Know Now) by Ellyn Spragins

Yeah, I'm posting close to midnight on Valentine's Day, which happens to be on a Saturday this year. So what? Single people unite blah blah blah other bullshit.

ANYWAY this book was better than the last - it was in the same vein (people writing about/to themselves at a younger age) and yet the letters spoke to me more than the essays in the previous book. It did bother me slightly that most people were writing to themselves around their teenage years though (just in case the concept is lost - the whole idea is that adults write letters to themselves at earlier, harder points in their lives to show how much they've grown since that point...the idea that it does in fact get better) - I mean, let's be honest - teenage girls are a lost cause. Is it really worth writing anything to them? Seriously, let's just put them all in cages until they're like...I dunno...22? 23? Sometimes I think I should still be in a cage somewhere so we could possibly extend that age limit to 24.

So people write these letters to themselves and tell them to hang in there, it won't be so bad for long, they will come out of the awkward phase they're in and eventually become people famous enough to have a letter to their younger self included in a compilation. Yeah, the essays are good, inspiring, etc, but....really...we don't all grow up to be celebrities. We don't all win gold medals in the Olympics, we don't write bestselling novels, we don't release platinum albums. I think it may have been better - more inspiring - to read a compilation of letters from normal people to their younger selves. To say, yeah, it gets better, even if you don't turn out to be a celebrity, you will be happy, and life still turns out to be pretty darn great. So, keep that in mind.

That is, unless you happen to also be a celebrity. In that case, read this book. It will probably speak to you and reassure you that your life is great and not awkward anymore...which may or may not be because you're rich and famous.