well, I just purchased 'Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You' by Peter Cameron (one of the books on my list) and am feeling a little more hopeful. This book intrigued me the most out of the many that I stumbled upon whilst creating the list, and I am now extremely excited to read it. I found out about it through fuck yeah, literary quotes, a site that I frequently visit. The extracts included caught my eye; I immediately established a connection with the character. One review put it like this:

James Svek doesn't really fit in. He isn't interested in the same things as other eighteen-year-old guys, doesn't even like people his age.. James is a contemplative young man whose views on the world around him aren't always congruent with popular opinion. He sees the world with a mix of ironic humor and disdain. Although he isn't an "angry" teenager, James has distanced himself from the people and things that surround him.. He has been accepted to Brown University but he has decided that he doesn't want to go to college. He would rather buy an old house in the Midwest and live in obscurity.

It is quite literally my ideal book. Perhaps I am not alone in my thinking after all. I found myself reading George Orwell for the majority of my day in the school library in an attempt to avoid my surroundings. It worked. Oh, the power of literary escapism.