What I've been reading lately

I was thinking about doing a post on my favorite reads of 2017, but I honestly would not be able to say anything meaningful about the books I read back in January last year - my memory is pretty bad. That's why I decided to just write about what has been going on in the last few weeks in terms of reading, what books I discovered, how I felt about my reads, and so on.

My reading choices have been heavily influenced by Bookstagram lately - and I have made some amazing choices because of that, and two accounts especially have become my favorites (@herpickings and @relationsheep). At this moment, I am kind of in a weird transition phase when it comes to my reading. I've been reading young adult since I was 12 up until last year, and I kind of lost my love for reading because I was not relating to the genre anymore, I felt like everything was more of the same, the characters started bothering me - and so on. However, for the longest time it did not come to my mind that MAYBE I could also pick up books from another genre ?!?! Wow!! Yeah, it's embarrassing, but for the longest time I was intimidated by adult books and literature, forgetting the fact that I am, officially, and adult now and I can read these things and might even relate. Anyway, long story short: in this past year, I slowly started picking up more diverse books from a variety of genres, and I completely fell in love with reading all over again. There's so much more to discover! So I keep finding myself scrolling to amazing Instagram accounts like the ones I just mentioned, and I get so excited about all the books they feature. A whole new world has opened up for me.

  I am a girl who writes in margins now! Imagine doing that with young adult books ("no stupid bitch, don't fall for him! DON'T DROP EVERYTHING FOR A GUY. For fucks sake. I'm out".)

And then this one time, Hayanna from @herpickings shared some excerpts from the book Bluets by Maggie Nelson, and it just struck me like thunder. It was beautiful, it was meaningful, the writing! So naturally I went on Bookdepository right away and ordered it, and naturally, I couldn't wait for it arrive so I went to the bookstore and bought Maggie Nelson's other book, The Argonauts. And this other short book 'Grief is the thing with feathers' by Max Porter. I don't even know what to call this genre - it's kind of like a memoir, kind of like short essays, kind of reads like poetry or philosophy. All I can say is that I have fallen in love with these type of books, and they made me fall back in love with reading, and even with writing again. I am a girl who writes in margins now! Imagine doing that with young adult books ("no stupid bitch, don't fall for him! DON'T DROP EVERYTHING FOR A GUY. For fucks sake. I'm out".)

This post is already starting to be shockingly long so I should probably stop talking so much - but on the other hand I don't really care (who is reading this, anyway)? So I read Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts, LOVED it, I read Max Porter's Grief is the thing with feathers, and felt very confused but I still cried, and I am currently reading Bluets by Maggie since it finally came in the mail yesterday, and I am loving it and I know I'll love it towards the very end. So there's that. I honestly do not have the words to explain this book, or even describe it, so I'll share the very first passage:

"Suppose I were to begin by saying I had fallen in love with a color. Suppose I were to speak this as though it were a confession; suppose I shredded my napkin as we spoke. It began slowly. An appreciation, and affinity. Then, one day, it became more serious. Then (looking into an empty teacup, its bottom stained with thin brown excrement coiled into the shape of a sea horse) it became somehow personal."

Yes.

But I have not completely ambandoned my old ways. I have been reading some middlegrade (at least I think it is): His dark materials by Philip Pullman. Okay, to be honest, I only read the first book, which I loved, and was so severely disappointed by the second one that I just let that be for a while. It was so slow, Lyra was so boring. I have been reading Howl's moving castle, which I would just call a twisted fairytale. I don't know why I didn't read it sooner, because it was absolutely wonderful, and like many, I might have developed a little crush on Howl. I bought some books in December, as well:

And then finally, what's to come? Well, there's still an order on it's way. A field guide to getting lost by Rebecca Solnit, which I hope will fit nicely into my new reading preferences. But also, again, some young adult! I ordered the second and third book in the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy by Lainy Taylor. I read the first book around two or three years ago, but I remember loving it. It had some magical realism elements to it that made it so very different from all other YA, and there is no annoying love triangle either (big plus). Hopefully when I re-read it and continue with the series, I will still love it just as much. For now, this post is probably long enough so I'm gonna wrap this up and continue reading Bluets because I can't stop.

Book review - The Power by Naomi Alderman

This is one of the books that I went into completely blind - aside from seeing the occasional photo on Bookstagram, I had no idea what this book was about, if people liked it, and so on. From what I gathered from the synopsis, this book was going to be a feminists' dream: an alternative world in which not men, but women are the dominant gender. For me, this sounded interesting enough to pick it up.

This book turned out to be endlessly fascinating, but not perfect. However, I could forgive this book it's flaws for the fact that it just had me so hooked - it was the first book in a long time that I wasn't able to put down. The strong point of this book is that it incorporates multiple perspectives, meaning also different parts of society as well as different cultures. This made it extremely real to me. One the rare occasions that I did put the book down and switched on the TV to watch the news, I half expected to see reports on the events of the book in the news. Rioting women on the street, from the US to Europe to India, shooting out electricity out of their hands (I do realize how fake and hard to believe this sounds, but it was actually so well done).

When a book lover met a book thief

Today, I finished 'The book thief' by Markus Zusak after it's been lying on my shelf for over five years. Which is completely ridiculous, because it is one of the most wonderful and touching books I've ever read. I remember the exact moment I bought this book, as well as where I bought it. I was on vacation with my family, we were travelling the West coast of the United States. Something I always do before going somewhere, is looking up if there's any interesting bookstores in that place. If you're a booklover, like me, you will definitely know what bookstore came up first when I looked for bookstores in Los Angeles. The last bookstore, this magical place in a depressing neighbourhood in downtown LA, where there were artpieces and tunnels and furniture all made out of books. I felt the magic of all the stories contained in those pages pressing down on me, and I could have stayed there for hours but my family always gets impatient in bookstores. I bought The book thief there - secondhand, and you could see it was read and loved by someone else before.

The last bookstore, this magical place in a depressing neighbourhood in downtown LA, where there were artpieces and tunnels and furniture all made out of books.

I remember that, back when she was still into reading, my younger sister was always very particular about her books. She would not buy them if they had the tiniest dent or the slightest creased page. She would read her books half opened, so that the spine wouldn't crack. I'm not like that. I want my books to show the journey I, as a reader, and the book went through together. The emotions felt, the laughs and the tears. If I did not fully disappear in the world of the book and the character, and I would still have thoughts of my own, I would probably write those thoughts down in the margins as well. That's why I love buying books secondhand, because it feels you're sharing something with the past reader. They went on the same journey you're about to take, and stories are not meant to be kept locked up, they are meant to be shared.

(I feel like I need to explain why it took me 5 long years to finally read The book thief. It's an easy explanation, actually. Since I was still around the age of 16 or 17 at the time, and my English was still quite horrible, I simply thought it was too hard and quit reading halfway. I'm very happy I decided to read it now, when my English is good enough to fully appreciate the beautiful words of Mark Zusak)

Some art journal pages

I love being creative and drawing/doodling in my art journal, even though I'm not a good artist by any means. I always love seeing other people's creations as they give me a lot of inspiration, so I thought I'd share mine as well!

Why not

Hi!  ☾

Today I had an enormous mental breakdown because I just didn't know how to balance my studies, work, money issues, friends, boyfriend, family and basically life anymore. I don't know how other people do it, but I just can't seem to focus on so many things at the same time. And then there's also the stuff I'd actually like to do: read, draw, write. There's just no time. Anyway, I did what any person with a distorted sense of logic would do: I started a blog. I've actually wanted to do this for a very long time, but it's scary: what will people think? What will my friends say? They'll probably think I'm looking for attention, internet fame, or even money. But I suffer no such illusions (my life is not that exciting): I'm doing this for myself. Since I've been little I've been saying I want to find a job that's creative and involves writing. Now that I'm doing my masters at uni, the terrifying deadline of real adult life is approaching: I need to figure out what I want in life, and how I'm going to get it. Sure, no problem. 

However, writing about it here should be a win-win: I can always make more sense of stuff when I write about it, so hopefully I'll be able to make sense of the stressful mess my life is right now (this sounds more concerning than it actually is, ask any college student how they feel and they'll probably reply the same way). Also, making a start on building an online portfolio seems like a sensible step into the right direction. That, and I just like creating stuff. So I created this. And why not?