This post will be (sort of) a recap of last year’s reading. A bit all over the place and I know it’s already June with the first half of the year already finished, perhaps it’s a bit late to be posting yearly recaps but I’m trying to ease my way back to writing blog posts and this seems an easy enough topic to start with.
Last year, while still typical of my hermit years with the added pandemic situation, felt such a huge accomplishment for me because I rekindled my love for reading. I was able to read 44 books and surpassed my Goodreads Reading Challenge which I’ve abysmally failed for years. I was so happy! I’m still so happy and proud about it! And it’s not a stretch nor an overstatement when I say reading infinitely helped my mental health and overall disposition about life and living.
After finishing and publishing my last blog post, I spent the next few days worrying. Worrying that the post was too long. Worrying that I was sounding conceited writing “reviews” when I was really just sprouting stupid thoughts and words. Worrying that I was being utterly ridiculous especially when the reality that no one actually cares finally sinks in.
Everything made me nostalgic about my early days of blogging in Tumblr where I would simply, and perhaps shamelessly, share my (brainless) thoughts and (mediocre) photos. It was a time where there’s no need for adding paragraphs and paragraphs of words that I try so hard to be somewhat of a great writer’s that they all end up even more nonsensical like I strangely always need to do whenever I write a post on this newer blog. There’s only a smidge of overthinking—a smidge because let’s face it overthinking is my brand™—before and after posting. No ridiculous worries. I purely freely shared what inspires me, what made me happy for that particular day which made me even more inspired and happier.
My interest and love for reading came surging back in the month of May. And I mean surging like an angry bull totally hell bent on running through that person (me) waving, arguably stupidly, that red flag. I read 7 books in May. Seven! A couple of which I was able to finish in just two days each. It’s unbelievably ridiculous for me. If someone told that version of myself from the beginning of this year or even just the one from April (the same version who had not lifted a single page nor read a single paragraph… sentence… a word) about this accomplishment, I would have told that someone insane.
I’m not exactly sure if this is the most I have read in such a short amount of time but this is certainly the most enjoyable reading time I have found myself immersed in. The first time in a very, very long while that I loved reading books and despite not being able to do anything else that I set out to do in May as I was too fixated and too lost in different and magnificent worlds through books, I am incredibly happy. I would also very much like to say I am proud of myself but it feels like there’s some bit of finality in doing so and I am hoping to continue the reading habit—I read for 29 out of 31 days!—I have established from May into the rest of the year.
And so, below are all the books I have read in the month of May and my thoughts on each of them.
I feel like I have to put up a warning that this is going to be quite a long post before anything else. I never know how to condense my thoughts better. I’ll give free hugs if you read until the end, heh. If you have any book recommendations, as well, please leave it in the comments! I’ll be glad to know.
It’s honestly hard for me to pinpoint moments that happened in the last few months. For one, I spent May lost in so many different lives and worlds through reading books that my brain is still too wrapped up with, deeming everything else unimportant and, thus, forgotten. But, mainly, my days have each been too trivial and too indistinguishably monotonous—each one seems to be mixing with and bleeding through one another that I cannot, most of the time, tell them apart.
I guess it’s for that same reason why the last few months have each both felt so long and short. I would often find myself wondering how my month went by so fast (It’s June already?!) and get surprised that it has only been a month (It’s only June?!) in a span of a moment. It feels like it’s been a whole year already but also not. It is a weird feeling. I feel weird. I’m weird.
Yet, here I am trying to make sense of everything, find something special in my mundane life, and write a life recap post. Forgive me in advance if anything written below won’t make any sense. This is just rambling, truth be told, veiled with a shiny (perhaps a bit pretentious) as a ‘Life Update’ blog post.
Read: April 28 — May 03GoodreadsFormat: E-bookRating:
Earlier this month, I finally catalogued one book for my 2021 Reading Challenge! Well, technically a second book but the first one was just a bit of rereading, skipping most of the story so it doesn’t really count, does it? Yes, the reading challenge was going really bleak and terrible but I felt a bit of hope after finishing A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness.
I had first heard of A Discovery of Witches as a tv series but did not know that it was a show based on a book until I came across a positive review of the book that captivated me while I was craving for something Twilight-esque to reduce the stress I was in at that time. Odd, I know. I actually tried to entertain myself with Breaking Dawn, the last book of the Twilight series, and even binged the movies but I was just cringing bone deep the entire time and joined Robert Pattinson in dissing the movies right after the entire excursion. I was very unsatisfied. And so, when the book review said that A Discovery of Witches is Twilight but more mature, I immediately decided to read it.
A Discovery of Witches follows Diana Bishop, a witch of a very powerful and distinguished descent but after suffering a terrible loss, she has since decided to abandon her magic and heritage, preferring her life as a scholar and historian. That is until she uncovered an alchemical book and, thus, found herself being forced back to the life she abandoned. A life of magic and creatures—witches, daemons, and vampires, particularly an alluring vampire named Matthew Clairmont.
February was such a good month for me in spite of the fact that I am having a hard time listing down the reasons as to why, seeing that the one thing I started towards the end of the month that I am most excited about since then has overridden all my sensibilities and focus that it is all I could think of right now. Regardless, it was a good month, I am sure of it! And I am so happy.
The one thing I am most excited about: I made a video and started a YouTube channel!
Well, it’s nothing much, really. Actually, it’s just a vlog the same as HeyHye’s 2 Seconds a Day that I have always wanted to do for myself since I discovered her videos and channel a few years ago. I honestly took a lot of inspiration from her in making and editing this vlog—wait, is it a vlog? I mostly associate that word ‘vlog’ with the more busy people or influencers and their videos about their more eventful lives. Mine is truthfully just a compilation of my everyday life watching television and staying at home, filmed with dirty camera gear, and done with beginner grade videography and editing skills. I am a mere child showing off an artwork of messy scribbles and it’s quite ridiculous. A wave of embarrassment washes over me sometimes when I really think about how excited I am over this but overall, I’m not sorry. I'm still proud.
Perhaps it is because it’s been a long while since I tried something new and enjoyed it; since I dared myself to try something I have been very curious about for a time now that made me very excited about a measly video. Perhaps it is because I was learning, truly felt and realized that learning is beyond the 4 walls of a classroom and I felt really happy and proud of myself for it. See, I have been a victim of thinking and assuming that learning can only happen at school, within the educational system, and only in a classroom. It is one of the many reasons that I feel insecure about after dropping out of university. I felt… well, ignorant and that there’s no room for improving because I rejected school. Yet, while my first experience of video editing—especially learning how to use Adobe Premiere Pro—has been honestly so confusing and a bit brutal, I truly felt such wasn’t the case. Apparently knowledge and the opportunities to learn is everywhere. Honestly, you can find anything on the internet. You just have to remain constantly curious and try.
And the process of learning is truly the best feeling there is. So, loudly clearing my throat and then in my most fake cheery voice, like and subscribe!
There was a whole year where I used to bring a film camera everywhere I went.
I did not have my DSLR camera yet (and I immensely wished to have one) nor did I have a phone, or any gadget for that matter, with a nice camera. I only worked with a Canon point-and-shoot digital camera that our family owned and I took photos of almost every little thing with it. At that time, photography was my main art form, my way of self-expression, and my hobby along with sharing the photos I took on my Tumblr blog. Actually, the two things came hand in hand. I took photos to blog and I blogged to take photos.
Anyway, around that time, film photography suddenly became a trend at the small community of bloggers I was part of on Tumblr. Of course, being who I was—curious and hyper fixated—I dug out an old film camera from the depths of my family’s vault of abandoned and forgotten things and tried out film photography myself and from then on, I invested the little of my savings from my allowance on my new found hobby and brought along my film camera everywhere.
in which my existentialism fully takes over and trouble you with ramblings
I never liked the first days of school. Well, I never liked school in general, particularly the part wherein having to wake up early for it, but that’s beside the point. I never liked first days of school because I know that they usually entail a lot of self-introductions and I never really liked those, not even a little bit. Speaking in front of classmates was fine as my school made sure of it but not knowing how and what to introduce about yourself makes the supposedly simple task of self-introduction, of saying hello very hard.
The root of all this, I realized years ago, is from my lack of any grasp of understanding about any part of myself, my identity.
Who are you? I never have anything to answer. I am always unable to verbalize anything, even mere little things about myself that would be remotely interesting as required to plant a good first impression. The question has always been so daunting for me even when I was younger. And it became increasingly more unnerving when I reached college and some teachers (still) individually asked us, their students, to stand up in class for self-introductions. At one point, I started asking myself why a touch personally invasive questions that seem, at least for me, to require reflecting on a lifetime worth of choices to formulate an answer would be a good baseline for self-introductions. Why did you choose your current study? What are your plans for the future that made you choose your course? My overthinking, perhaps a bit obsessive, existentialist is shaking.
Then, she ran for the hills.
It is also a fact that creating an ‘About’ page as some sort of obligatory introduction for my blog takes me ages to write and I am not really confident nor comfortable with the result, to be honest. Comparatively, an icing on the cake, I remain dreading birthdays. Birthdays, where clocks—biological and societal—seem to be very real and are ticking loudly, where the demons are raging wilder than usual, and the crisis that I could usually silence with a cloak of denial and a high wall built of hyper fixations screams louder for attention.
But, last year, I tried to combat my fear of self-introductions. With a rarely occurring sense of bravery inspired when I first listened to, now, one of my favorite songs ‘Palette’ by IU, I spent my anxiety ridden countdown to my 25th birthday trying to curve my existentialism down. I gallantry stepped into the metaphorical ring and fought one of my many, yet certainly mightier than the rest, demon named ‘Identity Crisis’ (but, I call said crisis ‘Leo’ for some reason—don’t ask), let everything be damned and all.