It’s been a pleasure.

Around March I said I wanted to come back, but the timing was bad because I had so much to revise for my eight exams.

I’ve been on holiday since end of May. I’ve been playing video games and learning how to do mini mobile games. I’ve also read a few stories here and there, but definitely not as much as I used to in the last years.

The thing is this:
I don’t think I’m coming back to this blog. I’m going into my fourth and final year of university this September, and I started this blog after I had just finished high school -during my gap year!

I’ve met awesome people from awesome countries and learned that reading is not a dying habit by any means. You just need to know where to find the bookworms,haha.

I will never forget that a one point in my life this blog meant a lot to me. Every morning I would check my numbers, interact with other bloggers and decide what things to share. This whole procedure of reading something amazing (or not) and sharing it with people gave me a feeling that I can’t describe in words, though I’m sure lots of bloggers know what I’m talking about!

I’m also really glad with the 50,983 visitors and 72,998 views my blog got along the years. Who would’ve thought?

But it’s just that I’ve changed so much. I am now 23 and have grown into a different person. It’s hard for me to carry on something I’ve started five years ago, which is why I’ve opted not to renew my membership in September. I think my fonts and theme will disappear thereafter.

Lots of bloggers I started with are long gone, so I doubt many people are reading this, but I just felt I owe it to the blog.

WordPress, fellow bloggers, friends, it’s been a pleasure.

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Madness

Understand me.
I’m not like an ordinary world.
I have my madness, I live in another dimension and I do not have time for things that have no soul.

Charles Bukowski

Dreams

 

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow

Langston Hughes, Dreams

Coming back?

I’ve just changed my blog’s theme for a fresher look.

Even though I’m extremely busy these days, I feel like coming back on wordpress to post at least once a week. Because I do miss life here. I never felt left out – on the contrary, I met lots of people sharing the same passion for books. My days had a purpose – I’d read something amazing to share on the blog later. And I was always looking forward to my favourite bloggers’ next post.

Oddly enough my blog has been doing quite well without me – statistically speaking. I very rarely get less than 50 views and my number of views per day regularly peaks around 90. Today itself I got 97 views, which is quite crazy. All in all, that’s 62,241 in total. I wonder when it will hit 100,000!

Anyway, I hope people will react to this post. I can’t wait to interact with you guys, again! 🙂

 

James Salter, Bangkok

I’ll tell you something funny, Hollis said, something I heard. They say that everything in the universe, the planets, all the galaxies, everything—the entire universe—came originally from something the size of a grain of rice that exploded and formed what we have now, the sun, stars, earth, seas, everything there is, including what I felt for you.

….

I’ve just gone on the blog and seen this.

427 views is crazy. My blog averages 70 views per day, so I don’t know how this happened.

Anyway, I’m glad I decided to go on the blog today. This will encourage me to post more in the future.

🙂

What I’m Up To These Days….

I’ve been in England for two weeks now. Lectures began last Monday.

This is my final year, and I’m determined to make the most of it – which means I’ll try to find the time to visit galleries and museums in London, read all sorts of books, and concentrate more on my studies.

Anyway, my room is such a mess that taking this little picture was not even easy. A Manual for Cleaning Women aside, the books arrived on Friday. I hope – I will try my best – to read all of them before the year ends. I initially wanted to read the Booker Prize nominees first, but I lost my debit card and couldn’t order anything for 1 week! So it would’ve been virtually impossible to read them in 3 weeks or so with my lectures.

Here is why I bought these books:

A Manual for Cleaning Women: I bought the book in Waterstones during the Fresher’s Week because I didn’t have anything to read in my room. I’m halfway through it, but I’ll read it sporadically now that I’ve received my other books – the reason being that reading nearly 400 pages of short stories can get very tiresome. I like it though.

This Is How You Lose Her: I had already added the books I wanted to read to my Amazon basket even before I actually obtained my debit card back. However, when checking out I noticed that two collections of short stories present in the cart were by Irish authors. So I kept one (Young Skins by Colin Barrett), saved the other (Dark Lies the Island by Kevin Barry) and added Junot Diaz’s short stories, because he writes from a different background and I was very impatient to discover his writing. I’m currently reading and loving it!

The Vegetarian: The Man Booker International Prize 2016. At first I didn’t want to read it that bad. But I read how the translator, Deborah Smith, learned Korean shortly after finishing university at 21 and how she ended up translating The Vegetarian. I can completely relate to her feeling that she needed to do something different, that will make her stand out, after graduating. I can’t wait to read this book!

The Glorious Heresies: Ah, another Irish author. I somehow forgot this book but I saw some people around here who were reading it. It won the Bailey’s Award despite not even featuring in the Booker longlist, so I have a feeling it might be a book that divides opinion. But,anyway, I am very much looking forward to reading it. (I wanted the other cover, but that one was cheaper.)

The Art of the Short Story: I’m loving reading short stories at the moment so I was very interested when I saw this book on goodreads. Paris Review is synonymous with quality and its selection of short stories (twenty in total) looks very promising. I like how each of them is given an introduction, so that we can witness the art of ”shortstorytelling” in different settings and styles.

The Sympathizer: This book won so many awards, among which is the Pulitzer. I added it to my tbr list because I wanted to read more books by Asians or authors of Asian descent. What made me want to actually read it now is simply the fact that it is one of the best books of 2016. In 2017 I’ll have my eyes set on different books and might end up forgetting it. So now is the right time, I think, to read it.