Most Recent Obsession: The Qala Soundtrack

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starry nights, enemies to lovers, annotations, graffiti, mixtapes, art galleries, anklets, sunsets, heart-shaped lockets, bonfires, libraries, constellations, love letters, soft lighting, messy hair, ice cream parlours, misted windows, blueberries, full moons, dark clouds, red roses

You belonged in the library, as much as any book.

- The Sorcery of Thorns

Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene I hardly paid it any attention. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that 18 years later I would recall it in such detail. I didn’t give a damn about the scenery that day. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking about the beautiful girl walking next to me. I was thinking about the two of us together, and then about myself again. I was at that age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with complications. Scenery was the last thing on my mind.

- Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

my favourite lines from The Bees in The Starless Sea

having an imagination like mine is a wonder and a curse. i feel so much and create so much but most of what it chooses to do is create an alternate reality for me to hide in. a world where i get everything i want and i have become everything i have ever wanted to be and i am beautiful and witty and smart and impressive and sparkling. but the funniest part of all is that i suffer there too. sometimes even more than i do here. but the difference is that, in my head, someone is there to hold me.

TW: Rape, Abuse

Photo Link: Echo Wang

Why I dislike Colleen Hoover : The decline of reading critically

Colleen Hoover is an American author who rose to fame after her books got popular on “Book Tok.” Book Tok is a “side” of tik tok that reads and reviews books. Her most popular novels are November 9, Ugly Love, Verity and It ends with us. Personally I’ve only read It ends with us, but from excerpts of her novels I don’t plan on reading them. 

Anna Todd is a popular fanfic author who wrote the infamous After series. So popular it got picked up for…. How many movies? Too many. (4) Anna and Colleen both have two things in common. Both terrible popular writers who romanticize and write hard topics beyond their writing skills. 

Even though my dislike for her is strong, there are a few things that I think she has accomplished. She became a popular known-romance author. Her novels are easily accessible because of the simplicity of them. I can admit that! I believe that readers of Colleen Hoover should develop better reading comprehension skills. 

I feel so strongly about my dislike of Colleen Hoover because I’ve read many, many romances. I’m a very picky romance reader. I can’t stand abusive, toxic, possessive men. Why would I want to surround myself around men like that? Now my preference strongly influences my dislike but not fully. Colleen Hoover doesn’t believe in Trigger warnings. Trigger warnings aren’t new, but to the modern political world people don’t need them! But here's the thing, Colleen Hoover doesn’t use them! Despite her constant use of rape, abuse, violence in almost all of her novels. Now this is debatable, why would this be bad? Because she believes it “Spoils” the story. Telling me that she uses these real life traumas solely on plot twists. If you look at most of her reviews from stans most will say they LOVED the plot twists. That is what Collen Hoover is, a “Romance” writer who writes rape as a plot twists. These characters do have “Happy Endings.” Spoiler for november 9 : She gets with the guy who burned her house down. Caused the burn damage on her skin and killed her mother in the fire. If that’s not a meet cute, I don’t know what is. 

Colleen Hoover also included a rape scene in her novel November 9. Later apologizing and having it removed from the novel. She later deleted her apology from facebook and never spoke about it again. Now this is relevant to Colleen Hoover’s character. When a girl online spoke about the sexual assault against her son, Colleen Hoover blocked the girl and continued to defend her son. Now of course not everything on the internet is true, but with the way she writes men makes me wonder how she views men. She also markets her novels as romance. 

Is simplistic writing bad? Of course not, simple language is what gets people reading. Most people wouldn’t read if they started with Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

I don’t hate Colleen Hoover fans, or the younger teenage girls for enjoying it. I just wish that the romance genre, although dominated by women, was less misogynistic and saw female characters as true, fleshed out characters. I believe that Colleen Hoover could improve the quality of her craft and her writing, by not calling her novels “Romance” and picking up a dictionary once in a while. 

I think the moral of this story is that not all popular writers are good, some just get lucky.  

taken by me

Do y'all believe in soulmates? Do y'all believe that there is one perfect person for everyone?

The way that in the starless sea, the books are never mentioned as being inside a "library", they're always said to be inside the "Harbor". As if stories and books are something safe and protect you from stormy seas and they feel like home and they're always a destination that you can go to and call your own. The stories themselves are the Harbor and I think that's so sweet and soft

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

- the picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde