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Book subscriptions🤗

Hi😁

One of the (many) things that I love about books is that book subscriptions exist! For me, nothing beats wandering around a book store, but receiving a monthly book parcel in the post is just😌 A little gift from me to me🤗

I currently have a monthly book subscription to Reposed and did also have one with Bookishly if you would like to check them out.

What I love about the Reposed subscription is that it’s not just about the book you receive. They take the time to include handmade chocolates, teas, beauty products and/or stationary. All made independently and to the highest standards. So you dont just pay for a novel, which is great in itself, but you’re also paying to help local and independent businesses.

The novels that are sent in the Reposed subscription are modern literary fiction if that’s your jam. Or if you’d like to start reading more modern fiction then definitely give this a go! They handpick the newest, inspiring and insightful novels to send and I’ve enjoyed every single one.

February’s box of goodies!

If modern fiction isn’t your thing, not to worry, Bookishly is there for you! They will send out classic novels that they have beautifully re-created the cover to in house. And if classics aren’t your thing, there are so many different types or book subscriptions out there from Crime and Detective to YA to Women led/feminist literature to just receiving a completely random book, there’s a subscription box for you!

xo

Booktour of LDN: Persephone Books

Hi!

I spent a couple of days in the good ol’ UK capital this week and decided to pay a visit to one of my favourite book stores – Persephone Books.


Persephone Books reprints neglected fiction and non-fiction by mid 20th Century (mostly) women writers. There are around 132 books that they publish that range from novels to stories to diaries to memoirs to cookbooks!


This is a must for any book lover or bookstore lover to add to their list. If you get the chance whilst you’re in London, definitely give it a visit! The books range from around £12-£13 or you can grab 3 for £33, and a lovely  little extra is you get individually crafted bookmarks for each if the books you buy!

I picked up 2 novels and a book of poems – The World that was Ours by Hilda Bernstein, It’s Hard to be Over Thirty by Judith Viorst and A Lady and her Husband by Amber Reeves. Can’t wait to get stuck into these so keep an eye out for my reviews🙂

If you would like to check out their catalogue, head on over to the website!

xo

Placement level…complete!

Hello everyone 🙂

Hope January is treating you all well. I know it can be a difficult time for a lot of people, but bigger and brighter things are around the corner for you!

What’s new with everyone?

For me, I finally completed my first placement of my teaching training course which means I’m more than halfway through! Gosh. I didn’t think this would come around so quickly. It felt like it was dragging its heels😅 but in the best way. I enjoyed it completely and gained so much from it that really cemented that teaching is the career for me.

I bawled like a baby (in private – can’t let the kids see that!) when one of my classes gave me a notebook filled with lovely comments about my teaching. Urgh😭

With teaching there’s that constant feeling that looms over you that you’re not good enough or that you’re not doing enough. And boy did I feel that on an hourly, never mind on a daily, basis. There is always something more you could be doing. Even right now, writing this, there is something that I probably could be doing to enhance my teaching career. But where is the stop sign? Where are the boundaries? There aren’t. It’s as simple as that. The main thing I learnt on my first section of this journey is the need to switch off and to separate myself from my teaching and my teaching persona. It’s hard and I’m still navigating through the currents, but I’m slowly starting to get there. Waking up in a panic at 3am most nights thinking about things I hadn’t completed, or even started, was not the one. Everything I watched or heard, or conversations I took part in made me think about how I could use it in my lessons. Pages upon pages of notes of ideas…have I used any of them? Big fat nope.

It’s definitely an all encompassing career and one that 100% will take over your life if you let it. Yet, I’m thriving and crossing everything that my next placement goes just as well.

xo

New decade, new post.

Hello 😄

It has been approximately 9 months since my last post (please don’t judge me😶). So what’s new?

Well…I took the plunge and started my teacher training course to be a fully fledged English teacher! Gotta put my love of books and that degree to use somehow I guess.

How’s it going you may ask? Stress-ful. My life has turned into a complete overload of lesson planning, creating resources and dealing with kids.

But…I am absolutely loving every second of it. Is it stressful? Hell yes. Have I had bad lessons and wanted to quit? Um..yeah! But the kids make it all worth it. The moment a child engages with what I’m teaching or understands a concept or how to use a new word correctly, the rush of pride and happiness let’s me know that it’s all worth it and that this is the career I want.

One of the hardest years of my career to come they all tell me…bring it on.

xo

You’ll be the prince and I’ll be the princess. It’s a love story, baby just say yes.

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Hello 🙂

I love love. I love romance. Give me heart wrenching, tear jerking couples pushing and pulling at each other, not realising they’re made for each other only to recognise it at the last moment to love happily ever after. Give me couples who shouldn’t be together or are enemies who fall in love, along with all the other soppy clichés. I’m a sucker for it. Ahhh ❤

But that’s not to say I enjoy reading romance novels where that becomes the only plotline and everything else redundant. For me, I like to have romance in novels/literature as an added bonus rather than being the main plot. I don’t want characters to be reduced to being love interests, I want their love to add to a story, to enhance it further, to be a driving force. More often than not however, that’s the case. Whether it be women thrown into a narrative, reduced to being nothing more than a one dimensional sexual character, or a male character being written purely to enhance a female’s story – to give her story purpose – because she can’t have a purpose without a man surely(!) I want flawed characters. I want them to fall in love with the person and the not the idea of romance. I know that it might be a little hypocritical to say that given that the first thing I said was I love romance. I mean the whole idea of romance is to sell an idyllic version of it right? To allow us to fulfil our fantasies and escape to a world where everything is easier and simpler, where a boy would come in and sweep you off your feet or a girl would give everything up for you in a heartbeat, you take one look at the movie industry in the 90’s and you can see that, it distorts or perceptions and our ideas of what love and romance should be and more often than not, the reality never lives up to the fantasy.

But. When you think of the best fictional couples, or when I think of my favourites, the ones that instantly spring to mind aren’t the perfect couples where everything goes right. My favourite literary couples are the ones where actually, everything goes pretty wrong. Where they butt heads and clash. Where they have a difference of opinions but compliment each other, making each other whole. Love is imperfect so why shouldn’t the couples be imperfect with it? Love is blind and romance is a fantasy, but what I love about my favourite fictional couples is their resilience, their strength and their fight for one another. Give me Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy with their different stances on pretty much everything. Give me Ron and Hermione who are imperfectly perfect for each other (no matter what JK says!) and give me Oliver and Jennifer who show that romance will never die.

“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays.

xo

I didn’t know I was a feminist until…

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I’d like to think that I was always a feminist, or that I’m able to pinpoint the exact epiphinising moment that I realised “I am a feminist,” but the truth is I can’t. It’s a feeling and a power that’s grown within me over the years, be it through my expansion of reading different genres and authors, meeting amazing women and men, and having been surrounded from a very early age by independent and strong women, but also men in touch with their emotions. I’ve always known and felt what I believe to be right in my core when witnessing injustice, but I was never able to put a label on it. I didn’t even know the term feminism existed until I was in my early teens and I came accross the term whilst researching Emmeline Pankhurst for a school project. Ridiculous I know. Or is it? Are we taught enough about the movement or it’s meanings enough when at school? I don’t think so. For something that is so fundamental and integral to society, it needs to be. Maybe this is part of the reason I want to become a teacher – to educate and provide young people of the future with all the knowledge they need to make up their own minds. Or maybe it’s just to push the feminist agenda 😉

God. The femenist agenda. There’s still the ‘bra burning, man hating’ stigma attached to the term that even as we go in 2019 many people hear the term and immediately turn away from the conversation, refusing to partake or even listen. Or they scoff, ‘pssh feminism. What do you even need that for any more? You can do what you want and vote right? Don’t you have everything you wanted, what more do you women want?” Weeeelll…actually no. I mean it’s great that I can vote and own property and have control of my own body, cheers guys, but there is still so much we need to achieve.

What even is feminism? I’ve spoken about it and the term has probably been mentioned thousands of times this year alone, but what is it exactly?

FEMINISM (noun)

fem•i•nism

– The political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.

Does that sound horrifying? Totalitarian? Matricarchal over rule? Women wanting out to stamp out men? Nope. Sounds pretty normal right. Equality. What a profound idea and notion. And for different people and socities it means different thing. Women want to be awarded the exact same opportunities and accolades as their male counterparts, to not be boxed in to an ideal, to be shunned or laughed at or not taken seriously. For girls all around the world to have an education, to end child marriages, sex slavery. To allow every single woman and girl on this planet the chance to fulfil their potential. How can we affect change and make a difference when millions around the world are unable to partake?

When you haven’t, and are not, seeing yourself represented in the world around you, it has repercussions. It serves to keep us down and dampen our strength and resolve, and in turn our ambition and potential. I say this as a woman and British born Pakistani woman. The entwining of my two cultures, both of which I adore, is a difficult one. The ideals of what a women should do and how they should behave are paramount to society within each, and at the core are the same. Women are lauded and demonised for their sexuality, openness and for speaking their mind.

And before anyone says but what about men? I thought you said it was about equality for both! 100% yes. Men and boys need to partake in the conversation as well. It’s not just women who are boxed into societal gender stereotypes. It’s time to break the glass ceiling on men being unable to get in touch with their emotions, for men to be viewed differently if they decided to be a stay at home parent, for boys to express themselves with makeup or the clothing they decide to wear. We as a society, and a world, can only move forwards if we all partake in the conversation. Smash that ceiling and smash it to millions of teeny tiny pieces.

I didn’t know I was a feminist until I decided I was, but you better believe that I’m not stopping or slowing down for anyone.

xo

Waiting for my Heathcliffe

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Hello!

I hope you’re all having a lovely day!

I have had the best day today😁 I travelled along to Haworth in West Yorkshire to visit the Brontë Parsonage to have a wander and a gander.

It’s so beautiful😍❤

I am a Jane Austen girl at heart, but the depth of characters and raw emotion you feel when reading Brontë novels is inspiring. It’s no wonder that Austen and the Brontë sisters are constantly compared – on the surface they’re similar, women writers talking about love and romance – but once you get into the stories they differ wildly.

It’s no secret that that Brontë sisters, especially Charlotte, disliked Austen and her literature. They felt she didn’t write about real women, real passion, or anything of real, solid substance. I disagree, but when you read them side by side it’s not hard to see the differences. The Brontë sisters romantic plots are darker and their men wilder – Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are perfect examples, while Austen focuses more on satire, social realism and class through romance. Could you imagine Mr Darcy roaming Derbyshire stricken with grief like Heathcliffe does on the Yorkshire moors?

Jane Eyre takes a lot from Charlotte Brontë’s own life – the death of her sisters, her schooling and her anguish at these. They say write what you know, and Charlotte certainly does this. The theme of wanting to belong runs throughout the novel and we see Jane try and find her place and her worth from the classes of Lowood to the halls of Thornfield. She must find herself without jeopardising who she is and what she stands for. Rochester is not her happy ending nor the man who saves her. He is the man she chooses, and who is her equal.

I hate that people say you’re either a Brontë fan or an Austen fan, they offer very different things through their literature. So just because you favour one over the other doesn’t mean you can’t still love and enjoy the other. I know I’m still waiting on my version of Heathcliffe/Darcy😊

xo

I have no idea what I’m doing.

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Hey guys😊

Hope you’re all having a glorious Saturday.

Combined with the below image, the quote “not all those who wander are lost,” has been playing on my mind a lot recently. A cliche quote it’s become I know, but that is what makes a cliche – relevancy to many and overuse.

Manchester wall art

I took this image over a year ago, whilst wandering the streets of Manchester, and the simple message has really hit home recently. I have no clue what I’m doing in life😅, but does anyone? We all give the impression of having our lives together and maintaining control, but how much control do we actually have over the events in out lives? To a degree yes of course we do, but there is so much uncertainty and things out of our control that can influence the decisions we undertake. Saying “I have no idea what I’m doing” isn’t a bad thing, though the connotations people take from it are negative. It is okay to take a step back from, whatever and where ever you find yourself in life, and to just take a moment to breathe.

As Tolkein says, just because I’m wandering without a clear purpose with what I want from life right now does not mean that I am lost. If there is one thing I’ve realised, it’s that it’s okay to not know what you’re doing or where your life is taking you right now. Not every single aspect of life has to be though out or planned. Where would be the fun in that?

Literature has become a massive source of comfort and escapism for me over these past couple of weeks, really helping to ground and re-focus on what I know I want to achieve in the future and how I can attain it. So yes, I don’t know what I’m doing right now, or even how I’m going to get to where I want to be, but focussing on myself and taking the time to figure out is going to worth it in the long run.

Enjoy the unknown. It might take you somewhere you never would have gone.

xo

HAM-IL-TON

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Hello everyone😊

I went to see the child birthed and concocted from Lin Manuel’s amazing and genius brain and it was UH-MAZING!

Hamilton!

For those who don’t know the story about Alexander Hamilton or the musical (where have you been?!) you can check out Ron Chernow’s book that inspired Lin Manuel to write a play about one of America’s founding fathers, turning it into a cultural phenomenon. If that’s not your thing, Hamilton follows the dramatic life of America’s first Treasury Secretary from the his childood, the American Civil War, to his marriage, his rise to political power, all leading to his untimely death, all set to the rhythm and beat of hip-hop.

Hamilton was everything that I knew it would be and so much more. From the staging to the casting to the lyrics and music, everything about the show was sublime. For a musical set in 1700’s and early 1800’s, the themes that run throughout – from immigrants to politics to family – still resonate deeply within the society that we live in especially in the current political climate.

Having the play set against the backdrop of vibrant and relatable music provides an originality that is spawning hundreds of imitations. It is not just a story about one man’s rise and fall, it’s more than that. It represents that this man, Alexander Hamilton, and everyone in his story can and could be anyone, which is seen through the casting choices. Born a bastard and being an immigrant, Hamilton refused to let this hinder the route he was adamant to taking in life. His ambition was ultimately his downfall, but his passion and hunger is something we should all embody.

Our stories and routes in life are not limited to race and creed. This can be any person’s story if we’re willing to put in the hard work and go the extra mile we can achieve the world.

If you can manage to grab tickets make sure you go and watch it. If not, download the soundtrack. I promise you, it will change you.

“My name is Alexander Hamilton and there’s a million things I havent done, but just you wait.”

xo

Paris = amazing pastries + books!

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Hello 😊

I recently had a lovely mini break in Paris which was amazing – full of gorgeous architecture, yummy pastries and patisseries and divine food.

But one of the most exciting parts of the trip for me was going to Shakespeare and Company. Urgh. It was so beautiful and stacked floor to ceiling with books😍

Shakespeare and Company bookshop – Paris (taken from Google images)

Anyone who loves books, will love this bookshop! It has such a rich and diverse history having had some of the greatest literary minds wander the shelves, from James Joyce to Ernest Hemmingway to Ezra Pound, becoming a cultural hubbub of inspiration and passion. Fun fact! The shop actually houses aspiring writers and artists in exchange for helping out around the store, and the shop’s motto is actually “be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be Angels in disguise.”

I made sure to treat myself to a book (obv) which you can get stamped whilst you’re there, and a lovely tote bag. Who doesn’t love a good tote? I aptly picked Murder on the Eiffel Tower by Claude Izner purely because I was in Paris and thought why not pick a book based here? Also, I don’t read enough murder mysteries and thought it’d be a nice switch up from my usual reads.

Murder mysteries are always so conflicting for me as a reader. I’ve never been completely shocked or thrown off the scent – I’ve read some really bad mystery books (both in terms of plot and writing style) which could be why that genre is not my go to. Does anyone have any good recommendations?

If you’re thinking of paying a trip while you’re there, be prepared for a wait. It can get very busy and they only allow a certain number of people in at a time. But once you’re in you’re in to spend as long as you like perusing the shelve and all the hidden nooks and crannies. There’s an upstairs as well so make sure you don’t miss that! Its right in front of the Notre Dame so you’ll be able to admire the beauty of the cathedral. Also, its not too far of a walk from the Jardine de Luxemburg if you fancy a stroll around the gardens.

I’d highly recommend Paris and I can’t wait to head back some day.

xo