Yesterday’s book haul

I was really excited to come home after work yesterday to get excited over these, to unwrap my “blind dates with a book,” but life other plans.

My year long relationship ended last night and I was a mess, I still am, my heart is shattered, and I can’t decide if I want to open these now or wait until I feel better to make a video of my haul + the unwrapping.

Breakups suck. But I guess book hauls can make us feel better

Book Recommendations from my TBR

Ikigai - Héctor García and Francesc Miralles

And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie

The Silent Patient - Alex Michaelides

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

Tuesdays With Morrie - Mitch Albom

The Forest of Enchanments - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity - Justin Baldoni

Security Analysis: The Classic 1951 Edition by Benjamin Graham

Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar - Maurice Leblanc

Dune - Frank Herbert

The Nightingale - Kristin Hannah

House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed - Sara Gay Forden

Nine Perfect Strangers - Liane Moriarty

A Boy Called Christmas - Matt Haig

Fear Street The Beginning: The New Girl; The Surprise Party; The Overnight; Missing - R.L. Stine

The Last Letter from Your Lover - Jojo Moyes

Anatomy of a Scandal - Sarah Vaughan

Blonde - Joyce Carol Oates

Feel free to add more!

Helios

I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read

Thomas Babington Macaulay

No filter 💚

Once again, it comes from the botanical encyclopedia, an arboreal glossary. I hope you like it

“𝘍𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘮𝘺 𝘪𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦.” ―𝐒𝐚𝐛𝐚𝐚 𝐓𝐚𝐡𝐢𝐫, 𝐀𝐧 𝐄𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐬.

Laia of Serra; aes ✧ *:･

➳ Listen my book playlist from this series:)

"Just as the sakura blooms at sunrise, so does the heart of the bloody princess of the wasp(s)"

Quick description of this picture before I explain the reason behind it

The quote I just put up is what it says in the Japanese text. I wanted to try one more time at getting the Japanese paper painting style right, and I love how this turned out! Japanese paper painting, from what I can tell, doesn't shade much, so I just did some smaller details and paint strokes for shading instead. I love it! As for Alva, she really does look like the princess she is! My baby looks just so beautiful! Her in that kimono gown holding the cherry blossoms branches makes her look so otherworldly! Now to explain the reasoning behind this

This picture is the most special to me, why? Because I just published my first ever book! It is called "Alva viAmi haSakura" and it follows the very unlikely friendship between fourteen year old Japanese girl Ami Wada and a wasp from another universe named Alva. I have spent five years writing, editing, and creating everything for this book and now it's on Amazon! My dream since I was six has come true! I am so elated, I can't put my joy into words. I lowkey wanna cry... None of this could have been possible without my wonderful head editor Sam K.H., who also voices Ami in this video! And my best friends Iris Wind-who helped edit as well- and Debbie who cheered me on through the ups and downs, and I just love to pieces. The online friends I have too were so supportive, and it really felt like this was a big deal to them too. And it is. It's finally happening, and I want to say thank you so much for supporting everything I do, and I hope you'll support this chapter of mine in the author's world

When the book has been approved by Amazon and available for purchase the link will be right here: www.amazon.com/dp/B095N9YW7X

I also animated something very special for this occasion, you can check it out here: youtu.be/xquN4WJMQuc

And here's me sobbing over my author's copy: https://youtu.be/8nhOdMKwIPw

When you talk about how crappy the world it

It makes the world warmer for me

When you sing just out of pure joy

It seems like a melody to me

And when those brown eyes hit the sun

I can’t help but lose myself inside those

When we talk at 2 am and the world seems quite

I feel like we’ve created our own universe

When you listen to me talking and talking

It feels like my heart is floating

And when you hold my hand while we walk

I feel safer than I have ever been in quite a while

It was never nothing — our talks , walks , the music , the ranting sessions and the drunk 2 am stars

As we lay here

With you not knowing my thoughts

I can’t help but wonder

If you would hold me just like I do in my head

It meant everything To be held by you and to hold on to you

So let’s just stay here a moment ? Just a moment please — to exist complete in your eyes , my unsung lover.

Geheimnisse, Reue und Schuld

Erinnerung, Einsamkeit, Schuld und Reue. Darum geht es in Bryn Chancellors Roman Wo niemand uns sehen kann, der jetzt bei btb im Taschenbuch erschienen ist. Chancellor erzählt die Geschichte eines jungen Mädchens, das in einer fremden Stadt nach Anschluss und Nähe suchte und am Ende nur den Tod fand. Es ist eine Geschichte, die ein Netz von der Vergangenheit über die Gegenwart bis hin zur Zukunft spannt und beweist, dass die Vergangenheit nie wirklich vergangen ist.

Darum geht’s: In Sycamore, einer verschlafenen  Kleinstadt in Arizona, werden menschliche Überreste gefunden. Die eingeschworene Gemeinschaft der Stadt vermutet sofort, dass es sich hier um die Überreste der vor achtzehn Jahren verschwundenen Jess Winters handeln könnte. Der Fund löst eine Welle der Erinnerung aus: Was ist vor achtzehn Jahren, an jenem Abend als die junge Frau zum letzten mal gesehen wurde, wirklich passiert und warum schweigen alle so beharrlich?

In diesem Roman erzählt Chancellor eine Geschichte, die zum einen spannend wie ein Krimi und zum anderen aber auch hochpsychologisch ist und sich mit Fragen der Moral beschäftigt. Der Aufbau des Romans ist relativ komplex: Hier bekommen viele Protagonisten eine Stimme, so dass sich ein versponnenes Netz aus Beziehungen ergibt, das nicht immer leicht zu durchschauen ist. Doch dranbleiben lohnt sich, denn man wird mit einem wirklich überraschenden Ausgang der Geschichte belohnt. Es fällt eigentlich auch nicht wirklich schwer, dranzubleiben, denn nicht nur die Perspektiven, sondern auch die Erzählstile wechseln im Verlauf des Geschehens: Unterbrochen wird die Erzählung nämlich immer wieder durch Briefe, Monologe in Form eines Gedankenstroms und einmal sogar durch ein kurzes Drama. Besonders gelungen ist auch der Wechsel zwischen der Darstellung von Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, die sich immer weiter annähern, bis schließlich die Lösung des großen Geheimnisses bekannt wird.

Wo niemand uns sehen kann ist eine berührende und fesselnde Geschichte über die Macht des Schweigens, die Last von Geheimnissen und die Schuld der Vergangenheit. Für alle empfehlenswert, die psychologische Romane mögen, bei denen auch die Spannung nicht zu kurz kommt.

Lest weiter unter: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.de/Taschenbuch/Wo-niemand-uns-sehen-kann/Bryn-Chancellor/btb/e554320.rhd

What else would he want to do with a book? Though it is not quite true. He wants to do more than read it. He wants to study it. He wants to savor it. He wants to use it as a window to see inside another person. He wants to take the book into his home, into his life, into his bed because he cannot do the same with the girl who gave it to him.

~The Starless Sea

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”

- Carlos Ruiz Zafón, 'The Shadow of the Wind'

I told him I was easily seduced by people who laughed at my jokes and he said he was easily seduced by people who were smarter than he was.

Sally Rooney, Conversations With Friends.

Art is not a making-oneself-understood but an urgent understanding-of-oneself. The closer you get in your most intimate and solitary contemplation or imagination (vision), the more has been achieved,even if no one else were to understand it.

–Rainer Maria Rilke

So, chocolates always fixes everything. Okay...

i use pretty to refer to just anything aesthetically pleasing at this point

― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.” 

― Kahlil Gibran, The Madman

― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

“All freedom is relative—you know too well—and sometimes it’s no freedom at all, but simply the cage widening far away from you, the bars abstracted with distance but still there, as when they “free” wild animals into nature preserves only to contain them yet again by larger borders. But I took it anyway, that widening. Because sometimes not seeing the bars is enough”

― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”

― Toni Morrison, Beloved

― Jean-Paul Sartre

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom.

― Maya Angelou, The Complete Collected Poems

― Franz Kafka, Amerika

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

― Viktor E. Frankl

― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.” 

― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

― E.B. White, The Trumpet of the Swan

“This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.”

― Kafka Franz, Diaries, 1910-1923

― John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman

“And I want to be held down. I don't know what to do with the horrifying freedom that can destroy me.”

― Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.

― Franz Kafka