Stacks with SLM

Rating:  3.5/5★ This novel follows Toru Watanabe, and begins with him on a plane journey to Germany where he hears the Beatles song 'Norwegian Wood' and he subsequently recounts his teenage years. The novel itself reads like a whimsical dream sequence, placing itself firmly on the border between plausibility and impossibility. I couldn't help but draw parallels to Woolf, and the idea of a stream of consciousness form of writing. The book was recommended by one of my teachers, and so I didn't exactly know what to expect, but after reading it I can't lie, there was some degree of confusion. There were a few pressing questions that I was left with after it ended but I also couldn't help but admire the patterns and the significance of certain things in the novel that carried on throughout. The most prominent of these is the significance of the number 4. There are 4 suicides in total: Kizuki's suicide, Naoko's sisters suicide, Hatsumi's ...

Throughout the literature that I have read over my little life, I can't help but notice the common cliches and tropes that always love to appear in many books. Here are what I think are the top 5 worst common tropes in literature: The trope : The chosen one. The replacement:  Normal people.  This trope is the one that gives me some serious stress. Not that I haven't enjoyed novels with this trope but at this point it's just so overdone. Books like Harry Potter sold well on the chosen one idea because it was original at the time, but even then it felt slightly worn. To have multiple dystopian novels take this idea after the fact and overdo it to the point where everything is predictable... I'm not here for it. How about have relatable characters that make sense in a dystopian setting? Ordinary people forced into the unusual? The trope:   Flawless characters. The replacement:  Characters with dimension. Characters that are typically flawless in pers...

Rating : 4/5★ Time it takes to read: 1 hour and 30 minutes - 2 hours.⌚ This novel follows a man by the name of Richard Hannay, who gets caught in a whirlwind of murder and political havoc in England before World War One. My attention was grabbed from the beginning with this famous 'man on the run' action story. For me, the plot was a typical run of the mill thriller, and I'm glad I went into it knowing little about it. To read the novel and enjoy what it has to offer I think you should go into it knowing as little as you possibly can. In terms of characters, I found myself liking the characters that may not have necessarily remained in the novel for a long time. Characters like Scudder, the Innkeeper and the Roadman were instantly charming to me and whilst I did appreciate Richard's character throughout I couldn't help but wish a little bit more time was spent with these characters who equally helped to propel the plot.  Pros:  ✔ The 10...

I’ve realised as I’ve gotten older that the same old tropes and the same old plot-lines in Young Adult fiction just weren’t working for me anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for reading a good old trashy novel every once in a while, but the same old repetitive themes and characters and ideas just get monotonous after a while. I first started reading the popular YA at around age 9/10, and moved through the more popular YA series such as Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Twilight and the vast collection of Cassandra Clare's books. At the time, when reading books at such a young age you don't necessarily consider how good the book or series is. You just read for the sake of reading. However, as I began to get older I started losing interest in the same love triangles with the same tropes disguised as different ones. I no longer wanted to read about the same boring romantic subplots. I wanted something more elaborate and extensive, I wanted language that was more difficult to...

Why does this blog exist? Mainly because I've realised that I spend a lot of time putting time into things that don't necessarily amount to much, and I procrastinate enough so that I put little time into those things that may amount to a lot. I also want to force myself to get back into reading again, because the amount of books I've collected that are waiting to be read is a bit ridiculous at this point. With school and other commitments I've found that I have little time to read. In general, this makes me pretty sad considering that reading is and has always been one of my all time favourite things to do. With this blog I'll (hopefully) be able to convince myself that I have no choice but to finish every book that is unread in my room. In the near future I hope to get up a few discussion posts about various things, or whatever may be topical at the time. This blog is very likely going to be an outlet and brain dump of the mess that is in my head.  C...