Bye, bye, 2018 (Part 3: Books!)

Hello, there. Welcome to the actually interesting part of my 2018 recaps! 🙂

As you know I did not have much time for blogging this past year *cough* I was not organized enough *cough* so… whenever I could read books, or watch movies or TV shows I did not post about them. I thought I could share them with you 🙂

This is the one and only post about my favorite books of 2018!

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If you follow me on social media (which is probable, if you are reading this) you’ll know I struggled to finish my Goodreads Reading Challenge this year. I set a goal of 25 books, which is one fourth of my goal when I was in high school. To be honest, I do not have much time for books ever since I started Pharmacy school, and it saddens me. This is why I tried my best to find small bits of time here and there. I’m proud, even if some people will think I should not be. *shrugs*

I’m choosing 5 books this year. This is definitely not going to be easy, but here we go.

(5) A Very Large Expanse of Sea, by Tahereh Mafi

Reading this, I knew we were getting a glimpse into the author’s life. And it honestly hurt to see how stereotypes can shape someone’s experience. Reading about Shirin’s anger with the world, and how she did not want to let anyone in? It made me sad, and it definitely made me reflect on how you never really know what a person is thinking or feeling, no matter how they react visibly.

I had already read Tahereh Mafi’s Shatter Me series (and I’m up to date with it) so I knew she would not disappoint me. I’m glad she wrote this amazing book.

(4) Radio Silence, by Alice Oseman

I first found of about this book because I was looking for ace representation. Then I started reading Heartstopper, and read Solitaire and every single Alice Oseman book and I knew I had to give this a chance. I loved that Frances and Aled are friends, not “friends”, if you get me. They are not set to have a romantic relationship, but that doesn’t substract from the depth of the story.

(3) Kingdom of Ash, by Sarah J. Maas

I waited so long for this book, it’s not even funny. (Not more than people following Aelin’s story since the Livejournal days. but still). If I’m honest, I read this book just before a Pharmacotherapy exam, and, at this day, I have no idea how I passed it. But moving on, it was an amazing book, it gave me most of the things I wanted from it (and excruciating pain, we can’t forget that). I really want to reread the series at some point of my life, and remember how my life was at this point. Aelin’s journey helped me through a LOT during these years, and I shall always be grateful. ❤

(2) The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I did not understand the hype around this book, then I read it. This is one of those you just can’t. Stop. Reading. Evelyn’s story enthralled me and never let go. Please, everyone. If by any chance you have not read this, feel doubtful, or do not understand the hype, join us. You will become Evelyn Hugo’s #1 stan. 🙂

(1) An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, by Hank Green

Look, everyone. I’m as surprised as you are. I still can’t stop thinking about this book. When I first picked it up, I had no idea of what it was about. I will admit I only started it because Hank Green had written it, and I am a fan. But I was pleasantly surprised. He gave us a glimpse into the thoughts of a public figure. The public thinks one way, but the truth is that her image has been manipulated by April, and the people around her. And isn’t this what is real? We all, not only celebrities, have this mask, this image we like to project, and April showed us what’s real. She owned to her mistakes: she accepted she screwed up, and gave you a heads up of what would happen. I was surprised to see that there would be a sequel (according to Goodreads), because I could have accepted this ending. Although I can’t wait to see how the story will continue!

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Anyhow, people. I want to wish you a happy new year, and that 2019 brings you the happiness you desire, and the goals you want to achieve. ❤

My Life Through Books Tag

I was tagged by the lovely Bridget to do this one, and it seems so fun!

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Baby: Did you like to read when you were little?

Yes. I learned to read at a very young age, and my parents have told me that even before that I loved listening to my mom when she read to me.

Toddler: What was your favorite picture book?

Uh… I really do not remember. I’m pretty sure it was one of these story compilations. It was blue… and had lots of fairytales. I loved it with a passion.

Child: Did you go through/are in a book ‘phase’? (Like reading the thickest books, reading all of an author’s books etc.)

Uh… I am still on my Harry Potter phase…! I also read the Chronicles of Narnia when I was little.

Tween: What books made/make you feel grown up?

I read 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. THAT one made me feel grown up. I still feel proud about that one. I plan on rereading it soon. 🙂

Teen: What are/where books that you rave/d about?

Twilight, I must admit. Mara Dyer, Shatter Me, Vampire Academy, The Fault in Our Stars… etc. Guys, I am in my last teen year, so yeah…

Adult: What are books that used to seem boring to you but now you really like?

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. It’s one of my favorite books ever… Mom told me it was amazing, but I must admit I didn’t give it a chance until 2 or 3 years later… and I read it in English.

Elderly: What book from your childhood and/or teen years that you still cherish?

Harry Potter, of course, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Little Prince, The Da Vinci Code (I read that one when I was in 4th grade)… So yeah. 😀

So… I tag:

Batool

Anniewhere she goes

Coffee n’Notes

… and everyone else that wants to do it! 🙂

Classic Alice: An Amazing Transmedia Project

Hello, everyone.

Let’s talk business. Let’s talk about Classic Alice.

Classic Alice is a scripted vlog, written, starred, and created by Kate Hackett**, about a college student that decides to live her life according the plots of classic books. Alice Rackham received a B- in one of her college projects, and thought that was a bad grade, a disaster. Her professor said she didn’t connect to the book enough, that she didn’t emotionally get it. So she makes this decision.

**She’s a genius.

 Her friend, Andrew Prichard *insert swooning here*

… needed a documentary for his senior college project and convinces Alice to “live her life.. one book at a time.” She starts with Crime and Punishment, and… well… saying anything else would be spoiling the show for you.

I got obsessed with this show a while ago, when some actors from the Emma Approved series appeared on one of their episodes. I was curious… and it was so much more than I imagined. I’m pretty sure I watched all the show’s episodes in one night. It was that good. I approve the binge watching Classic Alice project. 🙂

Alice is such a relatable character. I could somehow see myself doing something like that, and taking those decisions. The ways the books are adapted to life are amazing, and I have wanted to read along with them for a while. The actors (Kate Hackett, Tony Noto and Elise Cantu) make it look real, and weekly confessionals help you to know more about what’s happening. The storylines are written to perfection. 🙂

Guys… there is more. Classic Alice is a transmedia show. (kind of like Emma Approved and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries…) This basically means the characters interact with you along the way. (Tweeting, on Tumblr, commenting on the videos, you name it. They even have a podcast named Pens and Lens) Isn’t this amazing?? I must admit I got really happy when Alice added me as a friend on Goodreads! 😀 It is nice to be part of this. (Even if it’s such a small part.)

This show also has a purpose and a message. It’s encouraging people to read more, to interpret what they read, and to just aspire to be a better person and connect with people. 🙂

You must be wondering: How can I start watching this masterpiece? It’s easy. You can subscribe HERE. You can watch their Classic Alice- The Entirety playlist HERE.

Okay, guys, here’s the fun part: They’re crowd-funding for Books 8 and Beyond. This means that you could help Classic Alice to keep going, and to be better. This is important. You get perks for funding, and you also get perks by referring people! http://igg.me/at/SaveAlice 

Don’t worry if you can’t help financially. (I haven’t been able to, either…) But I am asking you, amazing people from the internet, to give this amazing show a chance. It is so worth it. And I can assure you… you will love this show… if you give it a chance. Help us #SaveAlice. 

*** All of the GIFs used on this post have been taken from classic-alice.tumblr.com

Guest Blog Post: Grow Up and Read Some YA

Hello, there!! Inertial Confinement agreed to write a guest post for our blog here. It’s about YA, and the impression everyone has about it. How it is not mature enough, blah blah blah. I must say I agree with it wholeheartedly! 🙂

Let’s all welcome our friend here, and please share your opinion!

*Nat

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We’re all adults here, so let’s get serious. We need to have a serious discussion. We need to read some serious literature, then open up some serious dialogue to guide our minds in a more serious direction. Did I mention we’re being adults here? And that we’re serious? Not just serious. Seriously serious. Put your serious faces on. I’m serious. 

I’m convinced this is what it means to be growing up. Becoming an adult.

Seriously, grow up! Stop laughing! Try and be a little more mature!

Having now reached that good old age of you-should-be-embarrassed-to-be-caught-in-the-YA-section-of-a-bookstore-and-for-heaven’s-sake-do-something-about-your-hair-what-is-wrong-with-you, I am now realizing some of the literature I am reading is considered “Young Adult.”

I can’t tell you for sure how much YA I read as a young person because when I was a young person, I read just to read. I read books that blew my mind. I read books I didn’t fully comprehend or relate to. I read books that changed my perspective on my view of life. I read literary fiction. I read science fiction. I read romance. It did not occur to me there were books I was supposed to be reading, and books that I shouldn’t read. I often read books without even checking the genre first because books were wonderful and stories were wonderful and I was a reader of books. Not just books–I was a reader of books, magazines, recipes, poetry, manuals, and backs of cereal boxes.

But then there comes a day when you decide to log onto the internet and your whole blissful ignorance is shattered. Dun, dun, dun. There are books that are considered “trash” and there are books that are considered “serious.”

Do you want to be considered serious? Are you a mature adult? Well, then, you need some serious literature! Hurry! Pick up your copy of Swann’s Way and take a number so you, too, can be on the path to becoming a Serious Adult™!

Sometimes I wonder if the word “serious” will cease to have any serious meaning now-a-days because it’s seriously being thrown all over the place.

What makes a book “serious” anyway? Who sets these standards? And why did I ever let myself think I wanted to meet these serious standards? And seriously, I probably should do something with my hair.

But you know what? I’m about to let you all in on a little secret. My favorite part about becoming an adult was when I stopped becoming an adult. Becoming an adult is a transition that never ends. Becoming. Becoming. Becoming. Wait, when did I get old?

It’s too confined. It’s restricted. And what exactly is the prize when you reach the end? I think Neil Gaiman drove this point home in his novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane: 

“Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences. I was a child, which meant that I knew a dozen different ways of getting out of our property and into the lane, ways that would not involve walking down our drive.”

I’m done walking down the drive. I’m tired of all these proverbial paths. I’m done becoming an adult. I’m ready to end this transition and just be.

Perhaps nobody who catches me in the YA section of my local bookstore will ever take me seriously. Ruth Graham sure won’t. [See Graham’s article on Slate: AGAINST YA (http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2014/06/against_ya_adults_should_be_embarrassed_to_read_children_s_books.html) ] But why should I care what book snobs think of me anyway? As the Indigo Girls would say, “I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind / Got my paper and I was free.” Yes, I just quoted Indigo Girls. Yes, I still expect you to take me seriously. Or not. I’m really not so sure anymore.

I enjoy reading, and I will continue to read what I enjoy and while reading for my own enjoyment, I will read what suits my mood, whether it be the lectures of Richard Feynman, the newest Murakami novel, or some random book I happened to pick up in the section marketed toward Young Adults.

And if you find yourself braving the YA section of your local bookstore among the more sophisticated folk, you can arm yourself with this relevant C.S Lewis quote I’m about to drop like it’s hot:

“Critics who treat “adult” as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

In other words, if you’re avoiding YA because you’re an Adult™, you really need to grow up.

FUN QUESTION TIME: Have you ever been embarrassed about what you read? What do you think of the process of “becoming an adult”? What makes an adult?

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Please follow my friend (if you don’t already!)

I plan on hosting guest posts on Fridays, If you want to be featured on my blog, just email me at sweetnat13@gmail.com or tweet me at @EvolutionofNoah

Guest Blog Post: You Have Been Lied To

Hello, my dear followers! Miss Theodora Zheng agreed to write a guest post for Science, Books and Silly Things, and here it is. It has to do with what my blog (and my life) is about: Science and English (Or any language), the mix that some people may call “weird”, but it is not. 

I am glad to host Theo on my blog. Her posts are amazing, pertinent and even fun. I hope to one day be a writer like her.

Without further ado, here’s Theodora and her take on how Science, Math and English shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.

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The most annoying kind of people are those who say, “You know, I’m not really much of a ________ person.” They say this and then they use it to justify why they perform poorly in the subject of choice.

You could replace the blank with any subject, really: English, math, history, science. But it’s strange. Students are taught that loving a “hard” subject (math or science) means that they can’t love or understand “soft” subjects (history or literature). And that’s not true. The three major loves of math, science, and English should not have to be mutually exclusive.

notes: From here on out, when I refer to “English” I am referring to all aspects of English, including literature, fiction writing, nonfiction, essays, grammar, poetry, etcetera. Additionally, Let’s begin with the premise that to truly love something, you must understand it. Therefore, the reason a person does not love math is because they cannot understand it; it does not make sense to them.

From elementary school, our failures in a subject are explained by differences in thinking. that originate from birth. A person who excels in math or science is “logical” and “rational.” A person who excels in the creative arts is an “artist type,” dreamy and vague and undisciplined. We are taught to think that loving knowledge is an either/or decision, and that we cannot love more than one “type” of subject. It’s limiting. When an “English kid” does poorly on a Math test, he is excused because it’s just something he can’t (and maybe will never) understand.

Compare it to the proverb “Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.” Saying that an “English kid” will never understand math and using that as an excuse to teach him negligently is like telling your significant other to stop trying to communicate with you because they’ll just never understand you. Sure, women and men may communicate differently, and they also act differently in certain cases (supposedly, women are inherently “docile” and men are inherently “aggressive”). However, women and men are not inherently different. Differences that arise in the sexes are a result of parenting and gender schema.

Minor differences in biology do not mean that men and women cannot reach mutual understanding. It also does not mean that children are born with inherent skills in math or science.

In both of these situations, this form of thinking is perpetuated by educators. In academics, the educators are teachers. In the men/women analogy, they are parents. But think about it: just like all men and women and in-betweens are humans, all subjects are knowledge. Why do we treat them differently?

Why in the world didn’t I study literature? (part 3)

This is part three of a series of posts I’ve been writing to convince myself I took the right decision. It’s also the last one.

Part one, if you’re interested: https://fearlesslynat.wordpress.com/2014/10/19/why-in-the-world-didnt-i-study-literature/

Part two: https://fearlesslynat.wordpress.com/2014/11/01/why-in-the-world-didnt-i-study-literature-part-2/

Hope you enjoy. 🙂

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On my last post, I talked about why I chose Science, and didn’t state the reasons why I left Literature behind, which is not fair.

Most of my posts are about how much I love reading. Reading is my life, and I’m always excited for the next book that is coming up. Then again, if I studied Literature, I would be exposed to everything, all the time, and I was afraid that I would lose my love of reading along the way. This is still my biggest fear, since reading is my shelter. It is my safe haven, and I don’t want to lose that. I must admit that was my main reason for not even thinking about Literature as an option. I would have done well, though.

Like I said on my last post, I didn’t explore the possibility like I should have when I was a senior, but I recently worked on that. I wanted to be sure I had made the right decision. Two weeks ago, I read all the requirements I needed. It was full of Humanities, Social Sciences, Spanish, English and other languages. I thought that was possible for me. It looked easy. I must say, I was tempted to go away and start anew, but that felt like giving up, and I am not a quitter. If I had space for other electives, though, I would take Creative Writing and other electives that helped me become a better writer. This has been a dream of mine for a while, and I want to learn how to organize my thoughts, create worlds and make people feel strong emotions, just like I do when I am reading a great book.

A doctor I met a while ago had a double major in biology and literature. He made me realize that I could have the best of both worlds. Please ignore my horrible Hannah Montana reference. I will not double major, sadly, but I can still work on my love for literature. When I have the time, I will definitely take literary courses. I will learn to write better, since reading and writing are essential skills for any profession. My Spanish professor says that Literature sensitizes people. I will most certainly not lose that, not in a million years.

I will not lose my passion for books, but my love for discoveries and Science will always be there and I had to acknowledge it. If I hadn’t, I would have gone mad.

Why in the world didn’t I study literature? (Part 2)

This is part two of a series of posts I’ve been writing to convince myself I took the right decision.

Part one of this post, if you’re interested: https://fearlesslynat.wordpress.com/2014/10/19/why-in-the-world-didnt-i-study-literature/

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I have always gone with the flow, and tried to do what felt right at the moment. I remember helping my classmates to choose what they wanted to do, to apply for their colleges of choice, while I still didn’t know what I was about to do. I had already applied to my college (and I definitely do not regret that decision) but I still did not know enough about myself to take an informed decision. Getting to know myself has taken a lot of time, and I am still trying to do so.

When I was a senior in high school I did not look for the requirements to be a Literature major, and that makes me kind of sad. Now that I think about it, that might have been because I did not have a counselor available to help me explore my options. Most of my teachers thought I would pursue a career in Literature. Choosing Biology was a surprise for them. I just wish I had had the time to think about it, to imagine myself doing something other than Science, even if I would have taken the same decision I took, in the end.

Science just felt right. I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to make a difference. I did think it was going to be easier than this. I had always been good at everything, without much effort. In hindsight, I realize how wrong I was, but I am glad I am learning everything along the way. It is not easy, but it is worth it. I need to realize how everything related to my future will take time and effort. I am at a crossroads right now. I am going to take the classes I need in order to study Pharmacy, which is my goal right now. Pharmacy sounds good, especially since I have realized how much I still love Chemistry. Even if it takes a lot of time and headaches, I still want to work with something that is related to it.

The truth is, Science just excites me. I love when I learn something new, when I discover the reason why things are the way they are. This is the reason why I chose Science.

Why in the world didn’t I study literature?

This is a short one. I might write more about this subject later on. 🙂

That is a good question, Nat. If there are two things I have always loved throughout my life, they’re Science and Literature. I have loved how those two fields were always with me, making me who I am today.

Last weekend, my mom asked me why I didn’t study literature. Believe me, I’ve thought about it. I have even searched recently for the requirements of changing my major to Lit. Anyway, I know I would have regretted not studying anything related to science. My life would be filled with what if’s, and that is too sad for words. Right now, as I’m writing this, I’m going through a relatively easy week, compared to my last two. Still, as stress is killing me almost everyday, I think I wouldn’t have it any other way, and that might seem like both masochism and passion.

I guess, in the end, I have no real reason why I didn’t major in lit. I just followed my gut, and did what felt right at the moment. I think it does feel right, and as long as it does, I’m going to pursue a career in Natural Sciences.

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Update: This, now, is the first of a series of blog posts about the reasons why I chose science instead of literature. Parts two and three will be posted on November 1st and November 8th. I hope you like them.