🔮 8th of October: Did you ever experience something supernatural?

Nope. I've never experienced ghosts, fae, rooms that just chill you to the bone as soon as you walk in. Nothing.

To be honest, I'm still grasping how incredible nature is - the planets, gravity, birds that fly, soil that nourishes plants. I know that there are experts in all these fields, but the ultimate why of 'why does nature do that?'... That why still feels supernatural to me.

Also, The Haunting of Hill House (first published 1959) still reads SUPERBLY today. I have SO MANY thoughts on Eleanor and Theodora's relationship 🤓 🧐 particularly its giddy-school-girl overly affectionate beginning and its knife-sharp middle.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

🎃 HORRORTOBER CHALLENGE 🎃

1st of October: What's the first horror book you read?

I had to read The Turn of the Screw in university for my "Ideas of the Real" class (circa 2006 😅). I re-read it recently after watching The Haunting of Bly Manor and wow! It hits differently when you're older. Horror isn't the first genre I usually turn to when I want 'a good read' so the challenge this month will help me get through a few titles I've been meaning to read but have been putting off.

Stay tuned for a slow release of the horror titles I'll be reading in October!

15 Sept 2022

Romanticizing my mornings with rose quartz and milky coffee

🎃 Horrortober Challenge + Backlogathon 2022 📚

🔮 13th October: Do you believe in Friday 13th superstitions?

I don't believe in Friday 13th superstitions, no. But for some reason the broken mirror = bad luck superstition is really strong for me 🤷🏽‍♀️. Someone has put a broken mirror in our apartment building's hard rubbish collection, and it's been sitting to the side for a month, and it's SO UNNERVING >.< (And I wasn't even the person who broke the mirror!!!)

As part of @pastelhorroracademia and @logarithmicpanda's reading challenges, I've started a book of short stories by Barbara Baynton. This collection depicts the harsh life and ever-present fear (of personal safety, of physical health, of your child's safety) of living as a (white) female in rural Australia at the turn of the century. As Helen Garner writes in the Introduction, Baynton's stories "are driven by a contained, contemptuous rage that no woman of spirit can fail to recognise, or to share." It's not surprising that, in 1902, Baynton had to go out to London to get her stories published. White Australians, it seems, didn't want to see the mirror of their own society - even if it was only fiction.

📚 October Backlog Readathon! 📚

Thank you to @logarithmicpanda for putting this marvellous idea out into the tumblr world for all to enjoy ^_^

I have on my list for October:

- The Mirror of Ink by Jorge Luis Borges (Pocket Penguins edition published 2005)

- Chess by Stefan Zweig (1942)

- Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (1911)

- Martha and Hanwell by Zadie Smith (2005)

The books that will cross-over with the Horrortober Reading Challenge are:

- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)

- Bush Studies by Barbara Baynton (1902)

🎃 HORRORTOBER CHALLENGE 🎃

🔮 4th October: What do you understand as horror? 🔮

I'll try to explain my perspective on horror fiction only (because I feel like horror movies are too hard to define, especially with lines of gore, thriller, etc.)

So, horror fiction is when a character is somehow deeply uneasy and unsettled in the world they inhabit. This character cannot find peace or solace in normal life because of the ongoing presence of a destabilizing force. That force may be internal (like in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) or external (like in The Turn Of The Screw). The characters may also experience a perceived lack of control over events in the world (more accidents or unexplained occurrences).

@pastelhorroracademia, this was a really interesting question! I bet at the end of this month (after reading more horror titles) my definition might change a bit ^_^

🎃 HORRORTOBER CHALLENGE 🎃

2nd October 2022 : Do you watch scary movies?

I don't enjoy or seek out scary movies or horror movies as a rule. I HAVE watched and enjoyed quite a few movies that just happened to be horror - for example Devil (2010) and 12 Hour Shift (2020) - but sitting down to watch a 'scary movie' isn't the way I generally relax on a Friday night ~

Regarding The Grace Year (the book I'm reading now), I honestly thought there's be more horror, more suspense, more slow deterioration of society.... But it's just a book about bullying and group-think and a future/medieval world that is not really explained (they have deerskin pouches, and microscopes, and wear corsets and have catholic-style confessionals... And they speak in Norwegian? Sigh. It's a real mash-up)

I have about 50 pages to go but I don't see this as being a book I could recommend. Writing, plot, characters, nothing is particularly well done, nor is it original.

Looking forward to moving on to my next book - The Haunting of Hill House 🏚️

25th September 2022

Sunday

This is such a beautiful, delicate book. I'm only half way through but I can tell it's going to be one I re-read every few years, going deeper each time because I'll be more mature each time.

Day 1/30

13.6.22

What am I studying at university? Chaplaincy, psychology and pastoral care.

What am I studying for this productivity challenge? Japanese

Do I think I'll stay committed to this this 30 day challenge for like, the first time ever? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

📺 Spiritpact S1 E1

D-97 JLPT N4

今日がまほうのうさぎになった

29th Sept 2022

Thursday

I picked up this YA book off my shelf to balance out the more intense titles I'm reading this month.

I really love the portrayal of bush life here - the sheep, the chooks, the dogs, the wood stove, all of it! And the main character's slow growth/maturity and eventual acceptance of life in Sturts Creek kept me interested in the plot and the challenges she encountered. Alexandra is such an unlikeable narrator, but unlikeable in the same way as Mary in The Secret Garden. There's a comparison on the blurb to Anne of Green Gables, but seeing as I haven't read Anne, I can't say. One criticism is that there's no First Nations characters, but it was written in 2001 so I'd have to go back and look at the discussion of First Nations portrayals (from titles like Deadly, Unna? etc) from that era in YA.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

D-95 JLPT N4

今日は少しだけ勉強しました。８時から４時まで病院で働きました。疲れた(⁠٥⁠↼⁠_⁠↼⁠)

D-98 JLPT N4

眠いそうです

You can see the post-it notes peeking out from where my brain just went "YES! EXACTLY!" In particular, the chapter Wealth and Other American Values was so well written. What other people take a whole book to write, Jessamyn got to the heart of in just a few pages. She talked about the interplay between performance, wealth, health, capitalism, consumerism... You all know that hamster wheel we are encouraged to live on.

Overall, highly recommended reading ^_^

2021.07.28 || 31/100

Have you heard this joke?

If you talk to three scholars, you'll hear four opinions. 😂

That's what it's like in this subject - trying to find out if there was a Jewish canon in the first century, and what books were in it, and how much of the Jewish diaspora subscribed to that canon, and which groups had more books, and which had less books.... Etc!

P.s. spot the SHINee reference in the photo ^_^

April 9, 2022

Let's do this! Let's do Anki!

(and then later let's do the baptism essay which is the reason I have 6 word docs of notes open)