For a brief (too brief, in my opinion) time period, the Museum of the Motion Picture in Los Angeles had a Hayao Miyazaki retrospective—the first of its kind outside of Japan. It was a fantastic exhibit. Much of the material was never-before-seen archival stuff, staged with quotes and other cool structures and paraphernalia. The museum…

Some of you know that I do monthly reviews. The process is fairly simple, though it’s not always fun. Here are the five steps to doing a simple monthly review: That’s it. It seems simple but it is really boring most of the time, and sometimes it’s really demoralizing to see yourself fail to live…

This post is about the things that make us feel other things. I’ve been thinking about this topic for awhile, but it received a punt to the forefront of my mental roster after a friend recommended the following episode of the Ezra Klein podcast: “How to Discover Your Own Taste”. I listened to it while…

As January closes out, I thought it would be good to look back on what I’ve done to accomplish the reading goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year: to read more widely and deeply. So far, I’ve completed 2/24 books for the BookRiot challenge and am in the middle of Anna…

Earlier this year, I binged-watched House of Anubis. That is what, in part, inspired me to write this story. Another part was trying to get better at writing romance/character development/dialogue. I’m a very plot-oriented person, so an exercise in writing believable, fun characters was my goal with my Q3 story. Enjoy! part I “Do you want…

The end to the boarding school story is finally here! Read Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV first. ~ If there’s one thing I’m sure of tonight, it’s that she’s lying, thought Duckie. “Well, you seem in a hurry to cut the evening short. I just wanted to make sure it was nothing I did to…

Part IV is finally here! Read Part I, Part II and Part III first. Not even three hours earlier, Duckie and Bex were free to do anything they wanted.They chose to agonise themselves over dinner—a dinner that may have, under different circumstances, been enjoyable. Instead, it necessitated a game plan, a contingency plan, and a Plan C—just to…

Happy new year! Regular readers of the blog will know that I intend to read differently this year. Sometimes, reading books allows you to see things differently in your daily life, even if you don’t retain everything you read. For example, reading Babel forced me to grapple with my relationship with language. I compiled a…

Part III is finally here! Read Part I and Part II here. He remembered. It was part of the routine tour he had to give as part of his Prefect duties. Most of his tour attendees were first-years. A few days ago, the headmistress called Duckie into her office and informed him that there would…

This year, I had the privilege of traveling to Colombia. Colombia is known for its coffee, so we went on a tour of a coffee farm located just outside Medellín. We learned a lot about the coffee-making process and what goes into making good coffee vs. average coffee. Some would say the highlight of this…