• Book Lists,  Books

    Books I Was Looking Forward To In 2021

    I started a very ambitious blog post in 2020. I mean, at the time, it didn’t seem ambitious. It felt doable. Manageable, and with the amount I had read in 2020, it felt within my reach. And then 2021 happened, and slowly, I realised, no, I can’t do any of this, though I refused to admit defeat for at least half the year. RIP 2021 me, you had high hopes. Defeat wound up being admitted, this blog went on hiatus, and by the end of the year, I had all of one review up on the blog and had forgotten everything else I had read. I did read and write…

  • Life,  Life Update

    What’s New In 2022

    Has it been a ride to get to 2022 or what? It’s certainly felt like it! There were so many things I had wanted to accomplish in 2021, and while some of them I am working on, many things felt like they had fallen on the wayside. But it is a new year, and a fresh start. As I write this post, I sit in home quarantine at my parents’ place, meeting them after almost two years. My kids – the younger of whom is meeting them for the first time – are asleep, and I can make some headway on one of the things I want to accomplish this…

  • Life,  Life Update

    blogging break 2021

    It is September 2021. You look around you and you realise more than half the year has passed by and you’ve posted one review, completed one book, and been struggling to keep your head afloat while the world struggles around you as well. You started this post in July. I think the first I realised that this was okay was when I read Kate’s blog post How To Overcome Blogging Fatigue. Having a name for what I was feeling made me take a step back and realise, hey, it’s okay to feel burned out despite not having actually done much. The situation we are facing now is mentally and emotionally…

  • Quarterly Wrap Up

    jul – sept 2020; it’s a wrap

    Surprisingly, this wrap-up isn’t late! The new organisational system I’m slowly trying to incorporate into my life is really helping. This past quarter has been equal parts a blur and so slow, I just want it to be 2021 already. But then, my second trimester during my first pregnancy was much the same. It’s just that the situation the world over isn’t really helping. The bright side is that we’re going out a little more – to places that are not too full of people and always wearing a mask – so we get a change of pace and of scenery. We actually just went to a beach again, had…

  • Books,  Discussion Post

    #goodreadance2020; how did i do?

    September has come to an end, and with it, the official #GoodReadance2020 as hosted by Shealea @ Shut Up, Shealea comes to a close as well. If you’ve seen my BookTube video, you would know that this was an initiative that really excited me, because I’ve been wanting to reorganise my Goodreads, and even the shelf I use for my BookTube filming. However, around mid-September, I wondered if I would even be able to cross off more than one thing on my short goal list. Let’s see how I did with each individual goal! Go through my TBR.I didn’t go through the ‘Want To Read’ shelf at first, instead going…

  • Mid-Year Wrap Up,  Quarterly Wrap Up

    apr – jun 2020; it’s a wrap

    Another very late wrap-up, but well. This year has been really long, hasn’t it? I was so hopeful in the first quarter that things could not get worse. I was wrong. I guess hindsight really is 20/20, eh? Eh? But seriously though, while the lockdown here in Malaysia is not as strict as the first few months, we’re still taking care. I am immuno-compromised so i’m trying not to take too many risks, but I do have doctor’s appointments pretty much every month that I have to go for, and so we’ve been eating out those few days. My reading has been all over the place – May and June…

  • Books,  Discussion Post

    sarc2020 starter kit; where you could begin

    A while back, I realised I was not reading as many South Asian stories as I would have liked. Maybe because growing up I couldn’t get my hands on many. The shelves of bookstores and libraries near me were filled with internationally published books – and almost all of them were white. So it was a nice change when more South Asian stories started to be published in the ‘mainstream’. The first time I read a story that mentioned a myth I grew up hearing – the book was Roshani Chokshi’s The Star-Touched Queen and the myth was the story of Harnakash and his son Prahlad – I had to…

  • Quarterly Wrap Up

    jan – mar 2020; it’s a wrap

    A little bit late, but well, I haven’t been blogging much at all, have I? I think I’m in another reading slump? I don’t know, on the one hand, these past three months have been good! I’ve been writing some, I’ve been reconnecting with old fandoms – but every time I try and interact again with the online book community, I find myself retreating to a few bloggers I can trust because there is so much Drama and so little nuance in the way the big names talk about things. I feel like that is why I haven’t been blogging or booktubing at all since the year has started. There…

  • Quarterly Wrap Up,  Yearly Wrap Up

    oct – dec 2019; it’s a wrap

    Am I two months late for a wrap up and fallen behind on everything blog and booktube? Yup! The last three months of 2019 were good on a lot of fronts, but in November, my external harddrive crashed, and I panicked about losing EVERYTHING on it. Because of that, I stepped back from blogging and my booktube, and even though we managed to get all my data back, it has taken me until now to get back on here! I have been writing, however, and I have made the step to look for freelance writing jobs. I also celebrated my birthday in October! That was great, and after that, I…

  • Books,  Discussion Post

    ;five asian booktubers you should subscribe to

    I realised a couple of days ago that I don’t actually follow that many Asian BookTubers, and this is a shame that I intend to correct. In the meantime! There are a few BookTubers of Asian descent that I adore, and a few that I think are of Asian descent* and please give them all some love. *If I’m wrong, please let me know! I found Saajid @ Books Are My Social Life via another BookTuber and honestly, he is so great and fun to follow. He is so honest and frank about his views, and so entertaining to watch! Highly, highly recommend his videos to everyone. Jules @ InconsistentlyJules…