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Books, exams, highlights, more books and more highlights.
I started another book, and yes, I know I said I wouldn't start another book, but in my defence, I've been so anxious this weekend.
Grace Iderima
June 01, 2024
Regular Programming.
I don't think anything is making me more excited right now than the mere fact that it's a new month and May is over, and if I were to describe May, I would do it in two words; really. shitty. I'm honestly glad it's over. I really hope June is much more—I'm hoping with all my might.
I will finish my exams this month, after 86 years, and I won't be going to school for maybe a week, so it's bound to be okay to some extent. I plan on not having contact with my classmates for one week (or two), I've had enough. It's not even just my classmates, I don't want anything that will remind me of the school FOR AT LEAST TWO WEEKS. Also, I don't want to think about my results, I'm already have anxiety concerning it.
I just realised that I don't even know when we are resuming, but anyways, two weeks break is all I ask for.
I saw this screenshot in a medium post and it made me want to try a new thing. I honestly would rather think the worst than allow myself think for one second that things can turn out okay. When I saw seeing a therapist, this was something she pointed out to me and asked why I did that, and I was like, “yes, Grace, why do you do that?”.
It's safer, I guess. Less chances of me being disappointed, but to be very honest, what's the harm in letting myself think that things might actually not be as bad as I think? Why am I borrowing grief from the future?
For example, I spoke about my results, and it's so crazy if you think about it, because I'm literally still writing exams and I'm already thinking about the results. I'm always thinking about something, the thousand of things that [I think] are going wrong in my life or the things that could go wrong. I can't just allow myself to relax.
So, my resolution for June is to shift my mindset; instead of thinking of all the ways everything could go wrong, I should think about all the ways it could actually go right instead. I mean, at least, balance it.
Don't borrow grief from the future. This looks like something I say all over and over, and that's because I don't take my advice (and I should!) and I'm going to keep saying it until I practice it in my life over and over again.
There's also the fact that I don't believe in myself, like “yes, I wrote the exams well, I wrote everything I could, I answered all the required questions, but it's still possible that everything I wrote was trash and I might not do well”.
It's crazy, but that's honestly how it is in my head; What if I didn't do something? What if I missed an instruction? What if I wrote off point? What if my scripts get missing? It just keeps going on and on and on. And I really need to stop doing that so I don't drive myself mad.
The problem with always thinking about something going wrong and how to solve a problem all the time is that you don't realise how much time is passing, and before you know it, you've spent a huge part of your life worrying, trying to survive, and trying to catch up all the time.
Of course, changing your mindset and how you see things will probably not change the results or make the problems go away, but it will help you handle the problems better if things actually go south, and like I always tell myself, nothing is ever that serious (some things probably are, but think about it, is it?).
I'm not sure where this is from, but I always read it every once in a while.
Renounce useless guilt.
Don't make a cult of suffering—I relate to this a lot, because it's easy to fall into the trap where you start thinking that your life always has to be so hard, something is always happening to you, or something is always wrong that even when things are actually okay, you can't just relax into it.
Trust all joy.
Another thing I always remind myself is this; I hope you remember you're allowed to be forgiven twice for the same offense (I think I saw it on Instagram, I can't remember where exactly). People make mistakes, it's what people do. It's why people are called human beings, it's you being a human.
Anyhoo, I think as much as I wanted to share this with you, I think I needed to tell myself these things too, and hopefully, I keep reminding myself throughout June and the months to come because I have to hard things I would rather not be doing (it's hard because I don't want to do them).
You can read the medium post here, this is another Medium writer I like. I spend a lot of time on medium these days, reading it like a newspaper. I just wish you can filter the member-only stories, so you can read only the free stories, as a non-subscriber. Anyways, check out the medium post.
Books.
Saturday, May 25, 2024.
I started two books today, they're both nonfiction. I'll probably read them for a long time, like the other nonfiction books I'm reading.
One of them is Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb and the other's Dictionary of Fine Distinctions by Eli Burnstein, the second one is a fun book with pictures, that's why I'm reading it. Plus, I like the explanations.
So far, my highlight is,
"Great Britain is a geographical term referring to a single island or landmass.
The United Kingdom is a political term referring to the country made up of England, Scotland, and Wales (which together make up Great Britain), together with Northern Ireland.”
It's really a dictionary of fine distinctions. They also said something about a bay, gulf, and a cove.
The first book, like the name implies, is a book about a therapist and her clients. I keep wondering if it's right—her talking about her patients. I mean, no matter how you try to tweak the stories, you're still talking about real people. I don't know, but it's interesting, so I'll keep reading it.
So far, my highlight is,
"We’ll talk with almost anyone about our physical health (can anyone imagine spouses hiding their reflux medication from each other?), even our sex lives, but bring up anxiety or depression or an intractable sense of grief, and the expression on the face looking back at you will probably read, Get me out of this conversation, pronto.”
The other nonfiction books I'm reading (or are on my ‘currently reading’ list) are; Eats, Shoots & Leaves and Atomic Habits. I'm not sure when I'm going to pick up these books again, but I will. Definitely. That's how I read nonfiction.
There's also Insecure in Love: How Anxious Attachment Can Make You Feel Jealous, Needy, and Worried and What You Can Do About It by Leslie Becker-Phelps, I picked up this book because I did something that made me go ‘what the hell, Grace??!!’. It shocked me.
My highlights,
"The working model of self is your sense of how worthy or unworthy you feel of being loved. As you might imagine, when you feel unworthy of love, you also fear being rejected and struggle with attachment-related anxiety.”
Apparently, I have a fearful attachment in relationships, like, when I read the highlights below, I literally went, “uh-oh”.
"This constant tension between being too close or too distant leaves fearfully attached people chronically distressed, insecure, extremely passive, and emotionally distant. Not surprisingly, they are at high risk for anxiety, depression, and other emotional struggles.”
"This conflict between an intense fear of rejection and a desperate need for reassurance and closeness is typical of people with a fearful attachment style. When they are not totally avoiding relationships, they end up behaving in contradictory and confusing ways. Prone to seeing partners as emotionally distant, they sometimes try desperately to get their partners’ approval and attention by using hyperactivating strategies such as exaggerating their distress. However, when they perceive their partners as getting close, they feel vulnerable to getting hurt. So they instinctively look to protect themselves from their partner, turning to deactivating strategies to avoid intimacy”
My only problem with this book is how it only focus on attachment styles as it concerns romantic relationships and not platonic relationships, and that's how all the other books on attachment styles are. Why?!
I finished the book I started the last time we spoke, and well, 2.5 stars out of 5 stars. It had so much potential in the beginning and it just fell flat.
A lot of things that happened in this book was so irrelevant and unnecessary, and one thing I can't get out of my mind is the fact that one of the MC who is a doctor with kids and all (whose husband also worked in the same hospital as she does) took on a role that she absolutely didn't have the time for because “girl boss, I can do whatever I set my mind to, female power”, and it just rubbed me off the wrong way. Like, babe, you don't have to prove anything to anyone, you're good, just tell your shitty husband to help out around the house more or hire a help—now that I think about it, why wasn't this ever an option?
Also, a lot of the issues in this book were just swept under the carpet; eating disorder, sexual abuse, unbalanced parenting, a cancer scare, a minor sharing inappropriate pictures, shitty friendships, etc. Now that I think about it, their friendship was a little bit “unbalanced”, and the more I think about it, the more I wonder if they even liked each other at all.
Now, to crown it all, the author had to reference Elon Musk! Elon Musk! As in, one of the MC said something like “Elon just gave me the house for the weekend” and someone else was like “I actually flew to the moon with him once”, like, omg?! Why? I could handle all the other references, but this one? Immediately no.
The book had potential but it just fell flat, a lot of the things in the book were unnecessary and big issues were swept under the carpet so easily. Anyhoo, just in case you want to check it out, here's the synopsis.
Synopsis:
At their milestone high school reunion, a group of friends make a pact to finally achieve their high school superlatives one way or another, in the lively new novel from the acclaimed author of Last Summer at the Golden Hotel.
In 1997, grunge is king, Titanic is a blockbuster (and Blockbuster still exists), and Thursday nights are for Friends. In Bellport, Connecticut, four best friends and high school seniors are ready to light the world on fire. Melissa Levin, Priya Chowdury, Tara Taylor, and Suki Hammer are going places. Their yearbook superlatives confirm it: Most Likely to Win the White House, Cure Cancer, Open a Michelin-Starred Restaurant, and Join the Forbes 400.
Fast forward twenty-five years and nothing has gone according to plan as the women regroup at their dreaded high school reunion. When a forgotten classmate emerges at the reunion with a surprising announcement, the friends dig out the yearbook and rethink their younger selves. Is it too late to make their dreams come true? Fueled by nostalgia and one too many drinks, they form a pact to push through their middle-aged angst to bring their teenage aspirations to fruition, dubbing themselves the "Most Likely Girls."
Through the ensuing highs and lows, they are reminded of the enduring bonds of friendship, the ways our childhood dreams both sustain and surprise us -- and why it's deeply uncool to peak in high school.
Also, one question that kept being in my head was “why are they so obsessed with high school?”, it's never that serious.
Sunday, May 26, 2024.
I started another book, and yes, I know I said I wouldn't start another book, but in my defence, I've been so anxious this weekend, and it's so bad that all I've done is cry and tell myself “Grace, please focus and read your book, why are you doing this? You don't want to fail”, and cry some more, and be anxious some more, and read a few pages, and read the novels I'm reading, like clockwork. I'm having a ✨swell time✨.
Exams season is really not for me, the way I get so anxious is insane and no matter how prepared I think I am before the exams , I just lose it when the exams start. So, reading a novel is my best bet to make myself stop thinking. I keep thinking about the exams I've written so far and the results and how I don't think I'll do well and the exams I still have to write, it just keeps going on and on.
Anyhoo, the name of the book is The Novel Obsession by Caitlin Barasch. It's about a girl who's writing about her boyfriend's ex girlfriend, she's obsessed with her and her previous relationship with her boyfriend.
I'm really drawn to books that talk about obsession and love, that is, when it crosses the line and everything that leads to that, which eventually leads to the relationship being abusive and unconducive but the MC just keeps the relationship going or when love turns to indifference or hate. It fascinates me, really. Obsession of any kind. Also, books where the MC is unhinged in a way I can't understand.
My favourite thing so far about this book is the way the MC thinks, yes, her actions are crazy, but reading about how why she's taking these actions is… really something—for lack of words. I'm really curious to see where this whole thing ends up.
My highlights so far,
"I think I loved it. Being hit like that. Hearing his deep voice say my name. You deserve this, Naomi, you know you deserve this. I was wetter than I have ever been, will ever be, in my entire life. Did I deserve it? I had baited him, I had brought him there, I had been manipulative. I thought I had power.”
"I want to say: We’ve shared the same man. He once touched you there, and there. He will touch me tonight here, and here.”
This was funny.
"In bed, Caleb usually initiates sex by putting his mouth between my legs—it occurs to me now that Rosemary might have taught him this. But was she ever as spontaneous or adventurous as me when initiating sex? Was she louder? Quieter? Did she prefer lying beneath him, or straddling him, or moving onto her hands and knees? Did she disassociate with the men who came before him, and had he pointed it out to her, too? Or was she the one who demanded more from him, who changed the way he knew how to love?”
"Clicking around the Internet’s bowels, I found Rosemary’s Instagram account. It proved difficult to access, locked and private as it was. My account was public. I knew Privates sometimes looked down on Publics, assuming a shameless need for validation, but private accounts, one could easily argue, smack of elitism, exclusivity; was it wrong that I liked being scrolled into existence by a stranger, rebuilt inside their head?”
Monday, May 27, 2024.
I've finished the book now and first off, let's talk about these two scenes. When I started reading it, I literally went “okay, shit is about to go down”, my heart was racing, what's going to happen next?!
“I’m not fucking done”, ouuuu. Yes, sir.
It was a heartracing moment, because at one point, nothing was happening, and the next point, this whole thing was going down. I couldn't—
These two scenes really finished off the build up for me, like it was the climax, and everything needed to explode at that point, but it didn't. The ending was anticlimactic. I guess the twist is that the exgirlfriend was watching the person who was watching her, but based on what we know about the ex girlfriend, that seems unlikely, so it didn't make sense to me.
I gave the book 4 stars out of 5 stars though, it was good, but the ending could have been better.
More highlights!
"Sometimes I cry reading a sad book or listening to a certain song or masturbating, but I am never not aware of the absurdity of the act—for what and for whom do we cry? What is the point? I can’t be counted on to say the right thing when it comes to other people’s sadness, either; I recoil."
“I write about dysfunctional relationships. About how people disappoint each other all the time.”
"But imagine being the subject of such fervent scrutiny, such exalted reconstruction—how could anyone hate a person who makes them feel that special?”
"If given the choice between being in control and being in love, what do you choose?”I remain silent. Is there a way to be both?”
Here's the synopsis of the book.
Synopsis:
A wry and bold debut novel, which is at once an irresistible catastrophe waiting to happen and an unflinching exploration of how we narrate the stories of our lives, as an aspiring novelist finds herself stalking—and writing about—her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend.
Twenty-four-year-old New York bookseller Naomi Ackerman is desperate to write a novel, but struggles to find a story to tell. When, after countless disastrous dates, she meets Caleb—a perfectly nice guy with a Welsh accent and a unique patience for all her quirks—she thinks she’s finally stumbled onto a time-honored subject: love. Then Caleb’s ex-girlfriend, Rosemary, enters the scene.
Upon learning that Rosemary is not safely tucked away in Caleb’s homeland overseas, but in fact lives in New York and also works in the literary world, Naomi is threatened and intrigued in equal measure. If they both fell for the same man, what else might they have in common? The more Naomi learns about Rosemary, the more her curiosity consumes her. Before she knows it, her casual Instagram stalking morphs into a friendship under false pretenses—and becomes the subject of her nascent novel.
As her lies and half-truths spiral out of control, and fact and fiction become increasingly difficult to untangle, Naomi must decide what—and who—she’s willing to sacrifice to write the perfect ending.
Wednesday, May 29, 2024.
So, basically, after finishing the last book, I didn't pick up another one, because well, everything was not looking good enough and I needed to see the world in a more colourful light, but I started another book today. Well, this evening. Also, I had an exam today and it was pretty okay.
The name of the book's Friends And Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan, I feel like I'll take this one really slowly because it hasn't really captured my interest like that, but it's captured it enough to make me open it once in a while, but I'll probably finish the book soon because after my exams on Friday, I don't have exams till next week Wednesday. My exams are ending on the 10th, I feel like I've been writing exams for 80 years.
Thursday, May 30, 2024.
I started another book. I haven't opened any book since I started Friends And Strangers yesterday—I've been sleeping and reading for my exams. It's currently 8:56 PM and I need to go to bed soon, so I can wake up by 12:30 AM to read, send help.
I didn't wake up by 12:30AM, I woke up by 3:36AM. That was funny.
So, I opened my Storygraph app today (add me on Storygraph, btw) and I noticed that a book I've been looking forward to since last year has been released. It's Better By Far by Hazel Hayes.
I think the author has just two books and I read the other book in 2022, and I absolutely loved it, I just knew I had to read another of her books.
I've read only a page so far and I have highlights,
"In Irish we don’t say I am sad; we say tá brón orm—there is sadness on me. And we don’t say someone is grieving, we say they are faoi mhéala—under grief. The phrase “going into mourning” literally translates as “putting on a robe of sorrow.” We wear our feelings, wrapping them around ourselves like cloaks that separate us from the world, and grief is the heaviest one of all.”
"How odd that the language of grief is one of loss—people describe feeling empty, hollow, carved out—when for me, grief is heavy. There’s a weight to it. A density.”
"Today, unsatisfied with simply weighing me down, grief finds a way to slip inside me, filling me up like some tar-like creature that clogs my throat and lungs and crams itself into the cavities between my organs. You’ve only been gone a few hours and already I am turgid with the lack of you."
I also added some books to my TBR; A Crane Among Wolves by June Hur, The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren, The Dixon Rule by Elle Kennedy, but only because I've read the off-campus series and I really enjoyed it, and The Famished Road by Ben Okri.
My only problem with TBR lists is that I don't believe in saving a book for later or adding it to a list, so I can read it some other time. If it's good, I want to read it right now, not later, right now.
If I add a book to a TBR list, there's a 80% chance I will never read it, because by the time I open it again, I can't remember why I wanted to read it and the excitement is gone.
Currently, I'm reading a handful of books, but none of them have captured my attention in a way that makes me want to read it all the time and that's disappointing.
Anyhoo, I'll just keep reading the books small small till I finish. Hopefully, it gets REALLY GOOD at some point, like give me something. Anything.
Let me know what you've been reading though, I want to hear all about it.
10:03PM. Friday, May 31, 2024.
Forget everything I said about the books I'm reading not capturing my interest enough, my interest has been captured!
This is my reading journal on Storygraph, I literally didn't make so much progress when I started and when I opened it again, I went from 3% to 31%.
The books reads like prose poetry, I really love the writing, the pace—it’s slow, but not annoyingly slow, it's almost like whenever you get impatient and want to just get to where's she's heading already, it's begging you to calm down that it's slowly unravelling itself. I love the pacing, the way the author is describing things, also, I learnt about spaghettification, the author mentioned it.
I googled it and then I got to something about black holes and what's inside and I was really disappointed to find out that black holes are not portals to another dimension, and the whole thing about tidal forces and singularity was scary, but also interesting.
Anyhoo, I digress, I'm enjoying the book and I think everyone should read it.
More highlights!
“That’s the difference between panic and grief: panic rushes in regardless of where you are or what you’re doing—panic is the crazed gunman who bursts through your door in the middle of dinner and drags you away by the hair, while grief is the quiet caller who sits in the corner and watches wordlessly while you finish your meal. Grief waits for you to notify the necessary people and organise the funeral, pick the hymns and pay the priest. Grief waits for you to tidy up and say goodbye to the last guest. Grief is patient. Grief waits.”
"Writing, for me, isn’t about putting words on a page; it’s about putting myself on the page, leaving so much of myself there that I go to bed wondering if perhaps, this time, I gave too much away, if I’ve kept enough to get by on.”
"It’s marked there on the calendar. November first, WRITE A BLOODY BOOK, it says, and underneath that, an afterthought, Please. I find it’s best to be kind to my future self, otherwise she’ll get nothing done out of a warped sense of defiance. That future self, though, the one my past self wrote the request to, is now my present self. And she does not want to write a bloody book.”
"What I wanted to say then was that your anger scares me. And that my instinctive response—to shrink back and pacify you—only makes me feel smaller and therefore more vulnerable. So I make myself bigger; I meet you where you are even though I don’t want to, just so I can feel less afraid.”
"The first time we made love we did so hurriedly, hungrily, both of us desperate to know the answer to the question we’d been silently asking ourselves all year: If that’s how it feels when our hands touch . . . ? The answer was, perhaps, not what we expected—less an Earth-moving, mind-blowing explosion and more a quiet tremor of the soul, a sudden epiphanic understanding that our bodies were made to do this, and maybe only this.”
Anyhoo, this is where I stop talking (writing? typing?) and you write back. I've been getting more replies these days which gladens my heart, especially as the replies come in a thread—Beehiiv is such an amazing platform—Keep doing it (🤭).
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Happy new month, have a wonderful June. Bye x. 💕
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