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There’s a phrase that’s been all over the internet for a few years now. People say "I'm just a girl" as a joke, usually ...
20/06/2026

There’s a phrase that’s been all over the internet for a few years now. People say "I'm just a girl" as a joke, usually right after doing something a little embarrassing, like scraping a car or completely forgetting how taxes work, usually with that No Doubt song playing in the background. It’s “funny” because it reduces a whole identity down into one easy excuse. It makes girlhood look helpless, a little silly, and not really ready for the real world. "sowwy guys, i’m just a girl..." oh please, people need to shut up and listen to the rest of the damn song. Gwen Stefani wrote it because she was incredibly frustrated with being boxed in by other people's low expectations just because she was a woman. The internet trend basically flipped the song's entire point on its head, turning a complaint about being underestimated into an excuse to just live down to that underestimation, all set to the exact same music.

And honestly, that is exactly why I prefer book characters to many version of girls we see on social media. The women in these books never fit into the shape the internet trend is joking about. Some of them want things they were told not to want, some have minds that work in ways no one around them understands, and others spend years pretending to be normal just to fit in until they finally snap. None of them are "just a girl" in the way the trend means it. In fact, most of them are much closer to what the original song actually meant because they are women who got put into that box by everyone around them and had to fight their way out of it.

Girlhood was never just one thing, and it was never an excuse either. It just got turned into both because it was easy, and good books refuse to let it stay that way.
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DEAR OLDE BOOKS

We usually think of heartbreak as something that happens between two people, but the heartbreak caused by a city can las...
12/06/2026

We usually think of heartbreak as something that happens between two people, but the heartbreak caused by a city can last much longer. When a writer describes a city in this way, they are showing the ultimate one-sided relationship. The characters in these crowded spaces are all trying to fit their identities into their surroundings, whether they are working in the bright lights of Shanghai, spending time in a thrift shops in Tokyo, or living on the dangerous streets of Kingston. They change themselves to meet the expectations of the city, and they give up their morals, peace, or safety just to feel like they belong. The tragedy of this situation is that the city will never love them back because it only takes their youth and energy while remaining completely uncaring about their survival.

I understand this one-sided relationship deeply because I have traveled around a lot over the years. Moving between different places means constantly leaving behind what is familiar and trying to figure out how to fit into fast-moving new cultures. There is always a sense of loneliness that comes from sitting in a neighborhood cafe, watching crowds of people rush past with somewhere to go while you are still trying to figure out where you fit in.

In the end, looking at literature through the lens of urban heartbreak helps us understand our own complicated relationship with the modern world. These books are important because they show how exhausting it is to look for close human connections inside a massive, unfeeling system. They prove that a city can take away your innocence, change your future, and leave you with no money, but you will still look at its skyline with a sense of wonder. I do not read to find happy endings, but to find comfort in the shared human experience of loving something that is beautiful, dangerous, and entirely out of our control. How about you? What kind of feelings do you have for the city you are living in right now?

I think I have read enough mystery novels at this point to know that most of them are really just puzzles with a body in...
03/06/2026

I think I have read enough mystery novels at this point to know that most of them are really just puzzles with a body in them and nothing wrong with that but after a while the formula starts to feel like furniture, familiar and comfortable and completely unremarkable.

Japanese mystery fiction broke that feeling for me completely.

The first thing that separates it from everything else I had read is that Japanese crime authors are not that interested in the detective. They are interested in the person who committed the crime, and the specific combination of circumstances and personality and the desperation that made that moment possible, and they will spend an entire novel building that understanding so carefully that by the last page you are not entirely sure you want justice anymore. They are books about grief and obsession and institutional failure and what love looks like when it goes past every reasonable limit and the crime is almost always just the surface of something much deeper and more human underneath.

The other thing I love is how seriously Japanese mystery takes the puzzle itself. There is a whole tradition called honkaku mystery which is essentially a formal agreement between the author and the reader that the game will be played fairly, that every clue is present and the logic is airtight, so that the solution will surprise you without cheating you.

I am fully obsessed and I have no plans to stop and I am curious whether anyone else here has gone down this particular rabbit hole and where it took them.

What is your favorite Japanese mystery and where should I go next?

Chemistry was my worst subject in high school and I could not tell the difference between half the compounds we studied,...
25/05/2026

Chemistry was my worst subject in high school and I could not tell the difference between half the compounds we studied, so the fact that this book made me wish I had paid more attention says something real about how good it is.

The story follows Elizabeth Zott, a gifted chemist in early 1960s America where societal norms expected women to play supporting roles. Her work gets dismissed, her intelligence gets overlooked, and her ambitions get questioned at every turn just because of her gender. After facing unexpected personal losses, she ends up hosting a cooking television show, which sounds like a step backward until you understand what she does with it.

Instead of teaching women how to serve others more efficiently she starts teaching them chemistry through food, turning recipes into lessons and the kitchen into a classroom, and that idea was probably my favorite thing in the entire novel because it takes something that was used to contain women and transforms it into one that empowers them. If only my high school chemistry teacher had adopted this approach, I might have passed on my first try!

However, I found some hesitation around Elizabeth herself. She is exceptionally intelligent, strikingly beautiful, endlessly capable, and almost never wrong, and while I admired her deeply I sometimes found myself wanting more vulnerability from her, the kind that reflects her own struggles rather than the circumstances surrounding her. Characters feel most authentic when they display uncertainty and imperfections unrelated to external challenges, and I sometimes missed that depth in Elizabeth.

The same applies to some of the supporting characters, who often seem defined solely by their strengths or flaws, leaving little room for complexity. The novel also leans toward idealism in places that I noticed but did not necessarily mind.

Ultimately, Elizabeth Zott represents not just one woman’s journey, but the potential of countless women who might have existed if talent had simply been enough, or opportunity had been equal, and if ambition had never required anyone's permission.

Sometimes I wonder what is actually good about being a woman.We carry more and get paid less and are expected to be smal...
15/05/2026

Sometimes I wonder what is actually good about being a woman.

We carry more and get paid less and are expected to be smaller and grateful for whatever space we are given. We get judged for having too much ambition and judged for not having enough ambition, and I think pretending that is not tiring does nobody any favors.

But then I think about the women in these books and something in me changes. Not because their lives were easy or because they had everything figured out, but because they kept going as themselves anyway, with rage or with humor or with both at the same time. Women who survived wars, silence, bad marriages, motherhood, and their own minds, and still showed up the next day without apology.
What is actually good about being a woman has nothing to do with flexibility or clothing options. It is closer to the kind of strength that comes from being underestimated your whole life and choosing to keep going anyway, knowing what it costs and doing it regardless.

I love being a woman. I just hope for a future where nobody has to justify that, where what a person wants for their own life is simply enough without needing to be explained or defended or proven to anyone. And these books made me believe that world is possible.

What’s one book that changed how you view womanhood?

I have four cats and honestly they have probably saved me more times than I realize.There is something about coming home...
08/05/2026

I have four cats and honestly they have probably saved me more times than I realize.

There is something about coming home to someone who is just genuinely happy you are back, not because you earned it or did anything right, but simply because you walked through the door. My cats do not care how much money I have, whether I have kids or not, whether I am married or single, or whether I have a house or a car. Their needs are very simple. They just want to find me wherever I am and ask for food :) and of course they will ignore me most of the time just to get my attention, but somehow those small things make me feel better than most conversations do.

I think human connection is beautiful but it is also heavy sometimes. People can misunderstand you, manipulate you, or hurt you without meaning to, because everyone is carrying their own stuff and two people trying to reach each other across all of that is genuinely hard.

That is what all these books reminded me of. A dog walking 400 miles home because that is where her person is. A cat watching over a woman who is falling apart and not leaving her side. A robot throwing itself off a horse to save something it loves without stopping to think about what it costs. None of them planned to love the way they did. They just did it naturally and completely and without asking for anything back. That is what true love is, love that sacrifices for what it believes is right without regret, the most pure and beautiful kind.

You do not need a human to have a best friend. Sometimes the thing that loves you most purely is the one sleeping on your feet right now, and I think that is one of the most comforting truths there is.

02/05/2026

Been in a reading slump lately because of a personal project, but trying to get back on track so here are some books I think are pretty cool and fit a weird version of you today.

- How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water (Angie Cruz)
- One Hundred Flowers (Genki Kawamura)
- The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao (Martha Batalha)
- Isaac and the Egg (Bobby Palmer)
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon)
- Exciting Times (Naoise Dolan)
- Anything Is Possible (Elizabeth Strout)

Which one of these is yours?

Also totally unrelated but I just ordered two Vietnamese nonfiction books about ghosts and monsters from different ethnic groups in Vietnam and I genuinely think that is what is going to save me. Sometimes you just need something completely random to fall back in love with reading.

I used to think sad books were just sad. Like you pick them up, you cry, you feel terrible, and that is the whole point....
23/04/2026

I used to think sad books were just sad. Like you pick them up, you cry, you feel terrible, and that is the whole point. But the older I get, the more I think that is not it at all.

These stories are not trying to break you because what they are really doing is just telling the truth, and sometimes the truth happens to look exactly like your life, or your fear, or the thing you have been carrying for a long time. That is why you cry, not because the story is tragic, but because somewhere in the middle of it you look up and think, oh, this is real. This has happened. This is happening right now, to someone, somewhere in the world.

That is what I love most about reading heavy books, not the sadness itself, but the relief of being seen. The characters are carrying too much, and so are we. They do not always make the right choices, they love people who hurt them, they hold on too long or let go too soon, and they survive things that were not survivable and keep going anyway, not because they are brave but because that is simply what people do.

I think we need to cry sometimes, not to feel worse but to feel real again, to remember that we are human and that we are allowed to break a little, and that breaking is never the end of anything.
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DEAR OLDE BOOKS

19/04/2026

A short book is a long journey in a small package. Which of these are you adding to your TBR?

14/04/2026

You have to read Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros because it is the wild ride that will absolutely ruin your sleep schedule and make you obsessed with dragons. The story follows Violet Sorrengail, a girl who just wanted to read books in a quiet library but is instead forced by her terrifying mother into a "Riders Quadrant" where everything is basically trying to kill her. It is a brutal school for dragon riders where you either bond with a massive fire-breathing beast or you don't make it out alive, which is extra intense because Violet has a chronic illness that makes her joints super fragile.

She is such a badass protagonist because she uses her brain and some sneaky poison to win fights against people twice her size, all while dealing with the incredibly grumpy and handsome Xaden Riorson. Their chemistry is pure fire and the "enemies-to-lovers" tension is so thick you could cut it with one of Violet’s signature daggers. Even the dragons have massive personalities, especially the sarcastic ones who constantly roast the humans they are stuck with.

I am usually not a fantasy reader at all, but this series is on a whole different level and it completely cured my reading slump with its mix of spicy romance and non-stop action. I am recommending this to literally everyone because the twists at the end will leave you screaming and wanting more immediately.

Since I am now (maybe) a fantasy convert, please tell me your favorite series and give me all your best tips on how to get into these giant magical worlds!

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