“Look, I don’t give you grief over where you get your ideas from.”
(Neil Gaiman, “Smoke and Mirrors”)
Welcome to Liliana N Bookish blog, where I read, rant and leave reviews and recommendations for you lots, especially regarding Russian literature. 😀
Yes, it’s been a while. My last entry here was of August 22nd.
I’m sorry for my sudden long disappearance.
To put the whole situation in a nutshell, I’m facing a lot of pressure regarding my real life and my blogging life.
I almost stopped reading ever since August, and I currently have no motivation to go back to reading yet, because I’m being swayed away by k-pop and real life issues.
A couple of weeks ago I already announced on both my bookish instagram and twitter about shutting down those accounts and only keeping my blog half-alive. Here’s the whole message I left on those accounts:
Hi. I have an announcement to make.
I’ll be shutting down both my bookish twitter and instagram, and stay only with my WordPress blog.
Ever since I started book blogging, I was struggling with keeping up the updates as I hoped I could cope with + the pressure of regularly updating (especially taking photos) made it much harder for me to enjoy the reading process, resulting in taking a way too long of a break from itself.
After thinking for a good while I decided that I need to reduce the amount of platforms I’m dedicating my bookworm life to, so I can focus more on one format I feel more comfortable and less burdened with, which is blog. I will try to start blogging again after I decide how do I want to keep it, when obviously I have more k-pop related content to share than bookish. Since WordPress pretty much allow you to separate content, I will think of a complete redesign of my space.
The moment I reestablish everything on WordPress, I will announce it on Twitter and IG before closing both of my accounts. You can read my reviews on Goodreads anytime you feel like overwhelmed with the amount of k-pop content I will be posting on WordPress.
Thank you for reading this. -Liliana-
Currently I’m facing a very serious family crisis that is impossible for me to take control over, and the only thing I can do now is to continue doing my daily routine while preparing for the worst case possible, which means more responsibilities to take care of and less time to do social activities. So it’s even more crucial for me to reduce the amount of social accounts I possess because I simply get way too overwhelmed.
I really hope you will understand my situation, and I will not blame any one of you if you decide to unfollow my blog. I can’t make everyone like the content I will post from near future onwards, as well as I can’t keep myself pressured with the content I don’t feel like writing.
I will apparently remain on hiatus mode from WordPress until the end of this year, so I have more than enough time to figure out my new layout. Thank you for those short 6 months you’ve been with me as a book blogger, and I hope to see you soon as a multi-topic blogger.
It’s been 2 months since I last did a Top Ten Tuesday, and because this week’s prompt is actually much of a fun for me, I decided I need to gear my comeback to bookish world with bloggers’ probably most favorite kind of posts named lists. This week’s prompt features a Throwback freebie, so I’ll be doing a list of 10 classics I plan to (re)read in the nearest future, a.k.a. the rest of this year and the whole 2018.
You already can guess that I’m planning to mention not just one Russian classics, right?
10 classics I plan to (re)read in the nearest future (’17-’18)
It’s time to give a proper explanation on whatever is happening to my bookworm life, and why I’m such a slow ass in updating my blog with bookish related stuffs.
(this draft has been rotting for awhile, to be honest /sigh/)
So, currently I’m going through another wave of depression caused by things I cannot speak out because, you know, it’s called personal, but the fact is, I’m feeling very unmotivated, exhausted and I literally desire nothing but being left alone.
Actually, the current situation between and within specific K-pop group fandoms is partially another reason for me being so isolated from bookish world, but I’ll try not to talk about it.
The worst part is that, I actually enjoy being isolated from all of this, although it pressures me that I can’t find myself motivated to do things I usually love doing EVERYTIME EVERYWHERE (put Nation’s Sons – NEVER as a BGM, plz). Also since I’ve been living alone for a while (4 years during university studies, and now 2 years for work), I got used to not talking to anyone and hence, sharing whatever inner problems I have, even with the best friend, not even mentioning family. I got so used to keeping everything to myself I don’t even have the desire to look for communication. The second I get home, I lie on the bed and just stare at the ceiling, having endless thoughts but not being able to connect them with each other or even transforming them into words to write. I got so lazy I don’t even know how to motivate myself.
I’ve been so behind my blogging schedules due to lack of motivation, and also due to remembering that my blog is dedicated to books in the first place (which can’t be seen recently due to decreased reading speed and amount of books read and huge amount of k-pop related content), I decided I’d rather be on some sort of hiatus rather than ruining the blog with music contents only. Gosh, I already screwed my twitter so hard I need to define what to do with it
Anyways, all I wanted to say that I’m definitely not abandoning my book blog or bookstagram, but only deciding to run it at my pleasant speed and with much less pressure of _always_updating_new_books_i_can’t_get_’cause_i_live_at_the_world’s_end_. Considering how I can’t read at the light speed, I don’t see any reason I have to be updating twice a day on books I never know when I’ll get to read them or being way too stressed over new releases. Currently I have a considerably big collection of books with lots of yet to read titles, so I think I rather focus on finishing them first before piling myself with even more pressure. I hope you can understand.
By the way, I already started cleaning up my twitter, so everyone following me there for _only_ K-pop related tweets please follow me back at @neo_ttaemune, as I’d like to keep @liliananbookish solemnly for bookish purposes 🙂
It’s… finally here? Hahaha-
I reached my 100 followers here on WordPress and it’s my 6 month blogoversary!
THANK YOU SO MUCH!
I should’ve been doing some sort of giveaway, as many other bloggers do when they hit their milestones, but, unfortunately, I live in a country where it’s difficult to carry out such things without severe ‘damages’ to my wallet, plus I don’t think I’m confident in running one. Maybe later? Plus, let’s be honest, my stats are still not stable, and the feedback is yet to get to the level of even thinking of hosting a giveaway, so I’ll be more considerable and delay that fun part until I feel more confident.
Anyways!
It’s been exactly 6 months since I decided that I want to challenge myself in running a bookish blog in English, and also devote myself into reading more books, as I’ve noticed the enormous decrease of time I dedicate to reading which was one of my initial hobbies.
Well, what can I say… I didn’t really fulfill that ambition of mine, and, as usual for me, I was very hyped at the beginning. I read one book after another, although, of course, not at the speed of other bookworms out there, but I quickly learned not to compare myself to others way too much in terms of amount of books read within specific time period. Plus I frequently have days when I don’t want to do anything but just chill with my favorite music (that’s why I decided to start my K-pop related segment here on the blog), but it slowly grew up to be a reversal back to times when I was basically too lazy to pick a book to read. I know it all sounds gibberish, but most of my actions and decisions depend on my actual mood, and if I’m, for instance, completely into gloominess, no reading will help me there because I will be distracted by the thoughts running through my mind.
Okay, back to my anniversary thingy.
I’m really, really glad I actually started my little blog. Although I stated at the beginning that I would be focusing a lot on talking about Russian books… well, you know that people grow up, and blogs tend to grow up with them as well, so I unintentionally got affected by the international mainstream. It’s hard talking about books in Russian when there are little to no chances for international audience to read them in English language, which means no basement for long discussions.
I’d like to thank every single one out there who visited my blog, who decided to stay with my blog… I might not be as active as I was at the beginning, but I try my best to deliver the most honest opinion on whatever topic I bring up here on my blog. THANK YOU, and I LOVE YOU ALL.
And so to conclude this post, let’s have fun with the newest release by South Korean rap-rock band N.Flying!
Did I really finish reading another book? The second book this month? WTF REALLY
My life is such a misery, lol. I said to myself that I’d be reading more, but all I did was excessively fangirling over k-pop on twitter. I’m really sorry if that bothered your twitter timeline so much…
But anyways, a review! For a detective book which is not my usual reading genre (although I’m such a Sherlock Holmes trash…)
The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
Synopsis:Â A brilliant mystery in a classic vein: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a supermodel’s suicide.
After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.
Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, thelegendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.
You may think you know detectives, but you’ve never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you’ve never seen them under an investigation like this. (cr.: Goodreads)
Hi! Erm…
Sorry I suddenly disappeared from both Instagram and WordPress. Sometime you just cannot help but have those gloomy times when you don’t want to do anything at all.
Well, yeah, you can’t say so about me judging from the amount of K-pop rant I recently have on my twitter though (and I’m really sorry for that, but I decided to abandon my personal twitter account and merge everything happening onto the bookish one, so if you don’t want to see me spamming your feed with K-pop related tweets (like EVERYTIME EVERYWHERE), feel free to unfollow). But still.
Also as I don’t have much to share on bookish world (I’m being on a reading slump again, torn between three books, actually), neither I have topics I can brainstorm on (suggestions are welcomed!), so how about a little bit of photography?
I can’t say that I’m really good at photography, but there are some shots I really love and feel very proud of. I never studied photography professionally, only just enough to understand basics and to handle my Nikon D3200. I will give some commentaries under photos, as like under what conditions I took this photo, or what I liked about this shot particularly. Mostly all pics are already edited with VSCO Cam.
Hahaha.
Welcome back to another edition of Wednesday K-pop!, and today you’ll be introduced to another vocal monsters who happen to be under the same management company with MAMAMOO, which is why in K-pop world we call them “younger brothers”~
So pretty much a while ago Mikaela @ The Well-Thumbed Reader (btw, her blog is awesome, you should really check it out!) shared her 11 most secretive blogging confessions (trust me, you’re gonna relate to almost all of that), and she mentioned social activity as one of them, so it immediately triggered a thought in me, and that’s how I came up with today’s discussion topic. Many many opinions are very much appreciated, because I’m seriously interested in what you folks think on this!
So the concern of today is:
Do we really need to try so hard to be socially active?
Also my first contemporary book ever since… ever since forever? You know my preferences are fantasy, and that I rarely pick contemporaries… But I couldn’t get past this one because it features one of my favorite Western artists that is Adele.
My most favorite song from Adele will always be Someone Like You, because it’s too close to me and what happened in my life 5 years ago, and this song always triggers the memories of my past whenever I hear it, so, actually despite being the most favorite song, I try to listen to it as less as possible because I’ve overcome my initial pain and I wouldn’t like to have myself drown in that depression ever again.
Synopsis:Â An Adele concert held in Verona becomes the focus for an unhappy married couple, a divorced mother and a devoted lover from three different countries and cultures.
This is the story of three flawed but likeable people. First up is Elias, a Moroccan man living in Rome. He discovers that a black magic spell was cast upon him but starts to doubt whether it was the real cause of the break-up between him and his long-lost love Malika. He decides to search for her in the shadows of Marrakesh after eight years of separation.
Nadia, a single mother from Jordan, is battling her ex-husband in the courts and doing all she can to secure freedom for herself and her only son. Her dream is to take her son to see his idol, Adele, live.
Finally, Yaser, a married man living in Las Vegas, realizes that his marriage is crawling all over him like a slow, painful death, so he starts to rebel against his wife. While faith initially brought them together, it is now causing them to drift apart.
These three characters are on a journey to break free of everything that has haunted them, learning harsh truths about fate, religion, courage, desire and guilt along the way.
Liliana N Bookish Blog 