A Rhetorical Question for You Today: What Makes a Good Book?

Hi, and I'm here again, ready to grace your laptop/phone/other device screens for however long it takes you to read this post!

Well, it's been pretty warm recently, hasn't it? Today promises to be warm and then tomorrow... eugh it'll be too hot for me and I won't want to do anything apart from sit on the cold floor in our dining room.

But the weather is not a particularly interesting topic (even if I am British) and so, have no fear, I am here to talk about something different. There is actually something interesting that I read in the book I'm currently reading (The Tiger by John Vaillant, because I love tigers and it's been sitting on my shelf for ages and I'm doing this thing where I read all the books on my bookshelves) and I kinda wanted to talk about that BUT I don't really have to attention span at the moment and it probably needs a bit more research/thought than this randomly generated blog post.

Also. I'm a bit busy with the whole Maths coursework thing (which is going fairly well, I think, although yesterday my head exploded a bit as I was multiplying out quaternions and the letters started blurring together).

So I thought that I'd do a little update about what's going on in Lara's life at the moment! 

Firstly, I have now finished binging all the seasons of Call the Midwife (that I started a few weeks into lockdown I think) and I am looking forward to the Christmas special (if there is one) although every episode makes me cry and the Christmas ones always make me cry more. But I would recommend! I didn't think that I'd enjoy it but we watched a couple of episodes for English and then I went back and started from Season 1 and I now love it. The social history of London and England and the world, with changing views on science vs religion, feminism, life, death, and other topics that I did not expect to be addressed. Anyway. I would recommend watching it if you're at that stage in which you have no idea what to do because you've watched everything there is to watch on Netflix. Or if you just want to watch something.

As well as watching TV and doing school work, I've (obviously) listened to Taylor Swift's new album and the new releases from Lawson so that's cool. Reading-wise, I'm currently reading The Tiger, but before that, I was reading War and Peace. I have a poster with a bucket list of 100 books to read, of which I'd read 19 (including Count of Monte Cristo unfortunately) and War and Peace is on that list, as well as many other lists, so I decided to read it. I have a copy from a charity shop (hardback and it is so heavy oh my goodness) and went into reading it with trepidation. I'd seen the BBC version with Lily James and had enjoyed it, but I also knew that many 'must read!' books are not actually that good and are only on said lists because old snotty people think that a good book = pretentious and long and boring (and mostly male-orientated) (also I am definitely looking at you, Count of Monte Cristo). 

But I really enjoyed War and Peace! It was really good! Yes, it was long, and I couldn't name all of the lesser characters, but it was also funny and interesting and there was a lot of comments on the nature of history and the nature of people and I actually liked it so much that it's on my own list of 100 books to read.

Which I am creating as a sort of protest against what people think books-to-read should be. There are books that are on other lists, such as Harry Potter and War and Peace and Pride and Prejudice but also YA books that I think every adult should also read and non-fiction books and poetry anthologies. Because, as I said, a good book DOES NOT EQUAL a pretentious book, and really, who can be bothered to read pretentious books? (Apart from me because I want to be able to shut down any arguments for why Count of Monte Cristo certain books should be on to-read lists).

Ooooh, and I'll finish by sharing some origami with you as well, although the flowers are not actually origami because I had to use scissors and glue, but the vase was a lot easier than I had expected and the whole thing looks really pretty so voila: 


And also I made a Da Vinci bridge, which was hard only because my arms hurt from having to keep the pressure on it so that I could weave it all together but I was very impressed with my efforts and did not want to collapse it :(
   
 

Look at me, being all crafty and stuff! Anyway, I better get back to my Maths so au revoir my dear readers; live the day that you deserve today :)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Carers Week

Hi everyone! It feels like it's been ages since I last posted anything (or really wrote anything for that matter) but hey, exams! Anyway, this week (11th-17th June) is Carers Week, so I thought that I'd do some raising of awareness for Young Carers. First of all, shout out to my friend for standing up in assembly to talk about this, and for all those who ran the cake stall at school (they raised £69!). She's so amazing, and most of the following information comes from her. There are three main types of care that someone can provide-  physical (e.g helping to get dressed), practical (e.g shopping) and emotional (e.g comforting them if they’re upset or anxious etc). My friend thinks that emotional is probably the hardest to deal with, and it can worry carers a lot, especially when they’re at work or school (is that person ok, has anything happened to them etc), and I have to say that I agree. For young carers, the most common situations are looking after a paren
Read more

Steam trains move slowly but surely

Hello :) Those of you who know me well will probably have listened to at least one rant about feminism, especially after having studied Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez in English. And those of you who have also read this wonderful book will (hopefully) be joining me in ranting. One of the parts of this book discusses women's health and medicine, and how the concept of the default male (a major concept throughout the entire book) prevents women's health issues from being properly understood and treated. There were many parts of the book that made me so angry that I had to put it down and just stare into the distance. It was probably quite a good thing that we were studying it, because it meant that I only had to read a few chapters at a time and so the anger wasn't building up BUT, the revolution is here! Slowly, it comes, like a steam train. One of the parts of the revolution concerns actually listening to and collecting data on women's health so...  Please fil
Read more

Do You Think That Dragons Would Like Campervans?

Image
Because I haven't actually written anything on my blog for a bit, the modern look threw me once again. Oops? But hello! I hope that everyone is doing okay with everything that's going on at the moment. Our history teacher said that we're living through history at the moment and that it is exciting (especially as a historian) but also terrifying. This came about because we were talking about primary sources and secondary sources and which is more reliable/accurate (because it's history, the answer is neither). If you wrote a diary about the events happening at the moment, is it more or less accurate/reliable than someone thirty years in the future writing about the events drawing from multiple sources? Haha isn't history great. It's fascinating and there are so many different interpretations that can come out of sources, much like English (we're studying Othello at the moment and I did go off on a mini-rant about how I don't like Cassio). Oh, and also I j
Read more