Honestly, so many experiences can be summarized in just a few strokes: graduated, started work, moved to Austin, played a lot of Valorant. When phrased like that, it feels like time has completely escaped me, spilling through my fingertips. But I think a lot has happened and changed, even if it doesn’t necessarily feel like it! Could Christina a year ago have predicted that she’d be here?

There’s a dull sound approaching you. It’s slow, measured, deliberate. You recognize it as metal against concrete, but the distinct thud, thud, thud betrays a hulking weight behind it…

A review/reflection of how Shang-Chi, Interior Chinatown, and Houston Chinatown reflect the Asian-American identity - tied together with usual rambling Christina Ji flair

musings on memory, emotion, and ambiguity - less a blog update, more a reflection on Omori and Almond. really nothing to do with Friday the 13th besides serendipitous posting date

The end of junior year, summer, reading in the sun, and musings on feeling both like time is moving too slow and too fast.

My first real blog post. On nostalgia and UC Berkeley — a homecoming of sorts. nostos.

I have to preface this review by saying that The Garden of Evening Mists is by far one of the “slowest” books I’ve ever read. As many reviews have mentioned, Tan attempts to “capture stillness on paper” in the same manner as Aritomo, and I would honestly consider his endeavor a success. The novel is practically a carefully pruned garden itself, with lovely, meditative prose and poignant themes that meld into one another, almost an act of “borrowed scenery” amongst the end-of-empire narrative.

Carson possesses an incredible dexterity when it comes to the written word along with the creative chops to substantiate the narrative itself, suffusing this work with clear appreciation and love for the tale and how it can be adapted and interpreted anew.

I appreciated a lot of the themes that Cha brings up, and she peels back a layer when examining Korean culture, making what would otherwise appear “exotic” something familiar and accessible—a testament to the importance of reading books by Own Voices.

Short and sweet story, so here’s a short and sweet review. Before the Coffee Gets Cold gave me the general feeling I wanted out of a book today—something heartfelt and warm

Barcelona breathes in this story. She exists as the setting, seeps through the characters, whistles as the shadow of the wind itself. Zafón has crafted an incredible ode to storytelling, one that revolves around a mystery infused with the smell of sulfur, and he does so with incredible prose and style.

If you’re not familiar with burnout, here’s a quick definition a la Google’s first result: “Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to meet constant demands.”

3 Stars, but this review goes into why I think stars are rather meaningless…This was my first real foray into contemporary adult romance. I'm neither disappointed nor surprised, rather relatively lukewarm towards this book, but I find it difficult to say if it's just my unfamiliarity with the hallmarks of the genre.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is an autobiographical novel based on James Joyce's own life, the protagonist renamed as Stephen Daedalus. The mention of the myth to which Stephen's surname references is often called upon in this novel, an ode to both Icarus and the inventor himself, artist as creator and the consumed.

Now, let’s get one thing straight: bookstagram is a labor of love. To have the dedication to post regularly towards this passion speaks of commitment to literature, and the bookish community is centered on authentic experiences with one another. We cultivate our pages to showcase how much we love reading — what else could be more pure? So when I talk about marketing in relation to bookstagram, I do not mean to undermine this appreciation as something easily quantifiable…

4/5 Stars. I finished reading Americanah on a rainy morning, just before dawn. The world outside was still blue and shadowed, and the shape of buildings slowly emerged from the dark, brick by brick, pane by pane, as the sky lightened. The sound of toads and birds rose up from the twilight silence, their throats defrosted and open with warbling calls upon waking…

To be honest, as I was reading this book, I was prepared to give it, at most, 3.5-4 stars. I wasn't too familiar with the intricacies of the Shakespearean references, and I was slightly put off by how the characters talked - sometimes with the true crudeness of college students, other times pretentious and caricatural. At the same time, the Shakespeare references were perfect, doing exactly what Rio intended: imbuing the actors and readers with the words and feelings of his work in parallel to the novel's events…