Reading Week: OWLS #1
Back in 2017, I did a little readathon of my own to countdown the days until Christmas, and I was posting updates of my reading regularly. And last month, when Noura from the blog The Perks of Being Noura did a reading blog where she documented her weekend while she was reading Chain of Gold by Cassandra Claire, she got me thinking that maybe I could do something like that for the OWLs.
When I started writing this, I wasn’t too sure about this idea – and I’m still not sure. What am I going to write about? Will I have anything to say? But I kept on doing it day after day, pouring out the thoughts I was having at the moment about the book I was reading, about tv series, about my day. So here it is the first week of the OWLs 2020:
Wednesday, 1st April 2020
Even though the readathon runs for the entire month of April, I was so excited to start that I had to read something by midnight. I ended up reading the entire first volume of The Beauty by Jeremy Haun. I really enjoyed it, although it was kind of disappointing. I know the story has more volumes, but the book sort of has an end. And unless the other volumes follow the same characters, I don’t think I’ll be continuing reading it. It’s such a shame since I love the concept of this story. Either way, my Potions exam is done, five more to go.
The morning started off sunny and beautiful, my bunny was even sunbathing on the floor, and then it started raining. It rained all afternoon. The perfect weather for writing posts, reading a big book, and drinking tea. So I decided to enjoy the moment and start reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. I’m expecting this book to take me some time to read because it’s big and a slow burner. I only read about 50 pages, not much but I can see some long hours in the horizon reading this.
Thursday, 2nd April 2020
My morning and afternoon were spent in the sun reading Pachinko until the white of the pages started to “burn” my eyes. As nice as it sounds to read outside, white pages in the sun are not fun to read. And I also was too lazy to go grab my sunglasses. 😅 But somewhere between those pages, I started to really get into this book. I wasn’t getting tired of the extensive paragraphs and wasn’t jumping ahead to see when that chapter was going to end. I wanted to keep on reading. I’m not progressing as much as I think I am because I read really slowly – not on purpose though.
By the end of the day, I was starting to get some thoughts about something that was happening in the book. Without spoiling anything, there was a small religious conversation between some characters, which were Christian missionaries, that I didn’t like. And considering the time and place, I started to think about it on a bigger scale, outside of the story.
I’ve always seen missionaries as men of pure faith that travelled the world to help the less fortunate while expanding their religion (which they are). Although the same way that Portuguese conquerors were brave men that travel the seas to find new land, that glorified period of Portuguese History is not that great. Every piece of land they set foot meant slavery, and that’s not something to be proud of.
So now I’m thinking if missionary mission were really something to be proud of or something that was also glorified. Indeed, they didn’t enslave anyone, but they taught their “truth” as if it was the only truth, they taught the words of theirs Gods to miseducated people that don’t even know what the word God means. And it’s not like those people didn’t have their rituals for the dead, the living, and the land. Religion exists for thousands of years, long before Christianity was formed. Those religions have been evolving, the Gods have been changing names, but they were developing a culture based on ancient myths that are written over by the missionaries.
This is getting too serious, but now you know what is going on in my mind. I might be wrong thinking like this, I don’t know much about missionary missions however, I want to change that in the future to be able to have a formed opinion. And now, I’m going to watch the Tourist because that movie is on the TV, it’s awesome, and I need to relax.
Friday, 3rd April 2020
I’ve spent the entire day thinking about reading Pachinko. It’s all I want to do now, but I also had to get my March Wrap-Up ready to be published. The editing and the photos wouldn’t be taking themselves, so I had to prioritise some work before fun.
And while the weather was so lovely, I put together a vegetable patch in my balcony to grow some fresh veggies for my bunny. I had this idea when I was cleaning up the attic and throwing away some landscape models I did. And since I was in the mood to get my hands dirty, I had to take advantage of it. The only problem is, I got so into it that I published the post later (I forgot about it 🙈) and it kept me away from reading until tonight.
Saturday, 4th April 2020
I was not expecting Pachinko would be so religious. I actually wasn’t expecting anything other than some Korean and Japanese words, places, and slices of unknown history to me. What I was mostly not expecting was having so many thoughts regarding the religion actions of some characters. I kind of want to dig deep on all this relationship between different religions in this period and others around the world.
On other news, after watching 3 episodes of Outlander, I kind of want to maybe, just maybe, read the book. 🙈 I never gave much thought to the book series because historical fiction is a tricky genre for me, and I don’t know much about Scotland to be a strong reason to get me interested. But I have to say, the TV series slowly got my attention, and maybe I can actually enjoy that series a lot more than I’m expecting.
Monday, 6th April 2020
Yesterday, I didn’t read much. I was more in the mood to watch TV instead. I rewatched the 5th Wave, and now I remember why I want to read the book, but at the same time, I couldn’t avoid eye-rolling some cliché YA scenes. It doesn’t keep me away from reading it though, I just have to be in the right mood to deal with it.
This week, I want to slowly fall back into the routine I had before these crazy days started. I already cleaned my room and did a yoga class for beginners. I want to try and do yoga at least 10 minutes every day to help with my back. While I’m crafting, I sometimes find myself with pain on my shoulder blades because it gets too tense there from the repetitive movements. And because I don’t enjoy gym exercises, yoga seems to be a better alternative to stretch my back and release the pressure.
Tonight, I’ll have a new Outlander episode to watch, and I can’t stop thinking about it. I know the audiobook is on Scribd, and I’m really considering reading it this month. I don’t know what is it about it that has caught my attention. I just really want to read Claire’s misadventures in the Highlands.
Tuesday, 7th April 2020
Yoga is killing me! Today, I started the Home: 30 days yoga journey from Yoga with Adriene on YouTube, and as great as it feels to relax and stretch, my muscles are screaming. I spend a lot of time sit so any little small workout, I feel it in the next day. I wish I could fast forward a few days when my body starts to get used to the movements and positions and stops complaining.
On reading news, I’m over halfway into Pachinko. As I’m writing this, I’m realising that it has been a week since I started reading it, and by now, I was hoping I was done with it. It’s taking me longer than I wanted and maybe I have to start reading multiple books at once if I want to finish by the end of the month. The best part is that I’m reading every single day without fail. Some days I read almost 50 pages others I read only 20, but I’m reading. And I’m also still watching movies, TV shows, working, watching Twitch and YouTube. Did time stretch during quarantine?
The more I progress with Pachinko the more I want to keep reading. I love the characters, I love
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