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Reflections

3 Ways Having a Planner Has Helped Me

I am someone who didn’t realize they had Type-A tendencies for the longest time, and because of that, I always neglected using a planner. Because I can also be quite laid back (see: “procrastinator”), I convinced myself that I could simply organize and prioritize my tasks in my mind. I slowly began to realize, however, that I was becoming more and more absent-minded because of this (as one does when you have a million things going on in your brain). So, I would write down task lists and appointments on my phone’s Notes app, but the simplistic nature of the…

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Books

Self-Help Books that I’ve Found Useful

…and When I Use Them Sometimes, without knowing or expecting, there are days that you aren’t able to handle. Days that you do not want to face, and days that are too difficult to absorb. If you’re lucky, those days are rare, far and few in between. But sometimes, you go through a point when there are plenty in a row. However rare or frequent, they are not days to be ashamed by. But those are the days that you need a little pick-me-up. Sometimes it’s difficult to ask your friends for those pick-me-ups, and on those days I turn…

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Reflections

Self-Help Books: Do They Work?

Carrying on with the theme of Mental Health Awareness Month, and Mental Health Awareness Week which starts today in the UK, today’s post is looking at self-help books. The self-help genre has become a multi-billion dollar industry around the world. In the United States alone, self-help books earn around $2.5 billion a year. So, what is it about self-help books that make them so popular and do they actually work? Quite often when I talk about self-help books to other people, I am confronted with a more than healthy dose of cynicism, with the words “a load of hogwash” or…

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Reflections

A.I. in Sci-Fi

Book Review: Lexi Author: Heidi J. Hewett       Rating: 4/5      ASIN: B07KT8TDXY I have always wanted to branch out into reading more sci-fi books. It’s a genre that, for some reason, has never been at the top of my list, but one that has always intrigued me – and Heidi J. Hewett’s Lexi was a great, albeit new age, introduction into this world. The book centres on a robotics engineer named John Michael Kirkpatrick, whose father is famous in the robotics world. John Michael and his team have perfected a female robot called LX8000, who is “built to mimic humans”. However,…

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Books

“If Beale Street Could Talk” by James Baldwin: Mini-Review

The hype of African-American author James Baldwin has been rejuvenated in recent years, particularly as his 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk was adapted into a movie of the same name in 2019. Dealing with the young love between Tish and Fonny that must learn to survive in spite of the racist politics that keeps them apart, the novel feels very relevant to the current Black Lives Matter politics in the United States. Set in Harlem, NY in the early 1970s, Tish and Fonny have grown up together and have developed an intimate relationship between them. However, before they…

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Books

How to Pick a Book in a Bookstore

5 Tips to help you to avoid overspending on books All book-lovers know the feeling of intense panic that comes over them in the middle of a bookshop. You’re overwhelmed by all the choices and would much rather buy everything in the entire store than make a decision. I can definitely relate. In fact, at the time of writing this post, I am hiding out from my responsibilities in a cafe inside a bookstore. And while here, I was confronted with the typical desire to buy every book I see. For book lovers, it’s so easy to come up with…

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