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Books

Booker Prize Longlist 2019

It’s that time of the year again, and the Booker Prize (formerly known as the Man Booker Prize) longlist has been announced! Also known as the Booker Dozen (ironically as there are 13 books on the nomination list), this year’s nomination list seems unlikely to follow last year’s trend of diversity as the list includes many big names.  Margaret Atwood – The Testaments  Kevin Barry – Night Boat to Tangier  Oyinkan Braithwaite – My Sister, The Serial Killer  Lucy Ellmann – Ducks, Newburyport Bernardine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other  John Lanchester – The Wall  Deborah Levy – The Man Who…

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Books

Organising Your Bookshelf

Is there a right way? There comes a time in every bookworms life where you are faced with a rapidly growing pile of chaos in the form of your To-Be-Read, Already-Reads and Re-Reads. There’s a certain satisfaction to the messy book reader aesthetic, but as a generally meticulous person, I can only maintain it for so long before it drives me crazy. And it is during these fits characterised by an intense desire for organisation that I tend to rearrange my bookshelves.  Now you might be under the impression that an organised bookshelf simply means making sure all your books…

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Books

Pride Month Reading List

One of our earliest posts that we had on the blog was a Reading List for Black History Month and it is still one of our most popular posts, gaining praise for giving a starting point for people wanting to diversify their reading. This year’s Pride Month seemed like a great opportunity to do the same for books featuring, or exclusively dealing with, LGBTQ+ themes. A lot of my academic career has been focused on the topic of gender and sexuality, which is one of the main reasons I was able to discover so many amazing books within the genre.…

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Reflections

On the Social Responsibility of Writers

Do they have any? With Pride month upon us, it is perhaps no surprise that the question of social activism is on my mind. And since I am in the midst of writing my doctorate thesis, the question of social activism and writing has occupied my thoughts. Particularly the wonder of whether or not writers have a social responsibility to be activists, especially if they are writing about social issues? I am unashamed to admit that social activism plays a large role in my life: I am an openly feminist person of colour, an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, and ardently…

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Books

Seeds of Dissolution by William C. Tracy Book Review

Happy Pride Month! For many countries around the world (namely Western ones), June is Pride month—a month of recognition, and in the recent decades a celebration, of the rights and equality of all members of the LGBTQ+ community. It is no revelation that to many, literature is a form of escape from reality. And in the case of the LGBTQ+ community, it has similarly been turned to as a source of validation. Literature featuring homosexual characters is not as new as some may think, with evidence of same-sex relationships being hinted at, or even described, in as early as the…

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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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