Books - Finishing Good Books Lately

I've been reading/listening to good books lately. The best thing is, I picked them knowing near-to-nothing about these books, so it was a nice surprise. I gave 4 stars on Goodreads for books listed here :

• Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens
• The Good Mother by Sue Miller
• Three Daughters of Eve by Elif Shafak
• The Silent Treatment by Abbie Greaves

So I decided to go to Goodreads to read some of the comments but I was left disappointed by the never-ending detailed complains (or 'critiques') from other fellow readers. I'm sitting here in front of my monitor, imagining the lives of people who hated something and chose to make an effort to write something so detailed about the hundred reasons why they don't like it. If they like it, I understand the strong urge to share with others about the excitement, but imagine when it is the opposite feeling. 

For example, among the books that I consumed this 2 months, I also finished Lady Sunshine by Amy Mason Doan and Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, but I don't feel the urge to share my thoughts on why I didn't like the books. I can't even write the reviews on my Notion bookclub because the books weren't that good for me. It didn't leave any marks except for 'don't feel like rereading these books'.

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Anyway, I'm currently listening to more books by Nell Stevens. I would love to buy a physical copy of Briefly, A Delicious Life - it is a combination of Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman, Call Me by Your Name by Andre Aciman and The Invisible Life by Addie LaRue. First person view, silent love story, and giving a mellow vibe. 

Other than that, I wrote some of the reviews on my Notion Book Club (that I can't catch up to write in). 

Extra note : I just finished My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell (book 77). It was another good read, but uncomfortable to listen to (Exploring a relationship of a young naive 15-year old Vanessa and a manipulative 42 year old teacher). It reminds me of The Enchanter / Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Perhaps it is fair to say that it is a modern take of Lolita from the girl's point-of-view. It was not an easy read, quite uncomfortable and dark, but an interesting story nonetheless. 

Little Thing 253 : Drawing/Journaling Playlist

I made a 15 minutes drawing/writing playlist, or less. Well, at this moment I have 2 videos that I use when I wake up early in the morning and try to write/draw something before Sofi wakes up. I created my own calm playlists and I hope it is somewhat useful to some of you. 

Draw with Me : Mushroom Edition

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Draw with Me : Peach Edition

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Or you can play it on background here :

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Little Stories 245 : Cleaning up My Childhood Room, Recycling Old Books & Magazines

We've been spending a lot of time at my dad's to clean up our old stuffs (I left the house when I was 18 and the room kinda stuck in time). There are so many stuffs to do.

The Early Story : Basically what happened was the water tank beneath the ceiling in our old room was leaking badly, so it needed a change + the old roof was in bad shape. Our room was flooded by it so we had to do massive clean up and renovation. I think we already spent around a month on and off at the house since August. 

The Renovation : Repaired the old roof, cleaned up the ceiling, changed new water tank, hacked broken tiles in the kitchen and filled it up with new concrete, filled up cement in the toilet's drain, repaired broken door, rented trash tank and all those stuffs. We called 'tukang rumah' for all those stuffs that we can't do - we spent around RM 4,700 for all those renovation.

While we (mostly Af and I), we organized the stuffs, threw things that can't be used, recycled things that can be recycle, cleaned up the room and a lot of other small stuffs. My brother and sister came twice to help with the heavy stuffs especially the dismantling and lifting. 

The recycling part : The first time we send all our plastic stuffs to the recycling center, we only got RM 1 (it was in 3 huge plastics). We gave away 1 bag of tins & aluminium to the DBKL guy because he wanted it - he also requested to take the metal springs in 2 of the old mattresses that we put in the trash tank in front of the house. 

Here are all the books, magazines, old documents (paper/board related) that we sold, including 2 old bulky monitors, 3 old keyboards, 2 old radios, and a fax machine. We got RM 81 for all those. It's at the nearest recycling center to our house :

Some recycling centers won't take badly damaged books by termite, some just take them, so you need to ask ahead. This is only books and magazines from 2 rooms, we still have 2 rooms to go through :

Note : Most of the magazines were from my sister because she's the one that spent the most on magazines, and already I brought all my books when I left the house (so I don't have this problem).

Moving forward :

• we have around 15 huge bags of old clothes, bags and fabrics but we don't know where/how to send. Maybe to the Recycling Center in Precinct 9 Putrajaya because they take old clothes (I'm not sure about this yet). 
• we need to clean up the kitchen after the renovation
• we need to find a way to clean up the garden
• more magazines and termite-destroyed books in the library room :F

Anyway, it is a long process and I will maybe update again when I have the time.