My Love for Literature and Cinema | IcthusBookCorner

The two things I love the most in the world are books and films. I feel like that is a pretty common thing to say, and they are pretty typical things to love, but it’s the truth.

I’ve loved stories all my life. I believe it is something my parents ingrained in me as a kid. Every day, before bedtime, my parents would read to me. Once I began to learn how to read, they gave me The Little Prince (1943) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Even though I could barely put words together, I read that book every night until every syllable made sense.

When it comes to my love for cinema, the story is quite similar but not as easy to place together. The first film I went to the cinema to watch was Chicken Run (2000), which in retrospective might have been a bit too scary for a kid. But the first film which made me go “this is art, I see what you are doing here” was Jurassic Park (1993). I’m aware you probably don’t think of this film as a masterpiece, I’m just stating it shifted my perspective on cinema as a whole. I have no idea how old I was when I saw those dinosaurs on screen, but it changed me. 

To this day, I reread The Little Price and rewatch Jurassic Park almost every year.

I don’t know what is the point of this text, or why I felt the need to write about it…I just did. It’s just that these two forms of storytelling have gotten me through a lot. I read a lot when I can’t process my own feelings. I also watch loads of films when I’m at my lowest and feel extremely bleak and sombre. They’re like my safe house. 

Hope this wasn’t much of a bother. Have a great week!

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You can find me at:

• https://twitter.com/icthus_book
• https://www.instagram.com/icthus_book/
• https://www.goodreads.com/margaridadesousa

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I know I didn’t post anything last week, don’t come for me! |IcthusBookCorner

Hey there people! I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy. Today I’m here to ramble on with you, nothing bookish.

Probably no one cares, but I haven’t posted anything since my birthday, and that was a scheduled post. To be honest, I got a bit tired of posting two times a week, and it got to a point when I had no idea what to post. I didn’t feel like writing reviews, and I was, overall, burned out.

I’ve always enjoyed talking about books and films, and it’s something that brings me joy. That is why I created this blog: to express myself and find people who love books as much as I do.

At the end of 2020, I decided to create a regular posting schedule again, and it was fine. (Mind you that I’ve had this blog since 2016, which is a long time.) In the beginning, this new attempt at organized content was amazing. It was so good that I had the idea to monetize the blog. I was excited by the interactions and visitors I had for my review of Death at Intervals and took it as a good sign. It was a stupid idea! I now felt forced to post even if I had nothing to say, and I felt like people weren’t interacting with me as much as they once did, which lead to me feeling like I was talking into the vacuum. (And by the way, I made no money so far, it was a stupid idea.)

Now, I feel like I’m now back on track, but I’ll probably only post once a week (two if I feel like it). I want to write a sort of essay on “The Shawshank Redemption” and “A Pocket History of Human Evolution”, and I also really want to write my reviews for “All The Light We Cannot See”, “If on a winter’s night a traveller” and “Notes from Underground”. As well as other things that I don’t want to reveal because I think they are better as a surprise. (I’ll post my March Wrap Up as soon as I can.)

Once again, I hope you are all doing well and living a Covid-19 free life. It was nice to talk to you all.
Bye, keep on reading.

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You can find me at:

• https://twitter.com/icthus_book
• https://www.instagram.com/icthus_book/
• https://www.goodreads.com/margaridadesousa

Exploring Bookstagram’s Habits |IcthusBookCorner

Hello, hello, everyone! Today I decided to bring you something different.

I recently joined bookstagram (@icthus_book) and was interested in people’s habits regarding their book consumption inside the bookstagram space. So I did some polls, questions and quizzes to see what was going on. This post will show us what is up with the bookstagram community.

The questions I asked include:

1. Do you use a reading tracker?
2. Which reading tracker do you use?
3. If you don’t use one, why not?
4. How long have you been using a reading tracker?
5. Do you buy used or new books, or do you read library books?
6. Do you use audiobooks?

As someone how has been using Goodreads for years and is now changing to StoryGraph, I was interested to see how people track what they read. Or if they track at all. From my research, 21% of people don’t track what they read at all, and 79% of people do track their readings.

When it comes to what people use to track their readings: 78% of people use Goodreads, 15% of people use StoryGraph, and 7% of people use a notebook or a planner. 

I asked people who said they don’t track their readings why they don’t do so. One of them said they were, quite literally, assaulted in the message section of one of the online trackers. Some people said they don’t read enough to feel the need to track the books they read. Lastly, some people just said they had never thought of tracking the book they read.

The second part of the “research” was about the type of books the people of bookstagram consume. As someone who buys most books second-hand, I was intrigued by the results of the inquiry. I found out that 73% of the people that follow me mostly buy new books, rather than used books. Which is okay, like the planet doesn’t thank you (nor does your wallet if we are being honest, but who am I to judge?). I also found out that only 27% of the people that follow me buy used books, rather than new ones. Lastly, no one chose the option of mostly using library books, which is mind-blowing.

The last thing I wanted to know was if people used audiobooks a lot or not. I personally don’t use them that much. I read/listen in maxim to 2 audiobooks a year, and I do it together with reading the physical book (most of the time). 

The results were that 65% of people don’t use audiobooks, while 35% of people use them. I guess this is pretty normal, but I was expecting more people to listen to audiobooks for some reason.

Well, I hope you found this interesting. If not, at least I had fun. I love stats and inquiries and other things like this, so if you have any ideas please let me know. Please, let me know what you would answer these questions.

Bye, keep on reading. 

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You can find me at:

• https://twitter.com/icthus_book
• https://www.instagram.com/icthus_book/
• https://www.goodreads.com/margaridadesousa

George Orwell and “Orwellian” as a Concept

Given the current surge of people calling everything they see around them “Orwellian” and doing so incorrectly, I thought I would just come here and try to explain the meaning of the word.

The term was named after the British author Geoge Orwell because of one of his most famous books, the novel “1984”. In his book, Orwell illustrates an oppressive society under a totalitarian government. The word “Orwellian” is often used solely to mean authoritarian, using the term in this way not only fails to fully convey Orwell’s message, but it also risks doing something he tried to warn against.

The government showed to us in “1984” controls its people’s actions and speech in obvious ways, such as watching and hearing their every move and word with punishment waiting for anyone who defies authority. But there are other forms of control which are not so obvious. People are overwhelmed with endless propaganda consisting of made-up facts and statistics, which come from the “ministry of truth”.

Here another term comes into place, “doublespeak”. In “1984”: the military is called the ministry of peace, labour camps are called joycamps, and political prisoners are detained and tortured in what is called “the ministry of love”. Doublespeak is when words are used not to communicate meaning but to weaken it. This has an effect Orwell calls “doublethink”, which is essentially cognitive dissonance, leaving the individual completely dependent on the State’s definition of reality.

These concepts aren’t something that can only happen in totalitarian states, but that could potentially take place in democratic societies. And this is why we can’t use “authoritarian” and “Orwellian” as synonyms.

Orwell was opposed to all forms of totalitarianism and spent most of his life fighting against anti-democratic forces. He was deeply concerned with how such ideologies propagate, giving a great amount of importance to the role of language when it comes to shaping our thoughts and opinions as individuals and as a society.

I would also really like to mention Orwell’s work is often used as being against communism and as well as fascism. Even though it is very much against fascism, as it should, we can’t call Orwell’s novel anti-communist if anything it was anti-capitalism and mostly anti-authoritarian. I say anti-capitalism because fascism is mostly a result of far-right ideologies, as seen throughout history and nowadays as well in a lot of different countries, such as the USA with Trump and Brazil with Bolsonaro, for example. Not to mention, Orwell himself was a democratic socialist which goes against the idea right-wight people have of him being against socialism.

With all this being said, I highly recommend you pick two of his non-fiction books that will make you understand his political ideologies and why he was so anti-totalitarian regimes. These books are Politics and the English Language and Fascism and Democracy.

Anyway, I hope this was helpful and I’m sorry if my rambling went on for way too long.

Bye, keep on reading.

Little update!

Hello, people of the interweb!

Probably nobody cares but I feel like I have to explain the reason why I went so many months without posting.

First of all, last semester I attended a seminar on Superconductivity, which led to me being able to get an internship at an amazing investigation center in Barcelona. It was all fun and games until I realized I wasn’t going to be able to attend the exam season my uni has for anyone who fails any class during the semester or decides to improve his/her grades. This had I huge impact on my overall stability during this semester since I had never had a semester when I didn’t attend said exam season.

I had to achieve reasonable grades in all subjects in order to do this internship. I was under a crazy amount of pressure and stress, I mean I don’t consider myself dumb but I’m not the most intelligent person you’ll ever meet, in addition to my horrible study habits. It got to a point when I hardly got out of the house except for classes and tests, I hardly spoke to anyone, I decided to clean my phone of all type of social media I had and I only really used my computer to uni-related stuff.

Me being happy and not carrying about uni for 10min straight!

Everything is okay now, I’m currently doing my internship, sightseeing on the weekends and I even went to a karaoke bar for the first time in my life. I can honestly say that IT’S ALL GOOD IN THE HOOD.

I really just wanted to say sorry for not posting for so long and to all the authors who were kind enough to send me a copy of their books, if I haven’t reviewed them yet, I’m extremely sorry, I’m doing my best to catch up on my reading.

Bye, and don’t forget to keep on reading!

What a Vegan Eats in a Day

Hello guys, I’m trying something new here and I don’t know what to expect. As you can see from the title this is a What I Eat in a Day post, I can only wait for your feedback.

Here we go:

I don’t usually wake up with a huge appetite but I’m aware that I do have to eat something so I normally try to fill my breakfast with nutrients.

On this specific morning, I cut an apple and a pear in small pieces, as well as some almonds and pistachios and throw it into a blow together with some blueberries, raspberries and a splash of oat milk. It was delicious.

 

Between breakfast and lunch, I ate a clementine as a snack.

 

 

 

 

Lunch was way easier to prepare. I heated up some leftover carrot soup and curry udon noodles with sautéed vegetables from the freezer and finished my meal with a piece of dark chocolate (80%).

 

 

 

 

Most of the time I get hungry in the afternoon and that specific day wasn’t any different. I picked a ripe persimmon and a mix of almonds and pistachios (snack 2).

 

 

Dinner was a piece of bread with a thick layer of homemade hummus and a quarter of tomato just to spice it up a little bit.

 

 

 

 

 

Obviously, that wasn’t enough so later that night I was hungry again. My nighttime snack was a banana (boring, I know).

 

 

 

That was it for the day in terms of eating, even though I do usually eat more than this  I spent this day at home, therefore, I did not spend that much energy that would require me to eat more.

 

Bye, hope you like it. Give me some feedback!