‘Pride And Prejudice’ Book Review

Some of the very best red carpet looks of Zendaya that I totally adore 🥰

Definitely mind blowing!

Pip and Estella

Great Expectations (2011) BBC

Books smell good. They look good. You can press it to your bosom. You can carry it in your pocket.

Ray Bradbury

“The Haunting of Hill House” Book Review

It starts the quote “whatever walked there, walked alone”. This quote somehow seems to explain the whole story, right? The book wasn’t something I had expected. It deals with mental horror more than it deals with the ghostly horror which was not something I had expected though I knew there would be something psychological to it.

 It starts with Eleanor going to the Hill House by getting an invitation from Dr. Montague. The descriptions added about the town downstream the Hill house were like something we expect from a typical haunted house story. However, I too enjoyed the journey of Eleanor going to the Hill House, the writing was very effective in that part. The atmosphere inside the Hill house which has been described made me feel suffocated. The Hill house was described to consist of different rooms with different colours of the rainbow but still very dark and deep, just to think about this it feels like nature is against lighting the house. All through the book, Hill house did not only spread horror, it also had spread hatred, loathing, jealousy and suspicion. But at some points, I felt that though Hill house was disastrous, Hill house was also their comfort zone to an extent. One very disagreeable thing about the book is that it’s very draggy. You’ll have already gone through almost 2/3 of the book but you’d feel nothing major is happening actually. I would have liked it better if it did contain a bit more things going on. 

 Now, talking about “The Haunting of Hill House” means talking about the characters of the book. The protagonist is of course Eleanor and everything is about her. Her life seems really boring which needed excitement and hence the decision of going to the Hill house has arisen and she was genuinely happy to go there. She is very imaginative and keeps imagining a lot of stuff at the time of the journey. She is actually very insecure and an overthinker. She always keeps thinking about what her mother says or how she would have reacted in all of the situations. I felt like she had been controlled by her mother for the whole time. She troubles herself in every small matter. She is very pathetic and desperate which is very normal for her as she was brought up very strictly. And then comes Theodora. She is a chill kinda person who also seems to like excitement. One of the lines from the book is very appropriate as it has described the characteristics of both Eleanor and Theodora, “Theodora’s face was stiff and sulky, she likes attention, Eleanor without thinking, moved and sat on the floor beside Theodora.” Dr. Montague was the most adventurous among them. The only thing I want to say about Luke is that he is a flirt.

 Jackson’s writing style is very simple and easy to understand. She added many small details to make the hill house appear scarier and darker. But I did not like the style of her writing in case of conversations. It was messy with a disturbing flow which lacked smoothness.

This was all about the book. I enjoyed it though my expectation was a bit higher.

Review “Men Explained Things to Me”

Just some random thoughts I had while reading the book:

1. Solnit was so pissed with the so-called everlasting knowledge that the men try to represent they have. Literally in every matter, they try to put forward some illogical, unreasonable and irrelevant garbage of the theories they posses and try to stop the women, violating the rights to speak laws everyday.

2. It has become a necessity to start talking about women and their rights by stating about their unprivileged condition first. Many people may find this as cliché or rather boring, but just think about it in this way, we guys  might have become bored to hear about these regular women tragedy everyday where this shitty condition of women is not changing for these whole periods of times those had finally made you bored!

3. I loved how Solnit talked about the violence women are facing in her country as well as tried to talk about some of the problems of India. Some of her quotations are very very strong. She has a great political as well as philosophical views.  She wasn't confined in talking about feminisms and women's problems only but also shared her perspectives as a writer in different artistic values.

4. In one of her essays, she also mentioned that time is definitely changing though. Women are suffering true, but not as much as they used to in the past. I think writing this is definitely an example of optimism which again gives us hope (the famous Pandora's box's hope in the good sense you know). The essay called "Pandora's box and volunteer police force" and "Thinking out of the box" are my absolute favorite.

5. In her essays she also talked about some other issues like capitalism etc. which shows her other sides like unbiases. 

Spread Love<3

We often find people around us whom we usually consider as "bad attitude person", "moody", "arrogant" or "attention seeker". We tend to avoid them. I personally think, by avoiding them, we are not letting them be heard. People will have different sorts of behaviors and ways to express themselves. It doesn't necessarily mean they are to be avoided and be left alone all the time. If we clearly understand that the person is craving for attention, why not giving them some? Seriously, it won't take us long or any effort just to say hi or ask how they are doing. Just do it you know, you'll end up feeling good and you're gonna make the other person feel good too. Just a simple thing and we are both delighted, isn't it? Let's spread love because we all are meant to be loved<3

A Vision Of Life

This is the first story of the “Avonlea Story Club” for the month (January 15th- February 15th). We tried to write the genre “Adventure” for this month. Hope you like it. My another club member is @emerald-notes​ . Please check out her story for the month too. P.s. The photo has been taken from the internet.

*****

I woke up at 9:40 PM. ‘Shit!’ I’m gonna miss my train,’ I thought. I quickly went to the bathroom, trying to fresh up, but to my unfortunate life, I could never do anything fast. I came back from the bathroom and started applying all sorts of lotions and moisturizers contained in my daily skin care list. But ugh! It always takes a lot of time. However, I tried to finish dressing up as quickly as possible because I had to catch the train at 10:15 PM. It was getting super late. I did not even look at my watch, fearing it would already be 10:15. Instead, I just quickly hopped in my car and started driving to the direction of the train station. But again, the traffic lights! “It’s gonna kill all of my time” I thought. While waiting for the traffic light to turn green, I tried not to think what would happen to me if I was to miss the train. I started to feel very nervous and stressed. But then, to my great relief, the green signal came, and I started driving right away. The speed I was following was greater than ever because there was no way I could afford to miss the train. Finally, I got to the station. But again, to my utter disappointment, it was already 10:20 PM, and the train had already started running. I stood there watching it run. I could not stop thinking only if I had come 5 minutes earlier. Why did I even stop at the signal? What if I’d woken 5 minutes earlier? But there was nothing to do. What happened just happened. I missed the train. I was in great despair. What was I going to tell my parents? They would be disappointed with me as usual. I found a bench and sat there. My phone rang. I did not look at it because I knew it was my mother calling to know whether or not I got to the train safely. I couldn’t just receive the call and tell her that I didn’t get to the train, let alone safely. I started to get annoyed when my mother kept calling me for the third time. I wasn’t to face the situation. I couldn’t even decide what I was going to do now that I’d missed my train. “But I must do something”, I kept thinking. The whole situation was very pressurized, and I didn’t want to be in it. As I couldn’t stay undecided even for some time, I decided I would just sit there until I thought I should move. I knew it wasn’t an effective decision or maybe no decision at all, but I needed it in order to feel relaxed. Yes, I needed it, I needed some free time to make myself distracted. Yes, distraction was all I needed. I deserved it, I couldn't let myself get pressured. I was extremely tired, and I was beginning to feel restless. My eyes were closing. And then everything became black. 

I woke up again with a start. ‘Where was I?’ I thought. It seemed that I was in the station and fell asleep. ‘Of course, I didn’t leave it and didn’t even talk to mom and finally decided to rest here instead. What a silly thing to do!’, I thought. Suddenly, my eyes caught the stare of another  pair of eyes. The pair of eyes belonged to a man. The man was a bit gigantic.  He was looking at me with a wicked smile on his lips. He reminded me of someone I knew but couldn’t remember at that moment. I could not help hating him. He was making me uncomfortable with his continuous staring and annoying smile. I knew that that particular behaviour of that man was intentional. I kept thinking what I would do if this cruel man suddenly attacked me. I could not remember where I had parked my car. But that was not an issue because the keys are going to lead me to my car. So I started to search for the keys. But, Alas! My bag wasn’t with me. Quickly I reached my pocket, and it was what I had expected, my wallet was gone too. ‘What was I going to do?’ I started to become very tensed. I imagined the cruel man to have taken my stuff to put me in this dangerous situation. ‘How can I be this careless?’ I blamed myself. Then a worse thing happened. The man seemed to call someone without moving his disgusting stare from me. He was surely telling his friends to come meet him in the station. I seemed to guess what was going to happen if his friends had arrived. He and his friends were gonna surely hurt my feelings. I was going to be doomed. And yes, to make it obvious, I saw his friend arriving in the direction of that cruel man with a disgusting laugh. ‘No, this is not going to happen’, I pleaded to myself. I stood up and, without thinking twice, started running in the opposite direction. I thought maybe running from the situation would save me that time. But I was wrong. I heard mocking footsteps behind me. Yes, they were also running after me. As I said, I was doomed!

I had to quicken my steps as I was running for my life. I could swear that I had not run that fast in my entire life. There was a kind of forest near the station. Finding no other convenient place, I directly ran into it. As expected, the forest was very dark. As I was running deeper, it was getting darker. At some point, I could not even distinguish the trees. So, I had to slow down as I didn’t want to get hit by a tree and cause me more trouble. I noticed that the footsteps were no longer audible. I thought maybe they became busy with something more exciting. However, I was relieved. So, I sat down under what seemed to be a huge tree. I was sweating and struggling to breathe. I began to  think about a lot of things. I didn’t think it was worth living. Never in my life I did something extraordinary. It was rather boring as hell. I didn’t even like my parents. I was sure, neither did they like me. What was the point of calling each other and knowing stuff, I could not understand. Suddenly I saw a glimpse of light at the far end of the forest. I started walking towards it because my brain was incapable of thinking about anything else. 

As I reached the source of the light, I found a house. It was a wooden house. The house appeared very dark, perhaps because it was made out of very dark colored woods. I knocked at the door. I knocked it twice. An old woman finally opened the door. Her hair was all silver and she gave me a soothing smile. As I was just going to ask her something, she moved away from the door gesturing me to step inside. I obeyed her because she seemed friendly. I thought maybe she was the one who could actually help me get out of the situation. I sat on a tool near the fireplace. The old woman sat beside me. It seemed like she was ready to hear me talk. I could not decide where to start. It was always very difficult for me to start the discussion. Instead I started looking around her house. The house had only one room in which we were sitting. There was no other furniture other than the two chairs (where we were seated) and a table. The contents on the table were really weird. There were some moving dolls and a glass tube filled with a sparkling purple liquid. The dolls were very lovely looking. They had smooth skin and rosy cheeks and were glowing and radiating charisma. I was pleased at their beauty and their movement. Then, the woman spoke. 

“You seem to like the dolls, don’t you?”

“Yes, they are very comforting and lively”, I replied.

“You can be like them, you know, if you want.”

She took the glass tube from the table.

“This is called the ‘Elixir of Beauty’. This can make you happy just like it made the dolls happy”, she said pointing the tube towards me. 

I took the tube. 

“You can drink it” she seemed to suggest. I was hesitating. Things can happen this easily, I did not believe. “Can I really be as happy and lively as the dolls? Shall I trust the woman?” I kept thinking. 

Suddenly I woke up hearing a beep. It was my alarm. I really woke up this time from this peculiar dream. Was it a nightmare or an excitement, I could not tell. But I realized that, I didn’t yet miss the train. The train which was to take me to the job interview was still waiting. I could not miss that chance like I did before. I knew I needed it. ‘No slow-motion work this time’, I told myself. But firstly I had to take some moments to finish up my skin care routine peacefully because it was important. I had plenty of time but I had to make it useful. 

And I did reach the station and hopped on my train timely and safely. As the train was running, I decided what I would be doing after I had appeared for the interview properly. I needed to call my mom. Probably she liked me or liked me not but I did not have to think about that. I also do need to call my therapist and thank her. She was a good adviser after all. As the train started to run faster, I kept thinking about the dream. It felt too relatable. Like I had lived my life in that dream. 

Adult & Young Celebrities Look Alike

I’ve found some of the child actors\actresses look exactly like some adult actors\actresses. They should be in the movie together where the child actors\actresses will play the younger version of the adult actors\actresses.

1. Natalie Portman & Millie Bobby Brown

2. Ansel Elgort & Gabriel Bateman

3. Kiernan Shipka & Mckenna Grace

4. Hailee Steinfeld & Isabella Sermon

Just a small friendly reminder:

Everyone knows toxic chemicals are harmful for the physical health. Likewise toxic people are also harmful for mental health. It is wise and healty to stay away from them.

"This is How You Lose the Time War" by Amal El- Mohtar & Max Gladstone

The story follows two of our protagonists belonging to two different futuristic worlds which are against each other. It follows different timelines, describing from the past historical events to the things which are probable to happen in the future. Basically, it is a story of time travelling to the past, could be for saving something or destroying things. Red is a time-traveling agent from a world more collective and dependent. Blue's one is calculating and more independent. So, red's the one who runs and Blue's the one who ruins. Red and blue eventually get a form to connect to each other: through letters. So, it's more like a "enemy to lover" romance story in the historical and sci-fi world.

I have really liked the concept and storyline of the novella. But i have found the language a bit difficult to get by. The books at the beginning and some points also seemed a bit messy. I lost the tract and did not understand some of the rapidly mentioned historical references. It took me much time to understand the plotlines as well. I just wish it was more understandable and swift to grab a whole bucket of information (the ongoings) all at once. But the good thing is, as we keep reading, the things start untwisting and it feels less confusing. And slowly you starts to love it.

The message of the story is the best. War is the worst thing we can do. Love is the one thing everyone needs to live truly and fully. Love is another name for freedom, not war, of course.