Check out my friend Carleigh's blog http://the-sweet-disposition.blogspot.com
She's doing a countdown to Christmas where she gives one Christmas gift recommendation per day! Annnd she's a fellow bookworm & j-schooler.
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book list

Feel free to share your own favourites as a comment, or make your own book list and tag/link me in it!

I’m a little tired of giving the same exact answer to the question ‘What’s your favourite book?” all the time, so I wanted to list more favourite books off the top my head. This list is entirely for myself to keep (because I’m obsessed with making lists, pointless or otherwise) but I also thought I would share because these are all (in my opinion) life-changing, amazing books.

All time favourite book that I worship:

It’s a toss between:

Catcher in the Rye- JD Salinger (speaking of Salinger, Franny and Zooey is also wonderful)

and

The Bell Jar- Sylvia Plath (she’s my soul mate)

Other favourites:

Lullabies for Little Criminals- Heather O’Neill

A Million Little Pieces- James Frey

Everything Matters! -Ron Currie Jr

The Elegance of the Hedhehog- Muriel Barbery

Brave New World- Aldous Huxley

Prozac Nation- Elizabeth Wurtzel (I love the film version as well)

Girl, Interrupted- Susanna Kaysen (I love the film version as well)

All Chuck Palakniuk books and especially Fight Club, of course (love the film version as well)

Blindness- José Saramago (His books are amazing) (I love the film version as well)

Breakfast on Pluto- Patrick McCabe (I love the film version as well)

The Virgin Suicides- Jeffrey Eugenides (I love the film version as well)

Atonement- Ian McEwan (I love the film version as well)

Angela’s Ashes- Frank McCourt (I love the film version as well)

Perks of Being a Wallflower- Stephen Chbosky

All Paulo Coelho books but especially Veronika Decides to Die (Veronika Decide Morrer)

Story of My Life- Jay McInerney

Series off the top of my head:

Are things like the Harry Potter series and Lord of the Rings too obvious? In that case, The Hunger Games series (which is going mainstream, and I don’t wanna sound like a hipster but…it’s going mainstream FAST) and A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin, for Game of Thrones fans and fantasy lovers!

I usually seem togo for deep, depressing and dark books as I’m not usually a sap nor religious so I’m embarrassed to admit I love Nicholas Sparks novels but I loved

Dear John by Nicolas Sparks….but who am I kidding, his books are good (yet cheesy).

Books that made my childhood and shaped my entire life, and that I think of as adult books, and still think of to this day:

My Sweet-Orange Tree (O Meu Pé de Laranja Lima) by José Mauro de Vasconcelos, all his books are AMAZING.

and

The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) by Antoine de Saint Exupéry

…Also, who could forget classics like Lolita and

Anna Karenina and

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (all her books are amazing) and

Jane Eyre and

Lord of Flies?

….And much, MUCH more but these were off the top of my head. Sorry it went on longer than I expected. Sigh, I LOVE books.

quarter life crisis happenin' up in hurr.

Sometimes I'm in a club with my friends and I'm like, why am I even here? And I feel utterly out of place, which is strange because I LOVE drinking and dancing. Sometimes I don't even know where I'm headed. Which, again, is STRANGE because I've always been the kind of person who knows exactly what they want.
Wah wah, pity party of one.

True story though.

friendship.

Lately I've been thinking about friendship in the light of my own experiences and what I've come to realize about friendship dynamics:

Not always, but there's usually a dominant one and a passive one in a friendship, the passive one letting the dominant friend have bigger control over their relationship and everything else.

It can get frustrating if you're the one who has, whether on purpose or not, have agreed to fill the role of the non-dominant, 'passive' friend.

The thing is though, someone shouldn't be friends with you because you cater to their description of what they need out of a friend. They shouldn't be friends with you because you're the friend they need and want you to be.

They should be friends with you because they simply want/enjoy being friends with you for who you are. All of you. ALL sides of you. And if you're in a certain mood but they're in a mood where they need you to be something else, who should be the one adapting to the other? Should there BE any adapting at all? If not, how will these two friends come to be on the same page?

Confusing much? I know I am.

It's interesting when you know your dominant friend enough to understand exactly what she wants and expects out of a friend, yet maybe she shouldn't EXPECT anything at all. Maybe it shouldn't be about the passive friend struggling to fit that role all time, because that's not real friendship at all.

All I know is, I'm the kind of person that gets hurt easily by the ones she loves, I guess. And sometimes when I'm hurt and don't want to be hurt anymore, I tend to apologize to end the argument just to get it over with, even when I'm not the one in the wrong.

I should start taking charge and turn some of my friendship dynamics around.

Funny thing is, I'm not always the passive friend. In some of my friendships, albeit only a few, I'm the dominant one. I literally have the smallest ego I know and very low self-esteem, so I tend to conveniently fill the passive friend role a lot. People with no egos find it easy to apologize when they're wrong and people with low self-esteem will easily apologize even when they're right.

This is exactly what I do.

Maybe it's time to stop apologizing, being the one to take the blame just for the sake of ending the argument, and teach some people around me how to apologize when they're in the wrong.

Might be harsh and out-of-character but I encourage everyone in my situation to do the same. You might lose a couple friends, but then maybe they weren't your real friends in the first place.

You might win some, impressing people with your new self-confidence. I know I suffered (and still do) with low self confidence my whole life, but it's pretty easy to hide it now.

It's alllll about how you present yourself to others. Do it long enough to get good at it and no one will truly know the real you unless YOU decide it's time to reveal it to them.

my mind is 97% rants, 3% post-rant satisfaction.

Today in the light of me bitching about religious phrases I hate, I randomly thought of another: 'God bless you', meaning I need somebody else's blessing. This thought makes me want to drown kittens in my bathtub. (Mind you, I'm experiencing a little anger management issues today. I'll explain why below.)

I'm super stressed because I didn't write an essay worth 35% of my total mark(do only British people use this word instead of 'grade'? regardless, I use it as well) in a class and as a result I had to send my Prof a 'pity me, I need to ask a favour, I haven't showered in 4 days, that's how stressed I am' email.
I signed it with, "Sincerely, International Student About to Be Deported" hoping to extract some sort of pity. Lets hope it works?

I was also thinking about how the fact that Stephenie Meyer fantasized her 'perfect guy' Edward as a guy who won't have sex with Bella for the entirety of 3 books (I didn't read the last one, snort, I have better things to be concerned with, like getting a BA degree that won't do me any good in life, mind you). And this led me to assume that, since Stephenie's dream guy is a guy who doesn't want to have sex, poor Stephenie's husband can't possibly be getting any.
This just shows, thou shall not marry crazy Mormons who can't write.

Another phrase I dislike is, "Save it for a rainy day", associating 'rain' with sadness or stress. I don't know about you but rain makes me so happy! This is probably because I'm not a very 'sun' person. (and no, I don't mean I have vampiric tendencies, even though I was into vampires in literature WAY before any of this shit came out, ever heard of Anne Rice, you cunts). I just don't like being in the sun in the same way I don't like being cuddled or spooned when I'm sleeping. Just leave me be when I'm sleeping you dickwad!

In other news, I was on the subway the other day, quite tipsy I may add, and I kept glaring at the cute guy sitting opposite of me. He kept glaring back. This went on for a while as with each stop I kept thinking: "He's gonna get off at this stop and that'll be the end of it. I wonder if he can hear the songs I'm listening to on my ipod right now? He keeps breathing in an out to the rhytm of the songs. Hmm."
If you wanna hear how this mind-numbingly capturing story went, he finally got off at his stop and gave me a final smirk and a look before disappearing. sniff. It was good while it lasted, breathing-t0-the-rhytm-of-my-songs-subway-boy.

I am a little bit of Kat Dennings, little bit of Ricky Gervais, a whole lot of Sylvia Plath, a dash of Sheldon Cooper, and a bit of Tina Fey. Just making a pointless pie chart of my personality, in case you needed the recipe.

Now I have to go take out the trash as my roommates signed Petition for Maya to Remove her Pile of Pizza Boxes from the Floor (3 signatures, I didn't sign alas I need to obey), and this calls for me to get my lazy ass all the way to the Recycling Bins. Yes, we recycle here in Canada, ain't it grand? I want to justify my messiness with, 'Nobody in Turkey cares about recycling' but nobody over here cares about my home country either.

Signed,
International Student About to be Deported (except not, that was a lie I told my Prof to get an extension on my essay.)

notes from an angry agnostic atheist

Before I begin to list and rant about some of the common phrases I absolutely detest hearing, let me assure some doubters that YES, being agnostic AND atheist is completely possible. Atheism means lack of belief, as being a theist means “I believe.” Agnosticism/gnosticism is concerned with KNOWING, as in lack of knowing: agnosticism. Hence an agnostic atheist is someone who does not believe that one is capable of KNOWING the absolute existence of a god, and also someone who doesn’t BELIEVE that there may be such an existence.

now that we got that explanation out of the way, here are 3 Religious Phrases That I Hate:

1) God works in mysterious ways. (or, ‘God is testing you.’)

This is just something that religious people say when they are perplexed by injustice or an unpleasant thing that happens. Here’s the “reasoning” behind this ridiculous phrase that I can’t help but chuckle at whenever I hear it: You believe in a God and that this God’s actions are behind everything that happens in the world, so if your sweet grandma gets run over by a truck you go ‘Oh, I don’t understand why such a horrible thing happened. but I guess God works in mysterious ways!’

No, girl…no. there IS NO secret message or intention behind what happened. If you didn’t pass a test like you thought you would, it’s because LIFE SUCKS SOMETIMES AND THE TEST WAS HARD. not, ‘God wanted me to fail this so he could teach me a lesson/perseverance/patience/etc.’ When something unexpected happens and it’s confusing, this ‘God works in mysterious ways’ phrase gets thrown in and it’s uber hilarious/ridiculous/naive/stupidly optimistic.

Also, it’s like giving your future to the hands of somebody else instead of taking charge and knowing only YOU can change it.

2) (S)he was too good for this world, and she is playing with angels up in heaven now.

I’ll address this phrase in two parts. Now I understand that you’re mourning a death and that everyone grieves in different ways, but justifying a death like this is plain stupid. it’s indeed true that LIFE SUCKS (once again) and horrible shit happens, it will keep happening, but how premature is looking at life&death in this kind of mentality?? I’ll answer that: very. Second part of this statement, the angels up in heaven thing, I won’t even address extensively because everyone has different beliefs but from a realistic POV I just want to say: CHUCKLE CHUCKLE SNORT.

PS. Knowing that when a person dies, their flesh is eaten by worms in the dirt and nothing else happens beyond that, does NOT make me a bitter or unhappy person. I’m not a person to give into wishful thinking, and think that people I love who are dead, are playing with angels jumping from one cotton candy cloud to another playing harps and eating grapes on top of rainbows. No, they’re just rotting in the ground BECAUSE THEY’RE DEAD. finito. fin. and that’s ok, because there are sad truths in life we must acknowledge. (just sayin’, not preachin’)

3) Let us pray/I’m praying for the people of Japan/Haiti/Egypt/insert location of crisis.

you’re PRAYING?!?! Oh, how reassuring. how reassuring to know that you’re not actively helping out by donating or getting involved or protesting or informing others or taking a stand, but you’re PRAYING. how helpful. simply talk to your god while people suffer, starve, get tyrannized.

This is just an excuse to sit on your lazy ass and do nothing. I’ll say it once again, if being religious means letting the weight of your actions and your future rest on anyone other than yourself, there is a problem.

End of rant. see ya in another frustrated state of mind.

girl on a bus from Toronto to New York

I could make this post all about how I got my butt on a bus to New York for Christmas and New Years Eve, and gush about how much in love I am with NYC, but I won't. I pity you, so I won't. It's pretty safe to say, though, that my lifelong prediction about NYC being the city of my dreams is true. And I know I'm definitely not the only one to think that, because this is the city where people come to pursue their dreams. I see no old people or little kids on the streets of Manhattan. Only young, dynamic, busy people. The fact that I am this one tiny person in a huge crowd, full of people rushing to work, to subways, to meet with other people in restaurants, cafes....It gives me this amazing sense of freedom. I can sometimes get the same feeling on a night in the streets of downtown Toronto, or Istanbul...but the feeling is constant in New York.

I could easily get addicted to this feeling.

But anyway, I decided NOT to make a gushing-about-NYC post, as all I've been doing is sight-seeing and frequenting the nearest Starbucks with my laptop or book anyway. By the way, did you know that New Yorkers HATE Times Square? Once you get past all the lights and displays, I guess it kind of starts getting old (and filled with loud tourists) for a local. I could never imagine it getting old, though. I keep wishing I had a better camera to capture all the beauty here.

My New Years resolution is to work as hard as Lindsay Lohan's lawyers. And find a way not to spend so much money....this will prove to be challenging.

I'm getting a lot of reading done over the break, which is nice. The man who also frequents my nearest Starbucks here has struck up a conversation with me after I loudly shrieked while reading a particularly intense chapter of Hunger Games (the first book of the fantastic trilogy by Suzanne Collins, which I was embarrassed to find in the 'Young Adults' section..I guess I'll never stop being or reading chick lit?). I have since moved on to and finished the second book of the trilogy, Catching Fire, which was good too. But anyway, the man at Starbucks was asking me if I was a student here and when informed that I'm a girl from Istanbul studying journalism in Toronto and on a break in New York, he claimed I was 'exotic'! Having been born and lived all his life in Queens, I guess it doesn't take much to deem another to be exotic, but I had to snort at that. I don't consider my foreign-ness as exotic at all, merely something that's always at the back of my head and making me feel not at home. It's not necessarily a bad feeling, not feeling at home. It can sometimes be nice and liberating.

I like being away from home. And by home, I mean Istanbul. I'm going back in May...It's a scary thought. Imagine having to dodge 4234234,4532 questions about your weight having gone up.

That's what the experience of being back home is. Every time.