12 Books Like The Hate U Give | elle.com

I recently published my very first article for elle.com. As a Young Adult reader/fan girl/enthusiast, I follow trends and enjoy anticipating new releases both from The New York Times Book Review, Goodreads, as well as from some of my favorite book bloggers. 

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YA Under Trump

Since Trump has taken office, close to two years ago now, our world, the world of the next generation has undergone changes that we, as a nation, had believed we’d already passed. In a nation pretty much developed from immigrants, Trump wasted no time in closing the US border to entrants from several nations, most being majority-Muslim nations in the midst of their own revolutions. White supremacy and issues of racism that we thought we have overcome have suddenly reemerged, no doubt having some correlation with the leader of our nation. Our youth, the next generation of entrepreneurs, engineers and supreme court justices are growing up in a time of change and societal unrest. And we are not the only ones affected or who care about this. I may not be a teenager, but I still read Young Adult books, but it is not how I remember it. YA as a genre has changed and is now a reflection of school shootings, racial inequality, gender inequality, sexual abuse, political corruption, internet privacy – everything that we have grown so accustomed to to the point that we look at it as the new norm in our nation. 

Teeny-Weeny Life Update + Coffee Book Tag

Dear fellow Babblers,

A moment of silence for books. Yes books.

I love books and I know that all y’all do too. If you don’t, why you’re reading or following my blog remains an enigma if ya ask me. I really have no reason to be writing this right now, given the fact that this is not supposed to be a discussion post but rather a tag. But we’ll get to the tag after a short babble on the magic of books. I’ve been having a number of personal issues lately that have been putting me in a teary eyed and upside down mood lately. Reading has been my escape and solace. It’s only during reading (and my long, excruciating morning runs, but lets not get into that) that I finally find hope and make a return to joy and the hopeful possibility that theres a whole world out there just waiting to be delved into. It’s really hard for me to deal with sadness and pain so I’ve been hiding out at home and reading from early morning into the late evening only leaving the house for doctors appointments, job interviews, and to throw out the trash. If it wasn’t for books I don’t know how I would cope. Lazlo Strange, Eliza Mirk, Lara Jean Song – all my favorite characters remind me that, despite everything, there’s still hope and maybe, just maybe, things will get better. I’m sure we’ve all had some pretty low lows and I know a lot of my readers know exactly what I’m talking about when I say books save lives, in the most literal sense of the word. That’s all for now. Let’s get to the real purpose of my rambles, the Coffee Book Tag. 

The Blogosphere? Indeed, the estrangosphere

Dear fellow Babblers,

Stop. Think. Observe. Where are you reading this babble? What are you doing? What are you wearing? What do you look like? What are you stopping from doing? What are you thinking about doing? What are you observing someone else doing? How do you see yourself? Now? Yesterday? Tomorrow? How do you perceive yourself? Loving? Fun? Pretty? Handsome? Fat? Thin?

Now allow us to enter the blogosphere…