⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ If you‘re up for a feel-good love story, this is not a bad pick. Many history buffs already know how the story will turn out and who she‘s gonna end up with, but its development is still worth following until the last page. #bookstagram #bookreview

⭐️⭐️ A friend encouraged me to take the Love Language Test. Being the bookworm that I am, instead of taking the test, I bought the book. I shoulda just taken the test. Not for me. #bookstagram #bookreview

We are the memories we don‘t remember, which live in us, which we feel, which make us sing and dance and pray the way we do, feelings from memories that flare and bloom unexpectedly in our lives like blood through a blanket from a wound made by a bullet fired by a man shooting us in the back for our hair, for our heads, for a bounty, or just to get rid of us.

I suspect this will only be appreciated by true Potterheads like myself, and if oblivious muggles will start with Fantastic Beasts before the Harry Potter series, I don‘t think it‘ll be a hit. I‘m also presently ignoring the backlash on the alleged “Accio Niffler” and McGonagall timeline errors and keeping my final say until I‘m done with the whole FB run. “Pick” for now because the first and second instalments together has been a nail-biter.

NEWT: I got this—I mean, it‘s just a picture of you from the paper, but it‘s interesting because your eyes in newsprint... See, in reality they have this effect in them, Tina... It‘s like fire in water, in dark water. I‘ve only ever seen that— (struggling) I‘ve only ever seen that in—

TINA (whispers): Salamanders?

Highly recommended! This book can easily make any woman weep and want to hold her children close and tight. Through the stories of the Rossignol sisters, it tells the many different ways women strived to survive, fight, protect their loved ones, dodge death, constantly live with danger, and cope from World War 2. My heart breaks for the countless lives affected by its atrocities.

It is not biology that defines fatherhood. It is love.

In love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.

It‘s a good book because of its relevance today. The subject matter it tackles is very serious and sensitive, but it was also peppered with humor whenever the book zooms in on Starr‘s interactions with her family. It is flawed though because the main character fights and speaks against racism, yet she herself manifests similar biases in reverse. Still, it‘s worth reading. The hype isn‘t way off.

“Brave doesn‘t mean you‘re not scared, Starr,” she says. “It means you go on even though you‘re scared. And you‘re doing that.”

Sometimes you can do everything right and things will go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.

My philosophy is that worrying means you suffer twice.—Newt Scamander

It‘s perverse and difficult to put down. Disputes from the family abound as I‘ve later read, but regardless, Tara Westover‘s survival from several traumatic events amidst a toxic environment is admirable, and I am in awe of her strength.

... We had been sculpted by a tradition given to us by others, a tradition of which we were either willfully or accidentally ignorant... We had lent our voices to a discourse whose sole purpose was to dehumanize and brutalize others—because nurturing that discourse was easier, because retaining power always feels like the way forward... Never again would I allow myself to be made a foot soldier in a conflict I did not understand.

...I stared into the mirror at the girl clutching her wrist... I hated her for her weakness, for having a heart to break. That he could hurt her, that anyone could hurt her like that, was inexcusable... This moment would define my memory of that night, and of the many nights like it, for a decade. In it I saw myself as unbreakable, as tender as stone.

High marks for the book‘s premise, but I‘m holding back on the narrative. It‘s a really beautiful and unique account of the lives of two Holocaust survivors who met and fell in love in the worst of all the concentration camps there was, but it could‘ve been written better. I don‘t know if this will be picked up by a studio for a movie as it was originally written as a screenplay, and if so, I hope the film will do justice to Lale and Gita‘s story.

It‘s the funny and tragic story of a socially awkward woman who was in the process of rebuilding her childhood memories as she serendipitously initiates new friendships and relationships. I definitely recommend this book!

Your voice changes when you‘re smiling, it alters the sound somehow.

Obscenity is the distinguishing hallmark of a sadly limited vocabulary.

Time only blunts the pain of loss. It doesn‘t erase it.

Moments later, I received a response: 🙂

Twenty-first-century communication. I fear for our nation‘s standards of literacy.

I find lateness exceptionally rude; it‘s so disrespectful, implying unambiguously that you consider yourself and your own time to be so much more valuable than the other person‘s.

I was also thinking that I might buy some more vodka, just a half bottle, to top up what remained. I yearned for that brief, sharp feeling I get when I drink it—a sad, burning feeling—and then, blissfully, no feelings at all.

Did men ever look in the mirror, I wondered, and find themselves wanting in deeply fundamental ways? When they opened a newspaper or watched a film, were they presented with nothing but exceptionally handsome young men, and did this make them feel intimidated, inferior, because they were not as young, not as handsome? Did they then read newspaper articles ridiculing those same handsome men if they gained weight or wore something unflattering?

You can‘t have too much dog in a book.

I learn that appearances can be deceptive and the dividing line between good and bad is very thin indeed... Drunkards in Hindi films are invariably funny characters. But drunkards in real life are not funny, they are frightening.

Muggles who insist that they see ghosts in perfect focus are either a) lying or b) wizards showing off—and in flagrant breach of the International Statute of Secrecy. 👻

A must-read for all Potterheads. 🧙🏻‍♀️

...heroism comes in all shapes, sizes and varieties—whether it‘s Remus Lupin giving his life to save the wizarding world or Silvanus Kettleburn hurling Flobberworms at Death Eaters from his attic. After all, you idon‘thave to be a sword-wielding Gryffindor to be a hero; sometimes, all it takes is having your heart in the right place.

It‘s not the best but it‘s ok.

...the world is billions of years old, and life is a product of nucleotide mutation and everything. But the world is also the stories we tell about it.

You‘re both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. You‘re the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You‘re the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody‘s something, but you are also your you.

No one ever says goodbye unless they want to see you again.

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” — William James

“My dad‘s a big history nerd.” Right then her phone started ringing. “Holy shit. I just conjured him.” 😆

Riveting in a creepy sort of way.

If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained.

It isn‘t a love story, as frequently advertised. It is the story of an unfortunate girl who grew up to become an independent and resilient woman. The romance with Mr. Rochester is just a thrilling perk. I am only sorry I never read it until now.

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or to be registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world.

To this crib I always took my doll; human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image... It puzzles me now to remember with that absurd sincerity I doted on this little toy, half fancying it alive and capable of sensation... and when it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it to be happy likewise.

The book is about the story of a Korean family‘s four generations‘ rise from poverty during the depression to abundance in a hostile Japanese society. It sheds light on immigrants‘ struggles in wrestling with their cultural crisis as their ethnicity and their community seem to clash. Pick!

Whoa.

“No normal man would want another man‘s child unless he was an angel or a fool,” her mother said.

He didn‘t seem like a fool.

Gripping and heart-breaking.

“I am haunted by humans.” - Death

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfMsZrrQ5Vo&feature=share The final trailer is out! Kowalski‘s back. Credence is alive. And Nagini was a witch! ***Mind blown*** #thecrimesofgrindelwald

***A DEFINITION NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY***
Not Leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children