Graduation Season
episode 22: may showers & graduation
Welcome to Confessions of a Bookaholic! I send out a monthly newsletter that includes everything I read and watched in the past month! I hope you enjoy it and come back for more.
Spring and autumn, which make a paradise of our country, are rigorous winter with them... when we consider how much climate contributes to the happiness of our condition, by the fine sensations it excites, we have reason to value highly the accident of birth in such an one as that of Virginia
Thomas Jefferson
Hello dear bookaholics! ✨
I am extremely happy to announce that I have indeed obtained my graduate degree and fresh on the other side of a two year trek. Now with that behind me, I can happily put forth fresh effort to the research project I am leading as well as plan my big solo trip at the end of this month. Destination to be revealed at a future date, but it is a place that would not only make 8th grade me squeal with joy but also compliment my undergraduate honors thesis rather well….(hint to those who know what that paper was on!).
In other news, May also highlighted a visit to my 27th U.S. state - West Virginia. Instead of attending my graduation ceremony (an overrated experience now I’ve done my bachelor’s), I did a solo day trip to Harper’s Ferry, a 1800s historical site at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers. With scenic views of Maryland and Virginia, the town hosts a surprisingly well-maintained “historical district” with the original structures, including St. Peter’s Catholic Church, the only church in the town to survive the Civil War. The Appalachian trail also runs right through town, making it a perfect pitstop for hikers to catch some much needed rest. I could have easily made this long weekend trip, but greatly enjoyed being outside the city for a day. Nothing beats listening to the Lumineers on a country road to WV in the late spring!
On that note, here is some of my reads, listens, and watches over the last month. :)
FINISHED READS OF MAY ||
The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
On a hot day in 1960s Maine, six-year-old Joe watches his little sister Ruthie, sitting on her favourite rock at the edge of the blueberry fields, while their family, Mi’kmaq people from Nova Scotia, pick fruit. That afternoon, Ruthie vanishes without a trace. As the last person to see her, Joe will be forever haunted by grief, guilt, and the agony of imagining how his life could have been.
Authors Juniper Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena is a literary darling while June is a nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls?, June thinks. So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse, stealing Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.
But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.
What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.
Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both—now with an epilogue by Lucy Kalanithi.
Thirty years ago, in a facility buried beneath a vast Wyoming emptiness, an experiment gone awry accidentally opened a door. It is the world's best-kept secret-and its most terrifying. Trying to regain his life in the Alaskan wilds, ex-con/ex-cop Travis Chase stumbles upon an impossible scene: a crashed 747 passenger jet filled with the murdered dead, including the wife of the President of the United States.
Though a nightmare of monumental proportions, it pales before the terror to come, as Chase is dragged into a battle for the future that revolves around an amazing artifact. Allied with a beautiful covert operative whose life he saved, Chase must now play the role he's been destined for—a pawn of incomprehensible forces or humankind's final hope—as the race toward Apocalypse begins in earnest. Because something is loose in the world. And doomsday is not only possible...it is inevitable.
RECENT WATCHES FOR MAY||
Bridgerton (netflix)
For someone who loves her period pieces, it took me an incredibly LONG time to begin watching this show. Of course, there are a bunch of scenes I’ve been skipping (especially in that first season), but the series remains well-intact without all the sex. I will say — I am disappointed in Penelope as I thought she would be a favorite based on the Instagram reels I get (ugh that whole Season 2 fiasco!)….
Lincoln Lawyer (netflix)
I started this months ago, and never got around to finishing it. I returned to it recently as I watched season 3 with my parents over a holiday break. It is a very good series, although I have not read the books by Michael Connelly.
Young Sheldon (netflix)
Oh man, this is another series that has all been in my feed as of late! I binged the first two seasons while dog-sitting a few weekends ago.
FAVORITE LISTENS FOR MAY //
the great divide: the last of the bugs
hoopla
raincheck ft. quinn xcii
soulstrings
atlas: shape
CURRENT READS ||
Below are some books I am currently reading! Of course, they are not comprehensive as I have been adding on as time goes or I (very often) forget to record until when I finish the book; in either way, this might be a benefit of adding me on Goodreads or on Fable (@emily ann) if to see my full list of current/completed reads!
A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna
“Theirs was a friendship built on the unspoken, shared understanding that you can love the home you’ve made with the whole of your heart and still know the land it’s built on will never claim you.”
“There is always a little magic in the heart of a person who loves it.”
“There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extrovert.”
“For seven hundred years, my people have been enslaved without voice, without hope. Now I am their sword. And I do not forgive. I do not forget. So let him lead me onto his shuttle. Let him think he owns me. Let him welcome me into his house, so I might burn it down.”
An Echo of Things to Come by James Islington
“The true evil is always in the reason and the excuse, not the act. I was fooled. I was angry. I wasn’t thinking. I had to do it, else worse things would have happened. It didn’t hurt anyone. It hurt less people than it would have if I hadn’t. It was to protect myself. It was to protect others. It was in my nature. It was necessary. It was right. We have both been alive long enough to know that evil only wins when it spreads. It can cause destruction, it can cause death—but those are consequences of its nature, not its victory. Not its goal. The danger of evil, the purpose of evil, is that it causes those who would oppose it to become evil also. And that, my friend, is what happened to you.”
In Times Like These by Nathan Van Coop
“What happened, happened. You can never change the past. Not really. You can just choose to live in a time where things are different.”
“People say, 'Time heals all wounds.' That may be true, but relocating to an alternate reality can sure help too."
The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang
“People will seek to use you or destroy you. If you want to live, you must pick a side. So do not shirk from war, child. Do not flinch from suffering. When you hear screaming, run toward it.”
“If nothing lasted and the world did not exist, all that meant was that reality was not fixed. The illusion she lived in was fluid and mutable, and could be easily altered by someone willing to rewrite the script of reality.
final notes ||
coffee shops of the month: Epigram in Harper’s Ferry is an excellent choice for a local cafe! It is a direct walk up the hill from the lower town, but worth the trek (it is a trek if you are as out of shape as me haha!). They have the cutest little deck on the second floor where you can people watch and read like I did. Free water is also on hand if you are hot from all the hiking you might have done in the area. Honestly, their coffee is much much better than Battle Grounds Coffee and Bakery whose iced vanilla latte was just too sweet (sweet than Dunkin imo).
honorable mention: The Rabbit Hole is the cutest little tavern in Harper’s Ferry that is perfect for a midday meal in town. If it is nice outside, I’d recommend sitting outside to take in all the sights and people watch! I personally got the blue cheese burger which was delicious, and the ranch was satisfactory for this Midwestern gal.