Favourite Male Character // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 15

Today is the fifteenth day of the 30-day book challenge, in which I will be writing about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, with each book chosen according to the daily prompt. Today's prompt is: "favourite male character".

I know that I have complained about these challenges being difficult every day since I started (almost as if they were meant to be challenging or something), but I genuinely think this is the hardest prompt I've attempted so far. I tend to read more books by and/or about women than those which have male authors or protagonists, so I had somewhat fewer options to choose from than I will for tomorrow's prompt, "favourite female character". That said, I think I have finally settled on a character I am happy to select for this challenge. He might not be my all-time favourite male character, although I'm not sure who would be, but I think he is worthy of having a post dedicated to him all the same. The character I have chosen is Mercutio, from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

While I'm sure most of you reading are familiar with at least the basics of Romeo and Juliet's plot, you may not be familiar with how Mercutio fits into things. As you are probably aware, the story of Romeo and Juliet focuses on two teenagers who fall in love despite coming from two warring families, the Montagues and the Capulets. Mercutio appears as one of Romeo's two best friends, along with his boyfriend the significantly less-memorable Benvolio.

To me, Mercutio is without a doubt the best character in Romeo and Juliet. He's at times moody and rude, at others fun and jovial, but he's always witty and humorous, sometimes inappropriately so. This is the person who, while dying from a stab wound, took the opportunity to make a pun about being a "grave man", after all.

Mercutio has little patience with Romeo's pining or the Montague/Capulet feud, and he's often found winding his friends up with his sassy but facetious comments. However, he also has a short temper, one which ultimately leads to his death.

Mercutio brings some much-needed levity and wit to Romeo and Juliet, and his charisma and theatricality remains iconic whether he is acting grumpy or funny. It's no wonder that many of the actors who've portrayed him appear to be having such fun with his character, like Harold Perrineau in the scene below, from Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet.

More than being a great character in his own right, Mercutio represents for me some of my favourite and yet most frequently side-lined aspects of Shakespeare's plays: their wit, their humour, and their infectious, campy theatricality.

Book Turned Movie and Completely Desecrated // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 14

Today is the twelfth day of the 30-day book challenge, in which I will be writing about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, with each book chosen according to the daily prompt. Today's prompt is: "a book turned movie and completely desecrated".

Quick note: I would like to apologise for the rather large delay between this post and the previous one. I've been feeling unwell recently and had to take a break from the challenge, but hopefully from this point onwards I will be able to get back on track. Now let's get on to the post.

This prompt is somewhat difficult for me. Although I've read more than enough books that have been turned into movies, I often end up avoiding the film adaptations of them out of fear of them being, as this prompt phrased it, "completely desecrated". The problem is so bad that even when I read a book for the sole purpose of seeing the movie (because everyone knows you should always aspire to read the book first), I often end up not seeing the movie afterwards, or at least seeing it much later than I had intended. Then, those few that I do end up seeing after reading the book are those that have been recommended to me on their own merits as films, so they tend to be fairly decent. All this to say, I was fairly stumped for an answer to today's challenge.

So, I decided to cheat. The film I've chosen for this post's prompt is not based on one specific book, but rather what might be defined as a broad genre of literature: Greek mythology.

While Greek mythology itself does not have one specific text, I am going to focus on one specific adaptation of its stories in this post, the 2010 film Clash of the Titans.

Before I get into what I dislike about this film, let me give you a quick summary. Clash of the Titans is an action-adventure film that stars Sam Worthington as Perseus, a demigod adopted by humans who is drawn into a huge conflict that pits gods against humans. Apparently it's loosely based on a film of the same name that was released some 30 years prior, but I know nothing about that one and thus will conveniently ignore its existence.

Now, let's get into my issues with this film. First of all, it's just not very good. It's hardly the only bad film in the world, but it doesn't even have the decency to be amusingly bad. Mostly, it's just boring. Its poor quality is even more offensive given the source material. There's a reason Greek mythology has had a massive influence on popular culture, and why people still enjoy reading about it today; it has some brilliant stories. The fact that Clash of the Titans is based on these stories gives it an advantage from the start, but it somehow manages to bring these legendary tales down to the level of the rest of the film - which is to say, quite low.

As a whole, the film is basically your typical action-adventure young-man-goes-on-a-quest tale, just with the allure of Greek mythological references thrown over the top. It's a jumble of sepia tones, eyeliner, and muddled accents, in which neither the actors nor the characters ever seem to know what they're trying to achieve. Many choices in the film are questionable, but they could be redeemed if it was steered in the direction of something fun and pantomime-like. Instead, it simultaneously acts over-the-top and takes itself too seriously. The result is awkward and decidedly not entertaining to watch.

So, we shall move on to my issues with the way this film has adapted the mythology it's based upon, but first, a couple of disclaimers. I am not an expert on mythology; I'm just someone who has enjoyed reading about Greek myths and legends for a long time, and I have some strong feelings about them. I also don't think it's impossible to do a good Greek mythology film - Disney's Hercules and the classic 1963 version of Jason and the Argonauts are both films that I adore, for example. The reason I chose Clash of the Titans to write about is it hits several of the points that I see recurring in movies based on mythology, so a lot of the criticisms I make of this film can be applied to other adaptations of Greek myth as well.

The first problem I have with Clash of the Titans concerns the scope of the plot. Most Greek myths do not, typically, deal with world-altering conflicts. They might involve some heroes, some monsters, maybe a god or two, but they don't generally involve something on the level of, for example, an all-out war between humans and the Olympian pantheon (as Clash of the Titans does). Greek mythology is not one story, but rather a collection of interconnected ones - the trouble is that often filmmakers bite off more than they can chew and attempt to incorporate every little myth into one single film, with the result being a messy and contrived plot.

This brings me to the second thing that bothers me about this movie. It tries to cram too many mythological references into the plot, in a way that is perhaps meant to appeal to mythology nerds but just ends up seeming (like so much of the film) a bit messy. On top of a plot that bundles as many elements of the Perseus mythology together as it can (Medusa, Pegasus, Andromeda, etc.), we are also given random additions such as Io, who appears in this film not as a cow as she normally does in mythology, but as some kind of immortal-oracle-slash-love-interest. We get random allusions to the Hydra and Nemean lion, plus single-scene appearances of creatures that appear to be a cross between the Furies and harpies, as well as.... djinn?

If you're thinking, "hold on a minute, djinn are from Islamic mythology, not Greek", then you're not going to like what I have to say next. My third gripe with the film is that its main draw, the origin of its most iconic line ("Release the kraken!") completely clashes with the rest of the story. Now, I know that there is no one conclusive canon of Greek mythology, and anyone who wants to create media based on it needs to make decisions as to which versions of the stories they're going to follow. I know this. But. The. Kraken. Is. Not. Greek. It is Norse. It's entirely the wrong mythology, and furthermore it doesn't even look like the Norse description of the kraken, which is usually something along the lines of a giant squid rather than whatever Cloverfield knock-off we ended up with here. Why the filmmakers decided to include this bastardised kraken instead of any of the plethora of Greek monsters that would have worked just as well - or even, you know, the monster Cetus that exists in the original story - is beyond me.

Lastly, there is one issue in Clash of the Titans which is a real pet peeve of mine when it comes to adaptation of Greek mythology: the depiction of Hades. I wrote a piece some time ago about why this seems to happen so often, and why it annoys me so much. My theory was that since our Christianity-centric society has become so used to the idea of a benevolent, monotheistic god opposed by the unambiguously evil Satan, depictions of gods as flawed, complex characters who are not wholly good or bad is sometimes difficult for people work with. The result is that we get characters like Zeus and Hades repeatedly flattened into the roles of Good God and Bad Demon, with little room left for the nuance that made their characters so fascinating in the myths.

Granted, the version of Zeus depicted in Clash of the Titans is not entirely good. He's arrogant, vengeful, and also rapes a woman to get revenge on her husband. So yes, not exactly your typical good guy. Still, he ends up presented as the good deity in contrast to the villain, his brother Hades.

The depiction of Hades in Clash of the Titans is a travesty that even the great Ralph Fiennes couldn't salvage. This Hades is unambiguously the Bad Guy. He hates humans and the other gods for the vague reason that Zeus once betrayed him, and his grand plan in the film is to pit the two groups against one another as a way for him to eventually get his own back on Zeus. He swirls around in clouds of black hostility, popping up uninvited at events looking like a hungover Tim Minchin doing his best Maleficent impression. It's not enough that the filmmakers had to make Hades - who, I would argue, is actually one of the least problematic members of the Greek pantheon - into a villain; they didn't even have the decency to make him into good one.

Now, I know that Greek myths (and perhaps mythology in general) are not easy to adapt for the screen, but nor is it impossible. My issue is that so many of the things that make Greek mythology special - the interconnected stories, their absurdity, the deeply flawed characters - are too often diluted in favour of creating generic, family-friendly popcorn films, of which Clash of the Titans is one of the worst examples.

My Favourite Writer // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 13

Today is the thirteenth day of the 30-day book challenge, in which I will be writing about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, with each book chosen according to the daily prompt. Today's prompt is: "your favourite writer".

As some of you may or may not have noticed, I've fallen a little behind in my blog posting during this challenge. I would like to say that this is due to me going out every night and living it up in the city, but in reality it's due to a combination of laziness and forgetfulness. 

Today's post is meant to focus on "your favourite writer", and as said writer is a historical figure I worship as something akin to a deity, I would hate to dishonour her legacy by writing a post about her that was even more mediocre than my usual content simply because I was rushing. However, I still want to get this post up on time. So as a compromise, I have decided that this post will be a collection of quotes by said writer, which I hope will let their brilliance speak for themselves.

With all that out of the way, I would like to present to you my favourite writer of all time: Virginia Woolf.

13 Quotes by Virginia Woolf 

1. “Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."

2.  “No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.” 

3. “Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.”

4. “Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently.” 

5. “When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing.” 

6. “How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.”

 7. “I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.” 

8. “She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.” 

9. “But nothing is so strange when one is in love (and what was this except being in love?) as the complete indifference of other people.” 

10. "Then I may tell you that the very next words I read were these – ‘Chloe liked Olivia …’ Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women."

11. “Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy.” 

 12. “I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” 

 13. “When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?”

A Book I Love But Hate at the Same Time // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 12

Today is the twelfth day of the 30-day book challenge, in which I will be writing about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, with each book chosen according to the daily prompt. Today's prompt is: "a book you love but hate at the same time".

What a beautiful day to publish a blog post. A completely on-time blog post, going up exactly when it was supposed to. Not late in the slightest...

Anyway, let's move swiftly on.

The prompt for today's post is "a book you love but hate at the same time". I've known for a few days what book I was going to choose for this challenge, and my feelings are complex and ambivalent enough that I didn't want to rush a post about it just for the sake of meeting a self-imposed deadline - which is why this post is going up late (yes, I admit it). Hopefully, once you read this post, you will understand my hesitation.

So! The book I have selected for this emotionally-complex prompt is A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.

WARNING: this post will contain spoilers for A Little Life, including the ending.

My feelings about A Little Life have several layers, naturally, so let's start with the positive. It's been a couple of years since I read it, but when I first read A Little Life, I thought it was a brilliant book. It was well-written, I felt invested in the characters, and it was absolutely emotionally devastating.

This last point is arguably the most important. When the hype surrounding A Little Life was at its peak, discussing the book with other readers felt like commiserating over some shared tragedy that we'd all experienced. Apart from the few people who just didn't like the book, everyone I spoke to who'd read it had been deeply affected by the story, mostly in that it made them cry. I was no exception to this - I finished the book feeling like I'd been punched in the chest, and the "book hangover" it gave me lasted longer than most other novels I'd read that year.

For the most part, I'd say that a book having the power to impact people emotionally in such a strong way is a good thing. In fact, it's one of the biggest reasons I love A Little Life. It's also one of the main reasons I hate it.

In order to explain what I hate about A Little Life, I'm going to need to spoil it, in vague terms at least. So if that is something you'd rather avoid, I suggest you don't read any further.

But first, a Goodreads summary of the plot:

When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.

If you think this doesn't sound like an especially happy read, you'd be right. While there are moments of success, love, and hope for a positive future, it all comes crashing down before the book finishes its final page. Without getting too specific, I will say that the ending is decidedly unhappy.

Things are particularly tragic for Jude, a character who has gone through more trauma than I've ever known a fictional person to experience. Physical injury, childhood abuse of every type, intimate partner violence, mental illness, and eventually even the loss of the people he loves most in the world. If you thought J. K. Rowling or George R. R. Martin had it in for your favourite characters, you clearly haven't seen the things Hanya Yanagihara put Jude through.

Although seeing this sequence of events take place over the course of the novel, half happening chronologically and the other appearing in flashbacks, can be distressing at times, it's also a testament to the quality of the book that they come across as effective rather than melodramatic. So fundamentally, I wouldn't have much of a problem with this aspect of the book if it weren't for one crucial detail: Jude is gay.

To be more accurate, we are led to believe Jude is gay. If I remember correctly, his sexuality is treated with a certain amount of ambiguity in the novel, which is made all the more complex by the fact that he was sexually abused by men as a child. Throughout the book, he only has relationships with men. In that respect, he seems like a typical gay man. He is also a typical gay character in the sense that he serves as the author's pitiable punching bag for the majority of the story.

This is my main issue with the book, the LGBT+ representation in it. As I said before, the various qualities of A Little Life are hard to separate from one another. Similarly, the fact that A Little Life has been critically and commercially acclaimed cannot be separated from the gayness at the centre of it. In one review, the book was even dubbed "The Great Gay Novel" - despite the fact that its author is straight. Likewise, the same reviewer argued that even the very genre-mixing of the book is queer, writing that Yanagihara, "engages with aesthetic modes long coded as queer: melodrama, sentimental fiction, grand opera."

I wouldn't argue with the points of the above writer, but I would add that A Little Life also plays into the classic queer trope of making its gay characters suffer. Although perhaps to say that this trope is "queer" is a bit inaccurate, since it's usually straight people who like to employ it. They are even encouraged to do so, as critics love nothing more than praising the depiction of a gay person by a straight one, especially if that gay suffers tragically. If you don't believe that this is a thing, just take a look at the Bury Your Gays article on TV Tropes. I'm sure you'll find more than enough examples there.

Now, bear in mind that I was well-aware - one might say painfully so - of this kind of issue within LGBT+ representation when I got to the end of A Little Life. So when I read the absolutely, irrevocably sad conclusion to the story, I had the following thoughts, in this order: "that's so sad", "why?", and "of course".

The sadness speaks for itself. The "why?" was because I wanted to know what message the author was trying to put across. That we live tragic lives and then we die? That we can never overcome the pain we experience early in life? Then, the "of course" emerged. Because of course, the main queer character, having endured suffering from a young age, would have his life end the same way it had begun. Of course, a straight author would only choose to put a gay man at the centre of her story if it fit into a larger narrative of pain and trauma. Of course, this same straight author would be supremely successful and nominated for numerous awards for publishing what could most ungenerously be referred to as torture porn.

In discussing this book with a friend, I was asked if Jude suffers in the book because he is gay, or if his suffering is separate from his gayness. The answer is neither one nor the other. His suffering is not explicitly connected to his being gay - he is not subject to homophobic violence nor does he contract an illness typically associated with being gay, like AIDS) - but nor is it separate. It can't be separate. Even if Yanagihara truly believes she was writing Jude just as she would write a straight character, her depiction of him was always going to be informed (consciously or otherwise) by our media and our society's perception of gay people. I want to know, what came first: her decision to make Jude gay, or her decision to make him suffer? And what made her think those two things would go so well together?

Now, despite what some people may think, my intent in writing this is not to say that straight people cannot write queer characters. Nor is it to denigrate Yanagihara, who ultimately did write a book that touched many people. Yet if it is reasonable to criticise a book as being unoriginal, it is reasonable for me to label Yanagihara's depiction of her queer characters as such. I am also within my rights to question why it was yet another depiction of gay suffering that was so acclaimed by straight audiences, particularly if it is so cliched.

As I said, my sentiment when finishing the book was in large part one of resignation, because as a queer person I have learned never to expect a happy ending for people like me. The conclusion of A Little Life did not surprise me, but it did disappoint me. I do know better than to hope that straight people will give me a happy ending; yet I still can't help but wonder why they so enjoy taking it away.

***

Note: I didn't have the chance to mention it in the body of this post, but Brandon Taylor at Lithub and Michelle Hart at Bookriot wrote far better essays on this subject than I could hope to produce. If you care at all about the issue of queer representation and how it applies to A Little Life, I highly recommend you read those as well as or even instead of this post.

A Book I Hated // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 11

Today is the eleventh day of the 30-day book challenge, in which I will be writing about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, with each book chosen according to the daily prompt. Today's prompt is: "a book you hated".

This post might be considered cheating.

I'm not saying that I have consciously decided to cheat in writing it, but I feel that it could be seen in that light. The reason for this is that I have actually already written about the book I have chosen for today's prompt, in a rather passionate review I uploaded a little after I read it for the first time back in July 2019.

However, the fact that this book was the first to come to mind when I saw today's challenge, despite the fact that I read it over half a year ago, shows how deeply-embedded my hatred for this book has become, and thus how much it deserves its spot in today's blog post.

In case you haven't guessed by now, the book to which I am referring is none other than American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.

I'm not going to give you the usual Goodreads summary for this one, because I think American Psycho's plot can be summed up in fewer words than that. In short, the book is about an insufferable New York yuppie who moonlights as an increasingly-unhinged serial killer (and torturer, and rapist, and animal abuser, and necrophile...).

Given that I already wrote about American Psycho in detail in the aforementioned book review, I'm going to keep this post a bit simpler. If you want to read more of my thoughts on the book after this, I recommend having a look at that review. In the meantime, I would like to present to you:

10 Things I Hate About American Psycho

1. It's gross (TW: description of an especially graphic scene)

Did I ask for a scene that describes, in horrific detail, a woman being eaten from the inside out by a starving, live rat, which was forced inside her by the main character? No. Have I gained anything from this experience? No. No, I have not.

2. It's boring

You would think such a sensational book, even if it were otherwise terrible, would at least keep you reading through a sort of morbid fascination, right? Well, you would be wrong. Ellis's knack for producing boredom significantly outpaces his talent for shock, it would seem.

3. It's repetitive

Possibly the main culprit of its boringness, the book repeats the same events again and again ad nauseum: yuppy business, murder, rape, general violence, random interlude about music or physical objects, repeat. On and on and on.

4. It's too long

Almost 400 pages. There's no reason on this earth why this book had to be that long.

5. It's creepy

So this is something I just learnt about today, but apparently one of the characters in the book was originally created by Ellis's author friend, who in turn based this character on his ex-girlfriend. That wouldn't be so bad, perhaps, if it weren't for the fact that this character more or less solely exists in the novel to be physically abused and slut-shamed by Bateman and his social circle, respectively. Creepy.

6. It's got too much hate crime in it

Yes, yes, I am very familiar with the argument that Ellis wasn't actually advocating for hate crime or whatever and it was all just satire etc., etc., but really. How much violence do we need to see directed towards marginalised communities before it stops making a statement and starts becoming trauma porn? 

7. It's misogynistic

Even putting aside the supposedly satirical, repeated violence against women in this novel, am I really meant to defend a novel in which every woman is nothing more than a flat character there to be insulted or abused by the men in the book?

8. It's overrated

Perhaps this one means I'm cheating again, having already written about an overrated book only a few days ago, but I stand by this. I don't think that I would hate American Psycho nearly as much if it wasn't so acclaimed, after all. God knows what everyone sees in it.

9. It's nothing new

Book by a privileged white man, about privileged white men? Check. Gratuitous violence against marginalised people? Check. Surface-level critique of American consumerism (e.g. "money can't make you happy")? Check. Stick all of the above in a hardback and label it "satire" in an attempt to stop anyone from being able to criticise you? Check check. It's nothing that hasn't been done before, or better.

10. It hasn't got enough redeeming qualities to make up for any of the above

Perhaps I could forgive numbers 1-9 if the novel had something - anything - to offer as recompense for enduring these 400 pages of mind-numbingly boring and disturbing violence. Sadly, it does not.

***

I think hate is a rather strong word and not one I'd often use to describe my feelings about a piece of media. I'd even hesitate to use it for American Psycho, but then I clearly feel strongly enough about it that perhaps that term would most accurately describe my sentiments.

Also, I have the comments turned on for this post, so I would like to say that while I welcome people giving me their opinions on this book, even if they are in contrast to my own, please do not do as one man on twitter did and pop up just to tell me that "it's satire". I am well aware it was intended as such, so please find something more useful to say if you feel the need to say anything at all.

My Top 5 Albums of 2019

Just as I did last week, I'm taking this weekend off from the 30-day book challenge, as I feel I need the time to rest and get a head start on the posts for next week. However, I still wanted to write a little something less demanding for this blog today.

So as a break from the more serious, book-related posts, today we're going to do something completely different: a list of my favourite musical albums released in 2019. Although I've posted plenty of lists on blogs before, I don't normally write much about music, as I feel it's not a topic I know much about - unless of course I'm feeling angry about Taylor Swift, which prompted me to write my last music-based list post. So this post will just be my favourite albums of the last decade, not necessarily the ones I think are objectively the best (if there even is such a thing). It's also a bit late in the month to be doing an annual roundup, but ignore that. As someone once famously said, it's my blog and I'll post what I want to.

Now, let's get into the list. I've put these in ascending order, so number one is my ultimate favourite album of the year.

Top 5 Albums of 2019

5. Clarity - Kim Petras

I mentioned Kim Petras briefly in my aforementioned previous music post, and I stand by my cringy-but-true statement that "she makes absolute bops". There are plenty of fun, danceable tracks on this album, as you would expect from such a reliably catchy artist, like "Clarity" and "Got My Number". On the other hand, songs like "Icy" and "Personal Hell" look at the emotional vulnerability that can exist underneath a cool façade. Come for the infectious rhythms, stay for the feelings.

Favourite song: "Personal Hell"

4. Cuz I Love You - Lizzo

This album contains several of Lizzo's recent hits, including "Juice" and "Truth Hurts" - both memorable tracks, beloved for their messages of self-love and positivity. Yet songs like "Crybaby" and "Exactly How I Feel (ft. Gucci Mane)" don't shy away from the fact that even Lizzo has her bad days. Still, she always comes back to her signature theme of acceptance and confidence, making this one of my favourite feel-good albums. 

Favourite song: "Jerome"

3. Love + Fear  - MARINA

Love + Fear marks MARINA's return to music after a three year hiatus that started in 2016, after the release of her last album Froot. She might be performing under a different name now (the artist was previously known as Marina and the Diamonds), and the scope of her music has at times broadened to include the whole of humanity (as in "To Be Human"), but her music is as unique and deeply-felt as ever.

Favourite song: "You"

2. Norman Fucking Rockwell! - Lana Del Rey

This has been one of Lana Del Rey's most critically-acclaimed albums to date, and for good reason. It's got the classic glamour-coated melancholy we know and love, this time presented in a little over an hour's worth of musically-gorgeous songs with some truly brilliant lyrics.

Favourite song: "Fuck it I love you"

1. Dedicated - Carly Rae Jepsen

If the only Carly Rae Jepsen song you know of is still "Call Me Maybe", you need to catch up. Since the release of her album Emotion in 2015, she's been consistently putting out songs that perfectly mix contemporary and retro pop into a combination that I honestly believe marks the zenith of modern music. I thought Emotion couldn't possibly be topped, but Dedicated proved me wrong.

Favourite song: "Want You in My Room"

So, those were my favourite albums of 2019. There are two conclusions to be drawn from this exercise: 1. Even if 2019 was not a good year for the general state of the world, it was great for music; and 2. I love pop music. If you'd like to listen to these albums for yourself, an easy way to do so is to listen to the Spotify playlist I created that contains all five of them in one easy-to-listen-to collection. See the bottom of this post for the link.

Finally, If anyone reading this wants to share their favourite album(s) of 2019 with me, I'd be very interested to hear them. You can let me know either by commenting here or by messaging me directly, as I know most of you who read this have a way of getting in touch with me personally. 

Have a good weekend, everyone!

A Book That Reminds Me of Home // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 10

Today is the tenth day of the 30-day book challenge, in which I will be writing about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, with each book chosen according to the daily prompt. Today's prompt is: "a book that reminds you of home".

I feel that I've shot myself in the foot a bit here in terms of blog post topics.

As you can see from the intro above, today's challenge is "a book that reminds you of home". In order to choose a book for this prompt, I decided to reflect a little on what "home" means to me. After a bit of thought, I decided that home for me means where my family is. Unfortunately, I've already talked about my family, in my blog post about My Family and Other Animals. Clearly, I did not think this through.

I say all that to say, if this post seems slightly repetitive or similar to Day 8 of this blog challenge, please forgive me. It's been a long week.

Now, without any more excuses, here is my choice for today's challenge: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

The Harry Potter books have been a significant part of my family's life since the first book came out, when it was initially only my mum and my brother who read the books. As the years went by, most of us began to get hooked on the series as well. At the same time, we all kept up with the release of the new films, religiously going to see each one at the cinema when it came out. Several of us even bought copies of The Cursed Child simultaneously when that (awful) script was published. For many years, it was possibly second only to Star Trek in terms of the media which we were most unanimously fans of.

In part because of its association with my family and my childhood, the Harry Potter books and films have long been a source of comfort and nostalgia for me. This isn't solely owed to my family, however. Part of the reason the HP world is so reassuringly familiar is due to the stories itself, which I know so well by now that coming back to these stories is, in some ways, like returning to a family home. I know the place, the people, the history of what has happened here, and I supposedly know what to expect when I revisit it. Supposedly.

There is a saying, that you can't go home again. It's like that quote about how no man steps in the same river twice, as by the time he takes another step both he and the river are changed. Home is much the same. As fondly as we might remember it from our childhood, when we return to it older and wiser, it may be difficult to see in the same light. I find that this has very much happened to me with the Harry Potter series, and it is primarily due to one person: J. K. Rowling herself.

To be completely frank, I was initially hesitant about writing this post. There has been a lot of controversy surrounding Rowling lately, to the point that many people (myself included) became wary of giving any more support - financial or otherwise - to the Harry Potter franchise.

If you are unaware of what's been going on with J. K. Rowling, basically it's this: she's a transphobe. If you want more detail than that, Aja Romano and Katlyn Burns have both written excellent articles on the subject, explaining what happened and why people are angry. Romano's article particularly focuses on the timeline of Rowling's self-embarrassment and the response of HP fans to it, while Burns' piece puts Rowling's transphobia in the broader context of rising TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) ideology in the UK. I would recommend reading both if you have the time.

While this recent event was definitely the most egregious of Rowling's gaffes, it was by no means the first. There has been suspicion building over her possibly being transphobic for a while now, as the articles mentioned above explain. On top of that, people have been critical of Rowling for a number of other reasons, from her endless retconning of the source material (in case you haven't kept up, Dumbledore is gay and also wizards and witches used to soil themselves in public) to racism that apparently cropped up in the original books, Pottermore, and the new films. For the HP fandom, Rowling has become increasingly like an out-of-touch old relative who either doesn't know or doesn't care how offensive they keep being. In Rowling's case, I imagine it's a bit of both.

Now, I don't have the time nor the inclination to get into a debate over "separating the art from the artist" and whether or not we can continue to love Harry Potter while avoiding supporting a harmfully transphobic celebrity. I simply felt that I couldn't write this post without addressing the "Rowling issue". Yet in some ways, including this in a post about a book that reminds me of home makes perfect sense. Like I said earlier, returning to media that we loved as children isn't always easy. We see things with new eyes, and what we see isn't always as pure as we remembered. This is something that we all have to deal with in returning to those things we remember fondly, be they books, homes, or even people. Whether or not those things can continue to hold the same place in our heart afterwards is something only we can decide.

***

I would like to end this post by sharing a video on J. K. Rowling by one of my favourite YouTubers. Even if you're not sure how to approach the Harry Potter books in light of this controversy, one thing we can always do is support trans creators, like the incredibly talented Kat Blaque.