Words of June || Wrap-up

I realized something recently: I used to be jealous of a couple of influencers' lives because they seemed to be doing so much and having fun. I spent a lot of time following the minute details of others' days and not focusing on mine enough. Well, not anymore. I forgot about them until I opened Instagram for something else recently. Turns out, I've been pretty busy living my life lately and thinking less about others'. It feels good 🙂

June has been another busy month of being present in my days and intentional with my time. Grab a drink and settle down on your couch, let's catch up 🧋

reading

June was a pretty great reading month. I read 10 books—6 paperbacks and 4 ebooks. I'm so happy to be back to reading paperbacks. Having a library with 2-week dues helps haha.

In a surprising turn of events, I read no romance and five classics. Technically 6 because I read two different translated versions of one of them. I'm not a big classics reader but I read a lot in June due to different reasons. It's been fun, actually.

I started the month by starting The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on a flight. A quote from it was featured in One Tree Hill and it hit so hard during this rewatch that I had to buy and read the book. I read it in random 5-minute breaks over a few days. It was cute and interesting and fun. I liked it.

Then, I picked up The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop by Takuya Asakura. It was a cover buy and I didn't expect too much from the story. It has short stories which feature different classic books and the first one was, coincidentally, The Little Prince. So I made it a mini-project and read other classics that it featured too. I don't think I would have enjoyed the book much if I hadn't done that. I wrote all about the mini-project reading experience in my full review.

The book introduced me to Ten Nights of Dreams by Natsume Sōseki which was the HIGHLIGHT of my month. I loved this series of short stories so much. I first read the freely available version on the Sōseki project website. Unfortunately, it doesn't have translator's notes or annotations so I felt like I missed a lot.

I researched and found another version which is supposedly the best translation so far. So, I read it again in Ten Nights Dreaming and The Cat's Grave by Natsume Sōseki translated by Matt Treyvaud. This was great. I understood a lot more. I still think I'm missing stuff. I made a handful of people read it and I had in-depth discussions over a few of the dreams with a group of reader friends. It will be one of my best books of the year. I wrote more about it in this post too.

I also read Peter Pan and Wendy by J. M. Barrie due to The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop. I only knew the movie version from watching it several years ago. It was interesting to read it as an adult. I understand why it is a fun children's story and I'm sure it would have been amazing as a play. Some parts have deeper meanings that, I believe, we understand only by reading it critically. Knowing the author's background adds layers to the story too. I liked it.

I joined a book club that was reading Jane Austen's works in June. Since many were discussing the works critically, it motivated me to pick up one too. I read P&P years ago and didn't want to revisit that. I have a friend's copy of Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen which I never planned on reading—my friend gave it to me with a few other classics when she moved—so I picked it up. I really enjoyed it. I read it pretty quickly too. It was interesting, witty, and humorous. Knowing that Austen was commenting on gothic literature of her time through this added to my reading experience. I loved it... until the last handful of pages. The ending was random, rushed, and not written well. A friend told me it's intentional but I don't get it. That last line, especially, made no sense to me.

On one Sunday, I took my mom to the library. I didn't plan on borrowing anything because I wanted to read other books that I own. However, it was her first time at the library and she loved it so much that she wanted to stay for a while. So, I picked up People on Platform 5 by Clare Pooley. We ended up staying for over 3 hours before she agreed to leave, lol. I had only about a 100 pages left so I took the book home and finished it that night. It was a heartwarming story. I loved Iona, the main character. I liked how the varied group of strangers became a tight knit group and supported each other. There were a couple of other characters who weren't given full focus but were important to the story. I think the author had to edit them out to make the book shorter and it showed. But overall, solid book. I want to read more by the author.

I finally picked up the latest book in the Timeless series. Into a Golden Era by Gabrielle Meyer follows a character who has dual lives—1849 San Francisco during the gold strike and in 1929 California during the Golden Age of Hollywood. I did not know much about the gold strike history of America so it was interesting. The author seems to be adding more and more time crossers for the last couple of books, making the story more elaborate, but I find that it's actually ruining the stories for me. There was a certain twist in this one which doesn't fit in with the story in hindsight. It didn't feel as well-thought out as the first 4 books. Apparently the series is extended and will have 3 more books. I hope they're good and don't become more messy.

Someone in the in-person book club highly raved about Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman and I found that it's on Kindle Unlimited so I picked it up. It was fun but I didn't love it. It's an interested concept and format. It's basically a written version of a video game with interesting characters (I'm talking about the talking cat, Her Royal Highness Princess Donut, of course). However, that's also my gripe—that's it's written like a video game. The writing was not done well, in my opinion. It was constantly go-go-go like video games, with no breaks or slow points. Information was given only when it's almost immediately relevant, otherwise it was very obvious that it was going to be useful later on. There was zero character growth. Whatever we get to know about the main characters in the initial couple of chapters is pretty much all we get throughout the book. It's a good story but I don't think it's a well-written novel. Someone commented on my monsoon TBR post that the story has more depth in the further books so I may give the second book a shot... after some time.

The last book of the month was White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I've had it for years and many friends have encouraged me to pick it up. Since I've been on a good classics streak, I finally did. I did not like it. I think I understand what it is about—loneliness, unrequited love, and the final question about a moment of happiness being enough for a lifetime—but I don't like the plot. I've seen enough of the things in real life and I didn't find anything "new" or different in it which sets it apart as a classic. A couple of things, like him describing his loneliness and the end part, were nice. On the other hand, a couple of things ticked me off in the beginning like red flags, specifically his dialogues. So yeah, I didn't like it. I don't get why it is so popular and loved.

I also read about 10% of யானை Doctor (aka elephant doctor) by Jeyamohan. I was good at working on my Tamizh reading for the first couple of weeks and then it fell off the bandwagon because I got busy with other things. Hopefully I will be able to make more progress on it in July.

blogging

I posted three times in June! That's more than the 1 time in May haha. Honestly, I didn't even think about blogging or writing for the first half of the month. I totally expected that I wouldn't post anything other than the wrap-up but I suddenly felt like writing in the last week and posted twice.

In case you missed it, here are my June posts:

• Words of May || Where did the month go?
• Top Ten Books On My Monsoon 2026 To-Read List
• The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop by Takuya Asakura || Book Review

Something I noted in stats: my review of Lovely Runner got the highest number of views (so far) in June. I'm pretty sure it's because people finished watching Perfect Crown Kdrama starring Byeon Woo-seok and wanted more of him.

Other than that, the blog's stats are pretty stable. It reduced a tiny bit from the past months but the average was 399 views per day. Mostly due to search engine traffic for old posts. I saw something about a search engine algorithm update which hit many blogs badly on Reddit but there wasn't much difference in my stats.

I'm still on an unplanned hiatus from my newsletter and I have no idea when/whether I'll return. Does the newsletter even matter anymore? I don't know.

media consumed

I spent most of the month rewatching One Tree Hill. I first watched it when I was in high school and rewatched it once or twice in school days itself. I still have songs that caught my attention from the first watch in my playlist but I didn't rewatch since I graduated high school. Until now.

One Tree Hill was added to Netflix recently, I believe. I got the recommendation on my Netflix one day and I gasped so loud! I immediately started watching it and I fell in love with it all over again. I'm annoyed with more things now than I remember of the old watches, however I still really like the characters. I have a newfound appreciation for some of the characters and some of the writing. Different songs are catching my attention this time. The songs that made it to my list all those years ago didn't, surprisingly.

I believe I watched all 9 seasons once and rewatched only upto season 6. I barely remember seasons 7-9. Well, this rewatch, I'm trying to go the whole way. I'm currently on season 8, so I've been watching a LOT. I'll admit, I'm not liking these seasons much because Lucas and Peyton meant so much and not having them is like having a huge hole in the heart of the story. Some of the writing is inconsistent and sloppy. I'm not a huge fan of the new characters too. I like Jamie and the remaining original cast, though. I'm speed-watching these seasons, with some skips whenever the characters I don't care about come on.

I didn't know about the behind-the-scenes issues like the creator being toxic and the working conditions. I'm looking up stuff now and following the Reddit, I'm finding out so many new things! I found out about the Drama Queens Podcast pretty late so I'm not rewatching with the behind-the-scenes commentary from the 3 main actresses. I may do another, slower, rewatch someday with it. I'm already missing the initial seasons. I hate that the actors went through so much pain during the filming but the fact that they were passionate about it and made such good media through it all? It's beautiful.

I convinced one of my friends to watch it when I started the rewatch and he loved it so much that he finished s6 when I was still in s2 or s3, lol. He's more up to date with behind-the-scenes info than I am. I love that there's another person who loves this show, I have someone to discuss it with.

Other than OTH, the only thing I watched was Voicemails for Isabelle, a movie on Netflix. I really liked it. The writing and the acting were done so well. I teared up a couple of times too. I loved the ending. It's a great rom-com.

music

My friend became obsessed with Olivia Rodrigo's new album and convinced me to listen to it. I wasn't planning to because her music hasn't been my thing so far. I'm loving a couple of songs this time, though. "stupid song" and "drop dead" are my favourites and I had a handful of song-on-repeat days with them both. I don't like the video of stupid song, though. The concept doesn't make sense to me and the powerful parts don't look powerful in this. She's crossing her arms and shrinking herself the whole time while singing a song about opening up and shouting to the world.

hobbies & social life

I'm proud to share that I was consistent with exercise throughout the month. I ran, went to the gym, and played badminton. Mostly because my #1 streak killer (period) did not show up which is another issue, but I'll take what I get. I'm more familiar with the gym now and a bit more confident. I tried a few new exercises. I did not set a routine yet, though. Maybe later.

I also went to the new book club I joined every weekend. It's hard to wake up early on Saturday mornings for it but it's fun and worth it. I hung out with some of the group a couple of times too. I'm slowly making friends there. The regulars know me now too and a few of them read books because I mentioned it and liked it—the highest form of validation haha.

There was a queer fest on one of the weekends too. I was unsure about going but I met up with a friend after a long time and we went together. It was pretty nice! I did not know how the queer scene is in this city and I was happy to find that it was not bad. I liked the energy in there.

There wasn't much time for any other hobbies in June. Honestly, working out takes so much time. The addition of gym shortens my work days so I end up working in the evenings at home, reducing time for other hobbies. I also had a lot of work which had me staying up late to work with people in American timezones.

I haven't been a fun hobbyist lately. I haven't been artsy or crafty much, other than the few pages I made in my Traveler's Notebook. Maybe I'll get time for it in July, we'll see.

chat with me!

How was your June? What did you read/watch? Did you do any fun social or hobby things?