Words of May || Where did the month go?

It looks like my goal to take blogging easy this year has tipped into remembering that this blog exists only once in a few weeks 🙃

Life has been pretty full and busy—with schedules, deadlines, and new anxieties. It's interesting how there are always things to take up your time such that you don't really get time to "relax". I considered starting this post in advance so that it doesn't seem like a daunting task only to forget about it until today.

Do I even remember how to blog anymore? Grab a drink and settle down, let's find out together ☕️

books

I read 5 books in May. This is quite less considering my usual reading average. However, it is actually more considering the month I had. All of them were ebooks. 2 were romance, 2 were historical fiction, and 1 was a literary fiction. There were no rereads (at least full rereads, I don't track partials).

After seeing so much praise from Naemi, I finally read In Memoriam by Alice Winn. It follows two boys who enlist as soldiers in WW1. It was as sad as I expected it to be. As expected, I became numb to the atrocities in the trenches and teared up over random lines because they hit so hard. I read the last 50% while travelling back home in a flight and I actually kinda cried in the flight. It's a good thing everyone around me was asleep. I was obsessed with Birds of a Feather by Billie Eilish at the same time so I was listening to it on repeat while reading this in the flight and the song was actually a great match for it. The meanings matched. It is a great book.

I decided to read another sad book and picked up The Night We Met by Abby Jimenez. This story is sad from the start and you know exactly the kind of heartache you'll get from the synopsis. I found it annoying and repetitive, as expected. It was achingly comforting towards the end when things started wrapping up. Overall, not a story that stands out.

Picked up Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan on a recommendation from a book talk event I went to. I was blown away by it. It's amazing the way the author packs so much meaning in 118 pages of simple narration. It's simple to read but nothing about it is straight-forward. I liked that the author trusts the reader to look beyond what's plainly written, to interpret different contexts and motivations, to understand what she wants to say without her explicitly saying it. It was refreshing to read considering the current trend in books is to over-explain everything. I look forward to reading Foster, which is supposed to be an even better book.

I was on a sad book train. I picked up My Friends by Fredrik Backman next. It's a good book but it is my least favourite Backman book so far. My main gripe with it is the overused (in my opinion) writing style of always ending happy memory narrations with a sad note which hints that a tragedy broke everyone, stringing the reader along until the end to find out what the tragedy was. In this case, the tragedies I imagined were much worse than what actually happened. The ending was far less sad than what the writing hinted at. I felt oddly let down despite getting a better ending. I wish there was more focus on art and "finding our people". I liked the childhood parts though, it drew me in and kept me captivated. It made me feel.

I got a free copy of Sing You Home by Ava Hunter via Catherine Cowles' newsletter so I gave it a shot. It sounded interesting. And you know what, it was actually pretty nice. It was different from almost all musician romances and it was refreshing to read. I liked that the main couple falls in love all over again. It was so cute. The danger aspect added an edge. I wasn't fond of the third act tension (too predictable) but at least it was fixed quickly. Nice book.

I made some progress on Nexus by Yuval Noah Harrari but it is slow going. I think this book is trying to recreate the wonder of Sapiens but the author is jumping around a few too many unrelated topics to make points clearly. Individually, I don't mind the tangents because they lead me to rabbit holes where I look up the history separately to know more about it. But the book is not about history, you know? I'll try to finish it soon and report back on overall thoughts.

I read the introduction of உள்ளத்தின் குரல் (Inner Voice) by Prem Rawat (the Tamil translated version), about 3.5 pages, to practice reading Tamizh. I didn't find any Tamizh originals in the library and this was the best of the 3 options. I returned it after the introduction though because I got other reading material, which I hope to read soon. I now have a new goal for 2026—to read a whole Tamizh book. Considering I'm still learning how to read entire words at once, it's an ambitious goal. Wish me luck haha.

blogging

Not much to say here since I haven't been writing anything. All I wrote in May was the April wrap-up. I haven't even been writing newsletters for the past two months because I was travelling both times. It feels a bit weird because blogging has been central to my identity for over a decade and that's the thing that others remember about me, if they know about my blogging. But I won't lie, I'm having a blast doing other stuff with my time and I'm not ready to be back yet. I have blog post ideas but I don't have the urge to write them yet. My goal to blog only when I want to is going well? Is this considered well? 😂

media consumed

Movies

• Watched Michael in theatres with friends. I was disappointed. I didn't know up with Michael Jackson so I needed the movie to really give me something to be engaged with beyond nostalgia and references. Unfortunately, it didn't. Most of it was performances which I didn't care for. I found the plot to be very surface level and full of holes. For example, they didn't show one of the brothers leaving the band rejoining. It felt like they picked a couple of most popular facts known about Michael and only showed that, like his passion for animals and issues with his dad. I came out knowing maybe one extra fact about Michael, and I went in knowing very less. The movie felt like fan service to me.
• Watched The Devil Wears Prada 2. I meant to watch this in the movies but I couldn't since I fell sick so I watched it on a streaming website. I'm glad because it was sorely disappointing. I'm okay with the nostalgic references to the first movie if it comes with a proper plot. It didn't though. I don't know what the point of the movie was. This movie actually ruined Miranda's character by trying to humanise her and making her show remorse but ending the movie with her reverting to her old self similar to movie 1. That ending worked in the first movie, it does not work again. Andy's story didn't mean anything either. I will pretend that the 2nd movie doesn't exist.
• Purple Hearts was a random pick on Netflix and I absolutely hated it. What an asinine movie.

TV Shows

• Rewatched Twinkling Watermelon and Season 2 of Alchemy of Souls.
• I watched Perfect Crown. This might be a bit controversial but I don't think IU was the right casting. Or maybe her character wasn't written well. I just could not picture her as a royal despite everything. It felt like the prince had a lot going on and IU's character was just a bratty sidekick. Other than that one dance scene, I didn't feel like they had any chemistry either. They're just really good looking but they don't match, you know? I liked the concept of the plot but the execution, especially towards the end, fell short. Overall, a meh drama for me.
• Watched Racket Boys. This was a fun drama about kids playing competitive badminton. I liked it. Didn't totally get one of the supporting plot lines towards the end but it was good.
• Tried watching The King's Affection again because it came up and I saw that it won an award. I couldn't get past Episode 4 this time, and I had apparently watched till 5 last time. It has a good premise! I just.. don't like the love interest. His character is annoying and I don't like how nonsensical the main character becomes because of him. I don't have the patience to stick through it.
• Started rewatching One Tree Hill because it's on Netflix now! I LOVED this show in high school. I'm loving it all over again. Episode 1 itself made me so emotional. I'm realising new things as an adult like how the episodes are written and edited really well (episode 1's ending.. wow. what a moment.). The way the characters are introduced is great too. I love the soundtrack, always did. It's been several years since I last watched it so I've forgotten a lot. It's like I'm revisiting it while also getting surprised by the twists, haha. I'm rewatching it slowly to savour it. I successfully got a friend to give it a shot and he overtook me in about 3 days and is on season 4 now?! I'm still in season 2!

Music

While travelling in Gangtok, I heard Hyatteri (a Nepali song) while we were browsing in a shop and the tune was great so I saved it. After listening to it later at home, Spotify queued up another Nepali song and I immediately fell in love with it. Spotify knows me well lol. Pahuna is such a good song! I listened to it on repeat for a good while. Apparently I listened to it 108 times in May. It's awesome. I looked up the English translation of the lyrics and liked the song even more because of the meaning. Give it a shot! I'm not a fan of the video (kinda generic) but the song's got a good rhythm.

hobbies & social life

May was a full month. I was still travelling in the first few days. Right after coming back home, I fell sick for a whole week. After taking an additional few days to recover, I absolutely filled up my calendar.

I went to watch Michael with friends. Three friends came home on different days and stayed until dinner. I had a day out with a group of friends to visit a statue. The same group and I had a "reading" day at one of their homes during which I made iced matcha lattes and iced matcha with coconut water for everyone (they loved it 😄). I went to a book conversation event for the second time and had a great time there.

It's been a while since I actively worked out and regularly pushed my body to move. I decided to get back to it slowly this month. However, it felt really good so I may have overdone it a bit. I started going to the gym with my teammates during the week. I don't have any specific routine, I'm just doing whatever I feel like. The point is to get used to going to the gym and getting familiar with the place. I already see some improvement in the few exercises I started doing. I went for a run. I played badminton after a really long time and realised how much I missed it.

At the end of the month, I went to Bangalore for the weekend and met a bunch of friends. I went to the bookstore and walked out with books I didn't plan on buying. I had a really nice gluten-free mango and matcha pancake. I had a sleepover with a few friends during which we randomly planned an ambitious trip (TBD on whether it will actually happen, I really want it to though). I didn't meet all the friends I planned to though because I felt sick after getting caught in the rain one day and made sure to rest so that I don't spend another week recovering.

Other than socialising and working out, I really leaned into using my Traveler's Notebook. I spent a few evenings making memory pages with photos of the Darjeeling trip. I used it learn writing Tamizh. I also made monthly pages after a really long time. My favourite part of keeping a digital journal last year was being able to record events from my days in the monthly page and being able to see how the month was at a glance. I really missed that so I made a calendar for May and filled it up. It looks so nice, my life looks full and fun from the calendar. I made another for June and I'm looking forward to filling it up.

I spent many evenings working on reading and writing Tamizh. I decided to try journalling in Tamizh and while it was hard and slow, it made me learn a lot of the rules of the script. It forced me to notice specific things that I wouldn't have noticed as much while reading. I learnt a bunch of new vocab to describe regular things, for which I usually use the English words while speaking. My mom bought me a few Tamizh magazines and I looked up beginner-friendly novels too. I'd say it's going pretty well so far and I'm really proud of how far I've come considering I'm mostly spending only random free time on it without a specific schedule or a lesson plan. Actually, I think all the time that's freed up by not blogging is going into Tamizh haha. It's a great use of my time.

chat with me!

How are you doing? Are you reading anything fun? Have you seen any of the media I mentioned? Did you travel anywhere?