Book Review: All The Bright Places

On January 1, 2016 I decided to start my year with a book I have been eagerly waiting to read all about. This novel is by Jennifer Niven who is author of Best Selling New York Novel: All The Bright Places. I heard so many great reviews about this novel, and what motivated most to purchase it was the fact that Zoe Sugg (aka Zoella) has recommended her subscribers to read it. Without mentioning any spoilers, I shall take you through my journey within this book. 

To start off, the story of this novel was very inspiring and overwhelming. The story seemed very realistic (even though it was fictional), and it has touched upon incidents that are ignored by majority or are unspoken about. Moreover, the story has brought awareness of certain psychological issues that hardly spoken of and some of these issues I personally have never even heard of. This is what I personally liked about the story.

Moving on to the content, I loved Jennifer's writing style: very clear and easy to understand. Neither did I get lost or confused about what was going on nor found difficulty in understanding the story that Jennifer was telling. I also loved the way Jennifer described scenes in the story: content enough to make you imagine the scene perfectly.

To sum up, I loved the book so much to the point I finished reading half of it within a day. Nevertheless, I tried to hard to restrain myself from finishing the book so quickly and specifically within two days as I wanted to enjoy it as long as possible. I had experienced both happiness and sadness while reading this novel, it made me very emotional but I was satisfied with how the story ended. With that being said I personally recommended everyone to read this novel and I would rate it as following:

Overall: 4.5 Stars

Performance: 4 Stars

Story: 5 Stars      

Power of Books

Remember when I wrote "Change is good" blog post a few days ago? I stated that one of things that I have started doing, as part of change, is reading books or novels. I was at first less motivated to read but when I tried reading one novel I got excited to read more and more. I get excited shopping for books as much as I do when I shop for makeup. I even wonder sometimes what discouraged me from reading novels all this time!

Reading books feels like getting into a new world, a world in the eyes of others, and it feels like a new journey. I lose sight of reality, time passes so fast, and I feel like I'm going through an adventure. The power that great writers possess and reflect through their novels is Unimaginable! They can open a door to a new world, just like the wardrobe in the movie: Chronicles of Narnia! 

With that being said, I aim to open a new category in my blog: Book Reviews. I shall describe each journey that I have been through with each book, lessons I've learned, my rating for each book. I also promise not to add spoilers because just like many people I don't like spoilers. 

Here is today's task: borrow a novel from a friend/family or from library. Read it and describe your journey either in your own personal diary or in social media. You'll see a new experience if you have never read a novel before. I hope you all enjoyed reading this post & don't forget to follow me through my social media accounts. Have a nice day.

Time Heals Wounds

Every time, a wound grows in your life, you will be told by others: "Don't worry, Time will heal your wound". Is that really true? Let's figure that out

First, let's talk about wounds. Wounds could be anything that causes pain or hurts, despite how deep it is and how long it hurts, whatever hurts you let's refer it to "Wound". A wound could be as simple as paper cut or as painful as heart break. It can come into different forms. But tell me, can time really heal every form of a wound? We'll see about that in a second.

Combining wound with time, list common wounds that any human being is subject to.  Starting with least painful wounds to most painful wounds. Then measure in your own terms, how much time you think it takes to heal each wound. Here are my results:-

Wounds                                                                                            Time             

Paper cut                                                                                          1 second

Scratch                                                                                             5-15 minutes

Finger burn                                                                                       Few hours

Fever &flu                                                                                          3-5 days

Going deeper than that:

Wounds                                                                                            Time             

Getting hurt from a close person                                             1-3 days

Losing a friend                                                                                 2-3 weeks

Heartbroken                                                                                     4-5 months

Betrayed from unexpected person                                         6-12 months

There is still a lot more to list:

Wounds                                                                                            Time             

Divorce                                                                                              Infinite

Death of beloved once                                                                 Infinite

Being cheated on                                                                            Infinite

Suffering from incurable disease                                             Infinite

You see my point, not all wounds can be cured by time. The first four wounds may be physically painful but easily forgotten. The second four wounds may get healed by time. The pain may be forgone but they will break some things within you. The last four wounds are like tattoos in your heart. The pain cannot be forgotten or forgone; you will always be reminded of them. They create fear and a hole in your heart that sucks your happiness. Time can never heal these wounds.

If time can't heal them, what can heal these wounds? It's YOU who can.

You are the one who can treat yourself. You don't need time to heal these wounds; you need confidence & willingness to ease the pain. You will need to change many aspects in your life. You need to empower yourself & be stronger from inside. Don't wait for others to heal your wounds, do it on your own simply because you can. Ask for help after failing to heal your wounds but not before that.

We are human beings; we are subject to wounds. You may remove some, & you may adapt to live with them. Here is a little exercise for you to try: search for speeches represented by Cancer Survivors. They have gone through toughest wound you could ever imagine, & yet they survived! See how they managed to survive, you won't regret it.

Change is good

Dear Readers,

Have you ever woken up one day and decided that you need a change in your life? A Real Change from A to Z? I always thought like that and yet I have only made few changes in my life.

I believe that change is good, it's necessary to change certain things in life. But I also believe that change should start with small things not major things. Let me give you an example, you can start by changing your breakfast. Instead of eating cereal, try eating bread with cheese. You can also start by changing the music type you listen to, say change from R&B music to Jazz for example. Change is always good; it makes you feel as if you took a step out of your comfort zone, away from ordinary routine, and maybe into a new journey.

Change is what personally helped me move on, starting with cutting my hair shorter than usual, to reading novels. I was never bothered to read a book, not even interested in trying it out. But at last couple of months, I felt a strong urge to make change in my life. This is why I decided to take a wider step outside my comfort zone and read novels. Little by little, I found that passion bookworms have in reading. I have been fascinated with joy that books can bring. It feels like the doors of new worlds have been unlocked. Nowadays I ask myself why I assumed that reading novels would be boring. It is more fun than watching a series and movies.

With all that being said, I demand you all to make change in your life. Here is small exercise you can do:

1-    Write down list of things you've never done before.

2-    Rank them from 1(mini change) to 5(major change).

3-    Starting with one mini change every day until you are prepared for major change.

I hope you all enjoyed and make sure to do this exercise.

Best Wishes, Hadeel Al-lawati