welcome to my room

📚 my bookshelf: what I'm reading, have read, recommendations, and reviews. for my reviews, I've been using this review system!

📺 my tv: shows, movies, and video games

🛏️ my bed: cozy things and aesthetics I like

🖼️ my walls: art I would like to own and hang up

👗 my wardrobe: fashion inspo

💿 my record player: playlists and recommendations

📖 my journal: thoughts I'm sharing

📝 my desk: my schoolwork. reblogs go under study inspo.

📷 my photo album: not used a ton, but some of my own photos

🌟5 star books:

🌈Nothing Tastes As Good (Luke Dumas) - I'd honestly give this more stars if I could!! I'm already dying to reread it. Truly a horror novel set in the modern day: Emmett has struggled with his weight his whole life and a miracle weight-loss drug trial starts to turn everything around for him. But what happens when his appetite turns to human flesh? This book was beautifully written, and left me with so much to think about. Full review here.

Are You Sara? (S. C. Lalli) - A very unique premise for a thriller novel that hooked me right away. Once the plot has unfolded, it leads the way for a more serious conversation about violence against women, and the intersection between race and gender. Good if you're not looking for a heart-pounding, blood-chilling thriller. Longer review here.

🌈The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (Taylor Jenkins Reid) - My first reread after several years. I'd forgotten most of the little details, but I loved it just as much the second time around. Very interesting to read after Are You Sara? as both books feature women who are headstrong in taking what they want from life.

A Minor Revolution (Adam Benforado) - It seems like common sense that we should put the needs and rights of children first, but we don't. Benforado uses real-life examples and empirical evidence to explain 6 fundamental rights that should be extended to children as they grow up, and how that would benefit everyone in society. This is a very important read for anyone interested in social justice reform, children's welfare, and how to make an impact in their community. Full review here.

✨ 3 star books:

Three Perfect Liars (Heidi Perk) - A well-written whodunit that had me engaged right up until the end! It was unfortunately anticlimactic for me, but I appreciated that the three main characters were morally complex women. It gave a lot of opportunities to consider the ways in which women have to navigate careers, home life, and social lives. Full review here.

🌠1 star books:

🌈Our Wives Under the Sea (Julia Armfield) - I wanted to DNF this so many times 😭 I only stuck with it because my curiosity got the better of me. Such long descriptions of nothing happening. I did not connect with Miri's grief at all, she seemed so disconnected the whole time, as if what was happening to Leah was just one big inconvenience. Leah was more compelling because things actually happened to her. I think the atmosphere of the writing was supposed to convey tragedy, impending doom, and shivers-up-your-spine eeriness, but it just felt so flat to me. Nothing about this novel really worked for me.

Attachment Physical attachment and relationships with parents and family. Parental involvement helps guide a child to create secure bonds and have an emotionally safe place to express themselves and start exploring the world. And being more genuinely involved in a child's life leads to more compassion in other areas of your life. Benforado brings up the difficulties same-sex couples face trying to adopt, cracks in the foster care system, and suggests changes to the prison system to keep children with incarcerated parents closer together.

Investment Housing, food, healthcare, and a robust education system are all vital for making sure kids get a good education. The more we invest in their health when they're young, the less risk they have for health issues later in life. You can either pay a small cost upfront, or pay the debt at the backend. The schoolhouses themselves must also be well-kept. Asbestos and lead paint are still present in many schools in the US right now. They need proper ventilation, heating, and cooling. Kids need proper food and nutrition to think and learn. Healthcare goes hand-in-hand with that. Kids can be very aware of stresses at home and that impacts their learning as well. Racism and differences in schools with a predominantly Black population must be addressed as well. We must invest our time, resources, and taxes into fixing these problems.

Community Children should never be isolated from their community. Unfortunately, the rise of helicopter parenting and gatekeeping means that many kids don't have autonomy over where they do, what they do, who they interact with, or have input in decisions about their care (especially health care). Having good mentors and access to opportunities to learn about the world at large is important to raising a well-rounded, open-minded kid.

To be a kid This chapter focuses on the juvenile justice system and how it currently harms so many kids. They make mistakes, yes, but they should also be provided with a chance to recognize where they go wrong and learn from it. Rehabilitation should be the goal of criminal punishment, not doubling down and further setting up kids to reoffend down the line.

To be heard Young people are so attuned to politics, and yet politicians refuse to listen to them. The next generation is the one that's going to have to live in this world, we should turn to them for what they want to do with it. Older people have resources and power, but the youth have ideas, passion, and more at stake. Why shouldn't people under 18 be allowed to vote? They aren't as risky and volatile as we may think they are. What big political event happened when you were high school that you wish you could've been listened to when you spoke up about it? Young people understand the importance of healthcare, education, housing, gun control, and the need to reverse climate change, and yet they are barred from the rooms where decisions are made.

To start fresh This chapter was mostly about debt and mobility. Unless you come from a wealthy family, it can feel like a lose-lose situation. You either don't go to post-secondary school and have to take whatever jobs you can get without a degree (not very high-paying these days) or land a higher-paying job so you can pay off the thousands in debt you accrued to get your degree in the first place. Benforado highlights how predatory the US military is on high school students to offer help to pay off student loans, but a lot of the times the loftier promises of benefits for serving don't manifest. In terms of mobility, moving is expensive! And may require extra schooling or money spent to get recertified if you move to a place where your previous credentials aren't recognized. The freedom to allow young people to start adulthood on the right foot would make a world of difference.

This book made me think about my own experiences growing up, how kids around me are treated today, and how I want be there for the children around me in the future. The first half of A Minor Revolution felt a bit more actionable, like I can already start paying more attention and being a bigger advocate for children's welfare already, and having a more tangible impact on kids like my little cousins. The latter three chapters will require more cooperation from society as a whole to integrate children and their opinions into the process of political decision-making, but that doesn't mean you can't foster a sense of justice and level-headedness into kids already. I hadn't realized how much the criminal justice system directly and indirectly impacts kids. It's left me with a lot to consider and given me a new lens to look at the world from here on out.