I know this is a repost, but I was looking through my phone and saw this and now I just want to share this with everyone.
Okay but why does it feel like Hogwarts would be just around the corner?
So as a continuation of this post I made in frustration about how anglo-centric most “must-read” book lists are, I went and found a few lists with a focus on non-English speaking authors (sorted by number of books listed):
8 Must-Read Foreign Books Translated Into English (Babbel)
The non-western books that every student should read (The Guardian)
10 best translated fiction (Independent - has suggestions regarding editions + prices)
49 Incredible Books From 49 Different Countries (Huffpost - has amazon links to all the books, which is great to find the editions but please please please support your local bookstores!!!!)
100 Must-Read Classics in Translation (BookRead - Amazon links again. Most bookstores will offer to order books for you if they don’t have them, please utilise their services and support local shops whenever possible!)
All these lists have reviews and feature books from a wide range of countries. I haven’t read every single review but I browsed the lists to make sure they wouldn’t all just name the same books and they don’t!!
I hope you’ll find inspiring new reads on those lists! :)
“When we set children against one another in contests - from spelling bees to awards assemblies to science “fairs” (that are really contests), from dodge ball to honour rolls to prizes for the best painting or the most books read - we teach them to confuse excellence with winning, as if the only way to do something well is to outdo others. We encourage them to measure their own value in terms of how many people they’ve beaten, which is not exactly a path to mental health. We invite them to see their peers not as potential friends or collaborators but as obstacles to their own success… Finally, we lead children to regard whatever they’re doing as a means to an end: The point isn’t to paint or read or design a science experiment, but to win. The act of painting, reading, or designing is thereby devalued in the child’s mind.”
— Alfie Kohn, The Myth Of The Spoiled Child
sleep with the curtains open because you can turn off six hundred alarms but you can't turn off the sun without effort
In regards to the expensive nature of saffron…
‘stares into distance, takes a long drag off of what is, if you look closely, in fact a candy cigarette’
what if I told you…that saffron…is actually not that hard to grow at home for your own use.
Oh look a place you can buy the bulbs.
If you live in a climate colder than zone 6…as I do…plant them in containers and move the containers into a basement or garage during the winter.
They bloom in fall, and are quite lovely. And also you get saffron.
i really like just knowing things. learning new things is great of course but it truly does hit differently when you see a painting and know which era it's from and why it was painted in that way particular and how the artist was influenced by their time. it's nice just knowing how an author grew up and how that might have influenced their work. it is a good feeling
"am I being annoying" are you aware that my heart is trying to crawl out of my chest to get to you