It has been a while since I first read “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell. I was sixteen years’ old and my first reading experience of it basically blew my mind. I stayed up all night making notes, drawing sketches of characters and by the morning, I was not only insanely tired, but I had a whole notebook filled with masses and masses of information about the book. I had handwritten over one hundred pages of notes, quotations, sketches, drawings, opinions, lists and so many other things. This would be an annual thing and now I can’t live without the book. I still have my copy from all the way back then. I used it at university for one of my essays and it’s now covered in notes and highlighting. Now, my copy is safely tucked into a box under my bed and I take it out every now and again, I was reading it the night before my twenty-first birthday, at Christmas whilst I was twenty-three and I read it recently and the ripe age of twenty-four. It changed my entire opinion on the very limitations of literature. The truth is: there are no limitations.

I’ll begin with a brief paragraph describing my regular daily routine. At 5am I wake up and do a couple of hours of mindfulness exercises prior to getting out of bed. As soon as I pull off my blankets I start looking for my clothes and begin to get dressed. Once I’m fully dressed I have my breakfast, medication and finish everything that I need to do before I begin my work. If at home during the day I write my blogs, answer various emails or do work on my business. Sometimes I go out on weekdays for travel training with a support person. Perhaps I’ll go to the shops and buy a few things that I need/want; or maybe I’ll visit places such as our local historical village which is so fascinating and run by lovely people. Many younger people have become more interested in this place after a paranormal show investigated the site and reported it to contain a few ghosts. Once I return home (and/or finish my work) in the evening I have dinner, have a shower, brush my teeth, watch television, play Minecraft, pull on my pyjamas and read in bed before falling asleep at around 11pm.

The pressures of 2020’s reality have taken a toll on the human race. The devastating fires in Australia, Kobe and Gigi Bryant’s tragic death along with seven others, COVID-19, the confirmation of aliens, the murder of George Floyd sparking a Revolution for ALL Black Lives equality and everything else in between happening on the daily.

I remember this feeling of zooming out of my own existence when the much needed realization of change took the world weeks ago. I experienced this epiphany in a discord call talking with a group of diverse and polarizing thinkers, I am fortunate enough to call great friends, from all corners of the world. The realization that we were truly right in the middle of a very historical moment was jarring that sober night. A long due moment in history that is destined to change the course of our civilization for the nth time and this time, as rare as it may be for our brief human history, for a much more positive and peaceful advancement in our society. I remember following the very simple epiphany with a quick statement in the discord call that our unborn kids will be reading about this time in their textbooks a decade from now.

“African Myths of Origin” is a book that concerns the different regions of Africa, their creation stories and theme-based narratives. Themes of hunting, food, humanity, morality, death and dying, the Gods, supernatural ability, war and battle, masculinity vs. femininity and others prove that these stories are not only well-written and sophisticated but also prove that these narrators understand the very essences of human existence. Along with the ability to make it into an entertaining narrative, a lot of these stories echo and almost Biblical experience of life. The outline of the book is to treat these historical stories as a part of a geographical location and an entire population of people. The most notable thing is how all of these themes link together to make a narrative that contains a teaching, a tale and characters who are relatable to any time and place. As the narrative states on the theme of hunting: “the original human lifestyle is foraging mixed with hunting.” (p.3). Thus showing that the nature of humans looking for food is not only important thematically to the stories, but is also a quintessential part to every human no matter upon place, time etc. Past, present and future, humans will always require food to survive and this is only one of the bases of human existence that is seen in the book.

RATING: 4/5

After so many difficulties, I almost died still being tenacious, so I became a monk-like a child when I could contact the Earth.

Imagine a refreshing coming-of-age dystopian novel set within very dreary and dull modern-day London, depicting a protagonist living an underwhelming, relatable yet horrific existence, who decides to start her life afresh on another planet. That is the context of Everything You Ever Wanted (EYEW) in one sentence. In words, simply "unassuming yet powerful and prolific". The story is told by a young-ish depressed woman named Iris, a Digital Innovation Architect for a company, who often rolls her eyes when she tells anyone her pretentious job title and laughs at what little significance the words have in the grand-scheme of the Universe. She has a lot of complex modern wants, worries and desires, but above all she wishes her life had a greater fulfilling purpose. Her situation is one that I'm sure many of us are fairly familiar with; she feels her life in the modern world is hopeless, ungratifying, and she craves some kind of deeper satisfaction from her actions. So when the opportunity arises for her to change her state of existence completely, she jumps at it and goes to live on the planet Nyx. For the rest of us, sadly, picking up our roots and starting afresh is much more diificult. The only catch is that when she leaves, she can never return.

Before I started writing these stories, I had the vision of sharing the importance of “progress” with a society that seems to be proudly regressing into barbarism. I typed up a few very long drafts of potential stories, and felt pretty good about them. I wrote about how technology will be our greatest tool for building the future, how the medical field is better equipped than ever, and how general wealth and safety are increasing, despite the constant terror we are shown on the news.

"The Martian" is a science fiction novel by Andy Weir about Mark Watney - an astronaut and botanist who manages to survive and escape Mars, back to Earth, after being trapped. Because of the fierce dust storm. The book praises the extraordinary strength of the human being in adversity, and at the same time rewards teamwork and humanity.

Genius is a lonely person but walking alone will make us stronger.

Imagine a non-fic book in the direction of a detective novel, where the victim slowly disappears, and the culprit is increasing. More specifically, the perpetrator showed no remorse, became more and more barbaric, scary, and his skills were so skilled that he did not need to try at all. Elizabeth Kolbert was the one who wrote this tragedy in the Pulitzer Prize winning book: Friday's Extinction. What is more frightening of all is that each of us has the face of the killer, and the victim is none other than the planet, where people are still living, breathing, and working.