giovedì 13 febbraio 2020

'Reasons To Stay Alive' by Matt Haig | Review

Title: Reasons To Stay Alive  
Author: Matt Haig
Published by: Canongate Books
Format: Audiobook
Pages: 4 hours 
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4 stars)


Trigger Warnings: depression, anxiety, suicide, mental illness, panic attacks. 


In the western world the suicide rate is highest amongst men under the age of 35. Matt Haig could have added to that statistic when, aged 24, he found himself staring at a cliff-edge about to jump off. This is the story of why he didn’t, how he recovered and learned to live with anxiety and depression. It’s also an upbeat, joyous and very funny exploration of how to live better, love better, read better and feel more.


“You’re walking around with your head on fire and no one can see the flames.”

“Depression and panic only give you melodramatic thoughts to play with.”

“Once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through.”

“Sometimes on the rocky path to recovery, what feels like failure is a step forward.”


I’ve been wanting to read this book for a while as I’ve been following Matt Haig, the author, on Instagram and Twitter for a few years. I love everything he writes online and how much he advocates to end the stigma attached to mental health. So when I saw that his book was available on Storytel (the app I use to listen to audiobooks) I knew I had to listen to it and the fact that the audiobook is read by the author made it even more special. 

This book gave me a lot of comfort. As someone who suffers with anxiety, even though I rationally know that I’m not the only one, hearing someone else talk about ways of thinking and symptoms, physical and not, that I have experienced many times made me feel less alone and understood.  

I loved the writing style of this book and some of the different chapters he put in here and there, like the lists (I always appreciate a good list!). I loved how he explored both depression and anxiety, giving me a chance to know more about mental health and illnesses, even the ones I haven’t personally experienced. 

Three things majorly stood out to me: hearing about the author’s relationship with his then girlfriend and now wife and how supportive she’s been through all of his hard times. It made me believe that there are people out there that can love you regardless of your struggles and understand you even if they don’t experience life the same way as you do. 

Secondly the part where he says something along the lines of ‘had we been through some trauma we didn’t know about’, a trauma that we somehow forgot about and that could be the root cause of our anxiety. This part particularly resonated with me because I’ve too wondered where all of this came from, looking back at my life and finding no apparent reason for it has been hard at time. 

Finally the section where he talks about books and the idea of finding peace from the chaos of my mind in a linear narrative, the one that lacks in my life, one that builds a world that is the only way to get out of my head. I’ve been a book lover my whole life and I’ve always found comfort in reading, beside the joy of losing myself in a story and getting to know amazing characters, Matt Haig’s interpretation on the role of books in our life when we suffer with anxiety definitely added something to my passion for books. 

Have you read this book? If so what did you think? Did you enjoy it as much as I did?

lunedì 10 febbraio 2020

Book Haul | February 2020

Exactly a year ago I wrote my first book haul post and I’ve been good with buying books this past year, I only “splurged” on books twice, in February and December and now, but this one is a small bookish haul so I think I’m doing fine. I don’t have many unread books on my shelves, I’d say less than ten and I know I’m probably getting to them this year. I needed to buy a book for one of my classes and as I was ordering it I added a couple of other ones to my cart. So here’s my three new books: 

‘Someday’ by David Levithan: this book is the final one in the Everyday trilogy, which I started years ago. One of my reading goals for this year, even though I haven’t written it down, is to finish any book series I’ve started, so this one will definitely fulfill that goal. David Levithan is one of my favourite authors, possibly the only male author that has made it to my list of favourites, and I’ve loved the three books of his I’ve read so far: Everyday, Another Day (which I read last year) and The Lover’s Dictionary (which I finished in audiobook format earlier this month). I also included this book in my post on 10 books I want to read this year



‘Waiting For Tom Hanks’ by Kerry Winfrey: this book has been on my list for quite a long time, basically since it was published and so many people read it and raved about it on bookstagram. After reading the blurb, even though I have to admit that even just the title drew me in, this one ended up right away on my digital TBR on GoodReads. When I made this book order I noticed that this one was on sale for a very good price and took that as a sign that it was finally the time to get my hands on a copy. Like the previous one this one was also part of my post on 10 books I want to read this year. 




‘The Only Woman In The Room’ by Marie Benedict: I’ve been wanting to read more literary fiction and historical fiction and as I was looking through the books I had marked as to-read on GoodReads I noticed this one. From what I’ve gathered from the blurb, which pitched this story as a very incredible and interesting one, it can indeed be part of my feminists books I want to read category and I want to read more of those this year as well, so this one seemed like a good compromise. 




Have you read any of these books? If so did you enjoy them? Which books have you recently bought or read that you think I should add to my list? 

venerdì 24 gennaio 2020

On trigger warnings and including them in reviews

This year I want to be more inclusive and aware of other people’s needs. As part of my effort to achieve that I’ve realized that I wasn’t including trigger warnings in my reviews, neither here or on my bookstagram or GoodReads. I’ve seen a few people talk about this on Instagram and that’s when I realized the importance of including trigger warnings in reviews especially and in general discourse on books (and tv series, podcasts or movies). 

While I reflected on it, I came to the conclusion that I had never considered adding trigger warnings to my reviews simply because I thought the things that require them are more common in certain genres, mainly all of those that I never read. Therefore I’ve always thought that there was nothing do disclose in my reviews, because I thought the books I’ve read so far were lighter reads. 

As I talked to people on Instagram I realized that there are many things that could be included as possible trigger warnings and that some of them can be found in all sorts of books, not only in those that are part of genres like thrillers, where you would expect them way more than in say contemporary YA or romance novels. 

In my quest to educate myself on the topic I came across some comments of people that consider TW spoilers. To those people I want to say that if putting the well being of others before anything else bothers you maybe you should check your priorities. Especially if you consider a spoiler that will rob you of a fun and nice twist in a story, what could trigger someone that has gone through that exact same thing. Again check your priorities! 

As someone who has been reading fan fictions for nearly ten years, I’m quite used to TW. It’s common practice, at least for the authors I read, to include them at the top of their stories. I’ve always read them and then went on with my reading, grateful to have those in case something could be triggering to me and never once thought of them as spoilers, but just kind and respectful bonuses. 

So I came to the conclusion that I need to be more aware of what could be triggering for other people and that I’ll always do my best to be on top of it and include as much of them as I can in my reviews, even in the form of ‘mentions of…’. I chose to put them at the top of my reviews (as you can see here and here) so that if something triggers you, you don’t even have to read the full review to realize that maybe that book isn’t for you. I’ve also asked for some help on my bookstagram and compiled a list of the TW I’ll look out for (this list is going to be a work in progress, I’ll probably add to it as things pop up, so if there’s anything you think is missing that I should include just let me know): 
- death and death of a loved one
- suicide and attempted suicide
- violence
- abuse, domestic abuse and sexual abuse
- cancer or other illnesses 
- anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses
- abortion 
miscarriage, pregnancy loss, still birth
- divorce
- cheating 
- drugs, drug or alcohol abuse 
- sex or heavy sex scenes

martedì 21 gennaio 2020

'The Woman In The Photograph' by Stephanie Butland | Review

Title: The Woman In The Photograph  
Author: Stephanie Butland
Published by: Zaffre 
Format: Paperback
Pages: 352
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (5 stars)


Trigger Warnings: cancer, death of a loved one, mentions of abortion and domestic abuse.


In 1968 Veronica Moon is just trying to start her career as a photographer, she lives in Essex with her dad and takes any of the jobs the paper she works for offer, which mainly consist of anything the male photographer doesn’t want to take. One day she decides to visit the picket line at Dagenham Ford Factory and that’s when unexpectedly her life changes forever. As she takes one of her most famous photographs of the women workers fighting for equal pay, she meets Leonie Barrat, feminist, activist, writer way ahead of her time. She shows Vee how different her life could be and that maybe that different life it’s exactly what she craves and wants. So Vee breaks off her engagement and moves to London with Leonie, where her career as the most famous photographer of her time begins alongside her growth into the Liberation Movement. Fifty years later, in 2018, Erica, Leonie’s niece, contacts Vee because she wants to curate a feminist exhibition to celebrate her career. The one that so abruptly ended by one of the most famous and talked about photographs of the twentieth century: that of her best friend’s death. 


“Veronica by the virtue of being a woman: heartless, ambitious, unfeeling, selfish. Career over.”

“Strange how she fears being spotted, and at the same time burns for the recognition that should have been hers.”

“Once you realise you’re living in a world designated for white men, you see discrimination, assumption, everywhere.”

“It’s always OK to ask questions, but it’s never OK to be deliberately ignorant.”

“Men objecting to the protest on these grounds assume that women with cleverness, or curiosity, wit or bravery, would all willingly exchange those characteristics for a pert nose and a cute smile.”

“Everything will get fixed a lot faster if kids learn that they are the same, from the beginning.”


I’m not one to re-read books, I don’t think I’ve ever done it before, but I can tell you without the shadow of a doubt that this book is of the kind I’ll want to re-read in years to come. The kind of book that I know will stay with me for a long time. The perfect book to start this reading year and decade with. This book is perfect and will forever hold the place of my favourite book. For these reasons I know no review, even if well thought and carefully written, will ever do it justice. 

If there’s one thing this book has taught me is to be always and loudly proud of myself and everything I do. Which somehow still feels revolutionary even in 2020, saying out loud that I am proud of myself and everything I have and will achieve. It’s 2020 but as women we still live in a world that doesn’t praise us and our accomplishments enough. So to counterbalance that I want to give Stephanie Butland all the praise she deserves, because this book, this story, how it’s written: it’s magnificent!

This is a book about women and feminism. From the second wave of feminism in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s to our days, specifically 2018. It shows that things have changed and gotten better on many grounds, but that it’s still not enough. The world of today still isn’t the world those feminists campaigned for and as women we are reminded of that every single day. This book shows that we should never settle for the world as it is because even if we have made progress as a society, it’s still not enough. 

It does all of this through the most amazing story of friendship and sisterhood between Vee and Leonie. Through the years since they met in Dagenham, as Vee became the feminist that she always was within her through Leonie’s guidance and at times challenging ways, their friendship blossomed. But it was way more than that, it was sisterhood, a deep love and support for one another. The sort of relationship I wish I’ll find at some point in my life.  

I loved the time switching between the 1960s, 70s and 80s and 2018, where the story brings its focus on Vee and Erica. A new relationship of a feminist in the making, this time it’s Erica’s turn to learn something from a long life feminist: an older Vee who surprisingly finds that she still has something to five to the world and to women and to Erica in particular, to make her life better, just like Leonie did for her all those years ago. 

I could really spend hours praising this novel, but ultimately what I’ll bring with me is inside this quote “what would Leonie do?”, which Vee asks herself frequently. I’ll carry it with me wherever I’ll go and whatever I’ll do to be a better feminist, to stand up for myself more, to love myself more and be constantly and loudly proud of who I am. If there’s one thing you do this year is read this book.

venerdì 17 gennaio 2020

One year of blogging

This January marks my blog anniversary, I opened whatilareads at the beginning of last year with the main goal of sharing my love for books. 2019 was a hard year and a very unpredictable one, when I started this blog and my year I didn’t know where life would take me, everything felt unknown. It was my first year out of university, for the first time in my life I had no clear plan on what I was going to do, which proved to be harder than I ever expected to be. 

During the whole year this blog has been a source of light and comfort. Books have always been my safe place and getting a space on the internet to share that made it even better. The people I met, especially through bookstagram, welcomed me in their community and supported me when things got tough. I got more book recommendations than ever before and my TBR is nearly endless. 

I, of course, know that this little blog of mine is far from what it’s considered successful in this world, but I still consider it one of my successes. I wrote over 70 posts last year, some of which I’m extremely proud of, I tracked my reading progress and run into a writing block, I shared my NaNoWriMo adventure and reviewed every book I read. So even if the stats aren’t impressive, this still feels like a victory as I never thought I would keep up with it for a whole year. 

I’m going to be honest, when I created this blog I kind of wished for the big numbers and even more for this to turn into some sort of remunerative side hustle. But looking back at it a year late I realize that not everything has to do with it, that probably turning this into anything different would take away the pleasure of writing just because. I feel like sometimes in this society it’s easy to forget that not everything needs to be profitable and that every once in a while we can do something, even if it’s time consuming, just for the pleasure of doing it. 

Now don’t get me wrong it would still be nice to earn some money, after all I’m still unemployed and I wouldn’t say no to that. But at the same time I don’t want to make the fact that my blog is still small and relatively unsuccessful an issue that will make the rest of this experience miserable. If it’s going to happen at some point I will welcome it wholeheartedly and if it doesn’t I will still be happy with everything that I’ll have written. I can’t wait to see what this year has in story, for me in my personal life and my creative and reading life as well, and I for sure plan to blog all about it along the way. I’m planning on keeping up my schedule of two posts a week: every Tuesday and every Friday. 

Lastly, if you’ve ever read my blog, whether you’ve read every single blog post I’ve written in the past year or just one or two here and there: thank you! It really means a lot to me whenever someone takes some time away from their day to give a chance to anything I’ve written and I’ll be forever grateful if you decide to tag along for the rest of this adventure. 

martedì 14 gennaio 2020

'Becoming' by Michelle Obama | Review

Title: Becoming 
Author: Michelle Obama 
Published by: Random House Audio
Format: Audiobook  
Hours: 19 hours    
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (5 stars)





This book is a memoir through which Michelle Obama, the first african american First Lady of the United States of America, shows us her life from her childhood in the south side of Chicago to her life as a college student and then a lawyer, from the struggles of trying to balance a successful career and motherhood to having to give up that same career to support her husband in his political one to finding a way to use her job as First Lady to make positive changes in the lives of many. 


“The fundamental problem with caring a lot about what others think: it can put you on the established path and keep you there for a long time, maybe it stops you from swerving, from ever even considering a swerve, because what you risk losing in terms of other people’s high regard can feel too costly.”

“Do we settle for the world as it is or do we work for the world as it should be?”


As I start writing this review the thing I want to do the most is give this book justice, the importance of it, the many themes covered, the many lessons learned and just generally its greatness. I don’t want to portray it as anything less than the amazing book that it is, than the brilliant and incredible story that it tells. I’ve been wanting to read this book since it came out in late 2018, but I rarely read non fiction and so I put it off. When I made my first audiobook subscription last year I knew that the first book I was going to listen to was this one. Getting to hear this story from Michelle Obama’s voice has made it even more special than just reading her words. 

It’s somehow comforting to see the more human side of her and her life, knowing that after all the extraordinary things that happened to her she is still like one of us: she has doubted her worth, she dealt with imposter syndrome (and thus showed us that you can be a successful woman regardless), she has also learned that the noise of those who doubt you won’t go away, but successful people have learned to lean on those that believe in them

The underlying theme of race and racism in America makes its way through the entire book even when it’s not placed at the centre of the discussion, starting from her childhood and being asked by a cousin “why do you speak like a white girl?” to going to a school where most of the pupils where white and as she said ‘it takes energy to be the only black person in class’, from going to a college that some school advisor had said wasn’t for people like her to becoming the first black First Lady and as she said ‘nobody who has the words black and first attached to them would ever find their role easy’

I went into this book with a deep curiosity about her life as First Lady, because even if by then she was of course a public figure and we knew much more about her, life inside the White House still felt like a bit of a mystery. But as soon as I started listening to the first chapter I realised that the most interesting part came before her life in politics, getting to know how she grew up and what struggles she faced, how hard it was even for her to change the trajectory of her life when she was already an established lawyer, how difficult the transition from a “normal” life to life in politics was for her and her family. 

I particularly loved the insight she gave on her work life and the struggles that came with being a working mother (and then a working mother campaigning for her husband’s election) showing how even someone I always perceived as successful and put together found it hard sometimes. The part where she talks about realising she wanted to (partially) change her career, because she wanted to do more for her community than what she could do with the job she had, made me feel better about stepping outside of my own comfort zone and my own life plan because sometimes life just happens and you need do change and adapt. Even when you are a planner, it made me so happy to know she’s like me in that sense, and you’ve always done what you were supposed to do. 

The two quotes I picked for my review resonated with me deeply. The first one for personal reasons and the second one because I think it truly represents what they aimed at during the 8 years of Barack Obama’s presidency and even afterwards. The idea of working to make the world how it should be, a better, more inclusive, more compassionate world shows how incredibly different they are from the current occupants of those same roles. In parts it made me sad about the world as it is today and all the things that are going wrong in politics, but maybe this sadness shows that we can settle for the world as it is right now, but we had to work to make it how it should be. And as she says, way better than I ever could, “When they go low, we go high”

venerdì 10 gennaio 2020

10 Books I want to read in 2020

My first reading goal this year is to read 20 books, as always my digital TBR on GoodReads seems nearly endless and I somehow keep adding amazing book after amazing book to it. There are a lot of books I’d love to read this year, but to stay in line with my goal of reading 20 (of course I’ll be more than happy if I end up reading even more) I’m making a list of 10 books I’d love to read this year. 

I made a similar list and combined blog post at the beginning of last year and as I look at it a whole year later I’m quite happy with how many books from that list I ended up reading in 2019. I am a real mood reader and for that reason I didn’t read some of the books on that list (but they are still on my TBR, so who knows), I have a feeling that might happen this year too, but my goals are flexible and this list should probably be flexible as well. Here are 10 books I want to read in 2020: 

“Get a Life, Chloe Brown” by Talia Hibbert: I’ve been wanting to read this book since a good friend on bookstagram, Autumn @theliteraryheroine, read it and loved it, she is a great advocate for chronic ill people, since being chronically ill herself, and she praised this book for the great representation of life with chronic pain. As I want to read more diversely and open myself up to more life experiences than my own, this book seems perfect. 






“A Spark Of Light” by Jodi Picoult: this book was part of my list of books I wanted to read in 2019 and even though I now own a copy I didn’t get to it last year. So this year, as I try to catch up with all the books I own but haven’t read yet, I plan to read it and hopefully this time I’ll actually do it. 








“The Book Ninja” by Ali Berg and Michelle Kalus: this book was also part of last year’s list of books I wanted to read and I also own a copy of it already, so it makes total sense to put it on this year’s list too. Both books are set in summer and as such I didn’t end up reading them last year because I got in a reading slump right at the end of summer and I struggle with reading books set in seasons different than the one I find myself in. 






“Someday” by David Levithan: I know that a lot of people pledge to finish reading book series they started and never finished as part of their yearly reading goals, I wanted to do the same but I also realised that the only series I haven’t completed is this one. I’ve read Everyday and Another Day but I am missing the third book of the series, this year I’m determined to change that. 







“The Last Boy and Girl In the World” by Siobhan Vivian: I’ve been wanting to read this book for a while now as I aim to catch up with everything this author has written since I loved her book Stay Sweet so much (which I read in summer 2018). This book and her latest, published this year, titled Wildcats are the two at the top of my list. 







“Reasons to Stay Alive” by Matt Haig: I follow him on Instagram and Twitter and I agree with a lot of the things he says, particularly about mental health. I plan on listening to the audiobook of this one too and since it’s a shorter one (4 hours) I’d love to listen to his other book Notes on a Nervous Platen too. 







“The Other Half Of My Heart” by Stephanie Butland: if you’ve read any of my posts last year you’ll know that Stephanie Butland is my favourite author and as I’m reading her latest novel (spoiler alert I’m loving it) to start off the year right, I also want to catch up with the last book of hers I haven’t read yet but own a copy of. 







“The Dutch House” by Ann Patchett: I’ve seen this one being loved a lot on bookstagram and therefore added it to my TBR, then I noticed that the audiobook is read by Tom Hanks, who I love very much, and that’s when I knew I had to include it in this year’s list. 








“Waiting For Tom Hanks” by Kerry Winfrey: can you sense a theme here? Because I certainly can. Will this year be my Tom Hanks year in terms of books? Maybe. Quite possibly. This is the second book of this list where I mention Tom Hanks and how much I love him, this one though isn’t read by him in the audiobook version and it’s not written by him (but I want to read his book Common Type too), from what I know his name is only in the title. But this book has been on my TBR since it came out and it sounds like an amazing book, so I definitely want to read it this year.




“Mary Poppins” by P. L. Travers: if you’ve read my blog post about my reading goals for this year you know that I want to read all the Mary Poppins Books. From what I’ve seen online, there should be 8 of them, which is a lot considering all the other books I want to read this year. So I know I probably won’t read them all, but I still want to read at least the first one and then I’ll see how many more I can manage to fit in. 






I’m obviously open to changing this list at any time, to add new books to it and maybe push some of these a bit further down my list, but I’ll get to them one day. Have you read any of these books? Which books do you want to read this year?