Being the Reader I Used to Be

I’m not the reader I used to be. Ever since I stopped being a student, I struggled with reading as many books as I did in my youth. Partially it was because of my limited time: I didn’t have gaps between lectures or workshops to fill with reading. Being employed full time meant 9 hours a day at my workplace. After that, I had to take care of my food and house chores. It was also the fear of losing sleep over a book – something I confessed to two years ago, and something I couldn’t afford being an employee. But lately, I realized the problem is more complex than just less time to read. (more…)

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3 Interesting Sci-Fi and Fantasy Movies

We all hear about blockbusters like Avatar, Lord of the Rings, or movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Some are great, some meet our expectations, and some are just entertaining enough to ignore their shortcomings. There are many sci-fi and fantasy movies that any fan could readily name. But what about the less known titles? They aren’t necessarily worse, and sometimes they offer some fresh ideas, because they aren’t bound by the blockbuster requirements of how the story should be written.

I’m sure there are many great ones out there, but today I’d like to share three that I really liked. They aren’t without flaws, and they aren’t the most recent blockbusters, but they all provide decent entertainment and some inspiration too. (more…)

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Sex Scenes: How Did It Happen?

I read sex scenes for the first time when I was about 11.

It came at me quite unexpected, in the Arabian Nights book which I bought for my own pocket money. The Polish title of the book that could be translated as “The Tales of One Thousand and One Night” promised me exotic fairy tales from the lands of sand and sun. I was prepared for them to be dark, maybe even cruel sometimes, as I was very familiar with Brothers Grimm tales and works of Hans Christian Andersen, but I wasn’t prepared for sex scenes. The description was very vague and brief, but for a girl who already knew what was what it seemed pretty obvious what the sentences were talking about. (more…)

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Getting Over the Fear of Writing

I’m going on an assumption here, but I think that majority of writers and aspiring writers is, at some point of time and their writing career, getting over the fear of writing—or at least trying to get over it. It’s usually the fear of being not good enough, of writing something that won’t be worth reading, or even worrying of how the readers will react to our innermost thoughts. (more…)

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Reading Books: to Finish or Not to Finish?

For a while now, I’ve been struggling to read more. Part of the problem is what I’ve written about before: the fear of getting too immersed in the book which would result ditching everything else (books have kept me from sleep, eating, and many other things). At the same time, I found myself getting more and more picky about the books I read, so it’s getting harder to find a book that would actually enchant me enough for the first fear to be true. (more…)

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