A Jar of Ashes

My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.  Offer me money. Offer me power. Offer me everything I ask for! I want my father back, you son of a bitch I am plagued by heartbreak over a family member’s perceived mistake towards me. The road to forgiveness for that is not easy. Forgetting is a stage harder, as for people with good long-term memory, there are so many memories that stay stuck in my head despite my effort to forget them. That I had overthinking tendencies and extreme mood swings (especially during that time of the month) does not help (but do not worry, I have a doctor-written prescription to help manage them).  You must have heard that forgiving is for the person doing the forgiving; to let go of anger, of heartbreak, and move on to face reality. To not hold onto the thorny past that still gives us bleeding wounds. To still have it in our mental capacity to accept the person again as part of our life, even if strict boundaries or a certain dista...

This series is over! It's a total of 11k words, making it a novelet. I will make an author'c closing commentary for the series at the link below so anyone who read it understood the outside context of this series, if you'd like to read them, anyway. If not, then you can simply skip. Here are the full of chapters below: Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Author's Commentary

I am back with another book review. Finished the reading right on the 12th of April, a.k.a today. My days have been slow as of late, spent in reading and writing fiction pieces. Also trying to destress and lighten up from the news. So much bad news nowadays, especially when you return to college and have much freer time compared to a job. To my former co-workers who may be reading this: hey, guys! So, around the same time when Klara and the Sun came out, Kazuo Ishiguro’s daughter published her debut novel: Common Grounds . The book’s blurb offers a story about a long-lost friendship, rekindled. Reviews on the covers are gleaming and shimmering, as they often do. But is it?  About the author Naomi Ishiguro, as mentioned, is Kazuo Ishiguro’s daughter. In belief of her father’s prowess in writing, I decided to check her book out. Definitely not a case of mistaken identity when I typed in “Ishiguro” in the OPAC of the national library and thought this book was by Kazuo Ishiguro. Absolu...

CONTENT WARNING: mentions of sexual assault, spoilers for Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage novel, graphic sexual description edited 2026/29/03 22:31 In a previous post , I talked about Kazuo Ishiguro and how he moved Haruki Murakami’s spot from my top favourite author on magical realism. If you were a Harukist—Murakami’s fan—you would say that’s bollocks. I can agree. But consider: Kazuo Ishiguro does not objectify his (fictional) women. That alone is already a large win over Murakami’s works.  Today, the topic will delve a little bit deeper into that part of Murakami’s writings. I found a thesis by Kristina Mallabo on Google Scholar that compiles and summarises exactly what the problem is and why it is a problem. Moreover, this will be quite a long and technical post. So get comfy and prepare your eyes to continue reading. My Harukist days I read Haruki Murakami’s books, admittedly, a little bit too young. The prose, the subject matter, and my own situation at...

Hello and welcome back to Jar of Ashes, my dear readers.  I've created a new finished novella, currently in the process of editing. The work took place in the ancient Chinese period-ish (no research done here). We follow the protagonist, Rong Ju, as she insipidly drifts through her second life.  There is little action in this work, and it's more of Rong Ju's accounts of her "dull" second life. You can check it out by clicking this link.  Don't forget to leave a comment!

Hip-hop is not my usual genre. However, everything changed when the Kendrick-Drake beef happened. I delved into K-Dot/K.’s discography rather than hip-hop as a whole, though, so you may call me more of a Kendrick fan rather than a fan of the genre, which I do not regret. He won the Pulitzer Prize; I wasn't even aware music lyrics could be nominated for literature prizes before Bob Dylan won the Nobel. Rap in general, especially Kendrick's, needs to see the lyrics as a whole to see the interconnected meaning, rhythm, and subtlety. That is already available on lyrics websites; many users shared their videos and essays, or both about it. So if you actually want to understand something about the genius of Kendrick instead of musings of some rando on a free blogspot, turn away now. There’s still time. Come on…. You’re still here? Welcome. Today I will discuss one of my favourite songs from K.: " PRIDE. " from the DAMN. album, the very album that won the Pulitzer, from a co...