Tea Stains on Parchment

I'm sure we've all heard about the Laura Ingalls Wilder's Award being renamed to the Children's Literature Legacy Award, but I am here to tell you why that is a mistake. Surprisingly, books were not always my entire life.  In early middle school, I didn't really consider myself a reader. I didn't dislike reading, but I felt like I was slow, so I never really picked up books for fun. Eventually, this changed, and I think that I have Little House on the Prairie  to thank for this. I remember my mom handing my a thick, hard covered collection of the first Little House on the Prairie  books. She told me that when she was little, she loved these books, and always wanting to please, I started reading despite the daunting size that a collection of novels can pose to a young reader. Of course I loved them. They were the first books that I really loved. The first books that made me want to read more. Every trip to the library, from then on, led me to the next Little Ho

This was my first year at college, and although I would say that it ended on the positive side, not every moment was wonderful or even just good. Going to Penn was a big change. I had never lived in a city before. I had never spent more than a week on the East coast. I had never spent more than two weeks away from my family. Though these things all meant that my life would be different, I knew I could overcome them. The hardest obstacle would be leaving my family, but this seemed all the more difficult given that I knew absolutely no one going to Penn. I try to be optimistic, and I was looking forward to this new, exciting moment in my life. But I always underestimate my introvertedness. I do not think that being introverted is something that is a deficit to one's personality, but it definitely can hinder my ability to feel comfortable connecting with strangers. My first days at Penn, alone, I chose to stay in my dorm room most of the time. I had no friends to invite anywhere. I

I am a book snob. There, I said it. I don't even take that label as an insult; I wear it as a badge of honor. When someone called me a book snob three years ago, I took it as the highest of compliments. I have strong opinions of lots of things, but being nervous and introverted to a fault, I rarely share my thoughts. But I will tell anyone what I think about a book. When it comes to books, I have lots of opinions and somewhat controversial stances on everything from YA to bookstore layouts. Which I cannot mention without telling you my feelings...books, aside from children's novels, have no real age range if they are a book of quality . I hate YA, too. They are all the same. You can fight me on that one. And bookstores shouldn't be laid out by genre. The only sections should be children's, fiction, nonfiction. How can you separate by genre? For example, is Agatha Christie literature/fiction or mystery? Is To Kill a Mockingbird literature/fiction or YA (ughk). Yea

It has been a couple of days, and I think that there is something that I would like to say. It is no secret that I put great care into how I look, not out of vanity, but rather, out of creativity and personal choice. I feel more comfortable in skirts and dresses. I prefer to have my makeup fully done. I simply feel half dressed if I wear "comfortable" clothing or rush out the door without so much as mascara and lipstick. As I have said before, this mindset often makes me feel like I'm strange or standing out, but there have always been a few sources of inspiration that remind me that it is ok and someday, maybe, I'll be admired for it. One of these such icons was Kate Spade. Generally, celebrity deaths do not sadden me. I did not personally know the person. Nor did I really keep up with their day to day lives. I know them through TV screens or magazine covers--things that I can easily rewatch and make them alive again. But as the dust (or perhaps glitter would be

I started watching the Tony's about 3 years ago, so this year was my fourth Tony Awards, but I have never been as excited or invested in these awards as this year. As I have made very clear in my last post, I saw The Band's Visit, and I loved  it. I was so excited when I saw that they got 11 Tony nominations (though I think they should have had 12, and the other three new musicals had around 12 too many, but no shade here...). Anyways, I was invested. I wanted to watch the Tony's anyways, but now I needed to watch the Tony's. Leading up to this much awaited Sunday, I was actually beginning to get worried, as if I was nominated, which given my lack of talent, I am clearly not. I kept having this nagging fear that somehow, through some twisted joke, a musical about Spo ngebob would actually beat this well-reviewed, beautiful, essential musical about human connection triumphing over hate. About three days before, another fear set in. What if my hero, the man who autogra

You may not know this, but I adore  musicals. I cannot act. I cannot sing. But I honestly think that I have the most important role as audience member. Without us theatre aficionados, actors would just be a bunch of crazy people pretending on stage (wait...). Anyways, that being said, I love to go to shows and I love to listen to soundtracks and I spend my fair share of time on broadway.com reading up on the new musicals on Broadway. This year, the new show that I was hearing so much about was The Band's Visit . Yes, I hear about show openings and all that jazz, but the real reason I knew about this show was perhaps strange for a teenage girl. To understand fully I think I need to go back to when I was maybe five and onward. My parents raised me to watch Monk, a crime show following an OCD detective named Adrian Monk. Monk was played by the brilliant Tony Shalhoub. Enter The Band's Visit . Tony Shalhoub plays the male lead (a general in the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orche

So, I know that I have not been the best at keeping a posting schedule with my blog, but that does not mean that I do not care about it. I actually take my writing here quite seriously, but I have been working on finding out what exactly I plan to do on here and who exactly I am in the realm of blogging. I want this blog to be a representation of me. An honest representation of me that embodies the things that I love, what I like to do, and provide some (hopefully) fun and useful information to you. I came here claiming that I would blog about three topics: literature, tea, food. That is true to me. But there is so much more to me that I want to share with you all! I have passions and interests and all kinds of things that I notice in the world. I want to tell you about who I am and my own personal struggles, maybe even show someone like me that they are not alone. Or showing someone different from me that we are, in many ways, the same. This year I have struggled a bit. I have wor