A Little Night Music (28/11)

For this music post, I'm going to tell you about my obsession about Taylor Swift's latest album "1989". Up until recently, I don't really like Taylor Swift. I don't like country music and her whole schtick of obsessing over boys and putting other girls down gets old real quick. But, she grows up and her music grows up, too. I really like some songs off Red ("State of Grace" is probably one of my most favorite songs from her) and I excitedly anticipate the release of 1989. And boy, it does not disappoint.

1989 is Taylor's first pure pop album, there's no twangy country-feeling songs in this. As mentioned before, I don't really like country, so of course this is a welcome relief. 1989 is heavily-produced and differs so much in terms of sound than Tay's previous album, but it's still has that quintessentially her quality in the lyrics. I have a love-hate relationship with Taylor's lyrical skills; on one hand I find some of her lyrics to be pretty vapid and silly and just straight-up awkward but on the other hand that's what makes her her, ya know what I mean? I love the allusions to Greek mythology and the sentence 'love is a ruthless game unless you play it good and right' in "State of Grace" because it's such a Taylor Swift thing to say but hate the mixed-up metaphors and literary allusions in "Love Story" even though it's what she'd do.

I find some of the songs unlistenable (deleted "Welcome to New York" and "Bad Blood" on the first listen and never looked back tbh) but the rest of them makes up for it. Hell, the existence of "Blank Space" alone is enough to make this the best Taylor Swift's album for me. While there are a lot of repetitions (see: "Out of the Woods") but it's played up to great effect. I'm not a Taylor Swift fan, but after listening to this album, I'm a convert.

Okay, I'm going to attempt to do a track-by-track review of the album (sans "Welcome to New York" and "Bad Blood").

• "Blank Space" is the second track of the album and my most favorite song off the album. It is also one of my most favorite Taylor Swift song, tied with "State of Grace". It has a heavy beat that's reminiscent of the chorus to Lana Del Rey's "Florida Kilos" (it makes sense in my head). The lyrics are tongue-in-cheek, referring to Taylor's many boyfriends and the media attention paid to them, and so, so good. Seriously. It has so many quotable lines. Taylor in this song evokes a kind of carefree attitude towards love, in contrast to her more serious songs about love and heartbreak. It cheerily acknowledges the fact that she'll probably be heartbroken ("it'll leave you breathless, or leave a nasty scar"), and that her exes call her crazy for writing songs about then ("got a long list of ex-lovers, they'll tell you I'm insane") but that's okay, 'cos love's a game and she loves the players. Most of my friends who listened to this album said that "Blank Space" is their favorite and I couldn't agree more.
• "Style" is the third track in the album. It is ostensibly about Harry Styles; no doubt about it. When I first heard about it, I looked up the lyrics and thought, "well these all seem very awkward how is this any good?" But then I listened and it defied my expectations. It has a sort of vintage 1980s feeling to it, and it indeed is inspired by 1980s pop. The music was peppy and upbeat, but it has also that tinge of sadness to it, which fits the lyrics of going crashing down and coming back every time, because they never go out style. I love the mention of "James Dean daydream look" because it's so specific yet so general, like, I can even picture it right now. Plus, I really like the way she said "tight little skirt".
• "Out of the Woods" is the fourth track in the album. When I first heard it, I heard it along with my friend. She didn't like it and I laughed, but I liked it. It was repetitive, yes, the whole album has many repetitions, but it was also fun and the repetitiveness adds to the general atmosphere of the song. I also like the sound and the lyrics even though I find some of them to be funny in the wrong way ("the monster was just trees") and plain ol' mind screw ("your neck is hanging from my neck"). Still, it's catchy and had some parts that I really liked.
• "All You Had To Do Was Stay" is the fifth track in the album. It has a really fast and fun chorus, with a high-pitched yelp of 'stay' in the beginning, which can be rather jarring and annoying, and at first I didn't like it for that reason lol. But it grow on me like many other Taylor Swift's song (girl had a talent for making grower songs) and now it's repeated many times in my iTunes library.
• "Shake It Off" is the sixth track in the album. It is also the "lead single", which is what Taylor decided to use to promote her album. As a lead single, it had plenty of exposure. When I first heard about it, I was ambivalent. The title is too similar to Florence and the Machine's "Shake It Out" and I love her and that song. I love Taylor, too, but for different reasons. They were too different with each other and I was afraid that I couldn't reconcile them in my head. But my curiosity got the best of me and I watched the video. Bad mistake. The video's pretty good - love the part where she does the ballet - but the twerking part's too embarrassing. And the song's pretty embarrassing too, especially the part of "my ex-man". I was so disappointed. It was so different, so unlike "22", which was one of Taylor's 'party anthem' and a song that I liked. So I abandoned it after a listen and went on without listening to it for some time (which is uncharacteristic for a Taylor Swift song since Red). But after hearing about the buzz surrounding it, I decided to give it a second chance - and I got hooked. Reader, it grows on me. I spent a whole week listening to nothing but that fucking song in the morning as a pick-me-up, which's gonna jack up the iTunes play, I'm sure. Though, I must admit, the song sounds out of place with other songs in 1989 it still is a good listen. And if you don't like it in the first listen, try, try again.
• "I Wish You Would" is the seventh track in the album. I...really have no opinion about this song. It's not good, but it's not bad either. Like, it's a decent listen, but it's just so...bland and boring. It's not as bad as "Welcome to New York" 'cos I still have it in my iTunes library, but it's just forgettable. To me, it's just an obstacle to one of my favorite and best songs in the album.
• "Wildest Dreams" is the ninth track in the album. It's also a very Lana del Rey-ish track; the chorus eerily reminds me of LDR's "Without You". The lyrics are also very Lana-ish, with mentions of bad boys and red lipstick (but no "red dress" or "Queen of Saigon" which is quintessential Lana terms). And the lyrics too are a bit more explicit than Taylor's usual fare, with sex implied, but still very much PG-13.
•  "How You Get the Girl" is the tenth track in the album. Much like "I Wish You Would" this is a very average song for me. It's easy-listening, but I won't, like, play it on repeat or something. My friend loves it tho; it's his favorite song in the album. So there's that.
• "This Love" is the eleventh track in the album. It's mellow, soft, and reminds me of fluffy cotton candies. Taylor incorporates a good deal of indie-pop sound in 1989 and this song's a very simple sound, with "less" of a production feel than, say, "Out of the Woods" or "Blank Space". I like it.
• "I Know Places" is the twelfth track in the album. This song, my friend says, is very gothic but with a Taylor Swift flair, you know? It's not like "I Know You Were Trouble" but it has the same fast-and-slow tempo. I really like this song. It has great lyrics too.
• "Clean" is the thirteenth track in the album. I really want to like this song. This song's co-written by Imogen Heap, and I like Imogen, so I really really want to like this song. But I can't. Like, it's not as bad as "Bad Blood" or "Welcome to New York" but it's so boring. Nothing in the lyric is memorable, I don't even remember what it is about.
• "Wonderland" is one of three bonus tracks. Aaaaand, let me tell you how much I love the bonus tracks. The bonus tracks could and should be one of the main songs. "Wonderland" is so beautiful, it's one of my favorite song in the album. I really like the sound and the lyrics are so good and for once, Taylor's literary allusions and references are right! Yay! Four for you, Taylor!
• "You Are In Love" is one of the three bonus tracks. Lena Dunham says this song is hers and Jack Antonoff's wedding song and as much as I dislike agreeing with Lena Dunham, this time she's right. It is a song that's perfect for a wedding, the sound is soft and the lyrics are beautiful and smooth. This song somehow reminds me of a peach pink tulle dress. I don't know why I have that image. It is just so soft.
• "New Romantics" is one of the three bonus tracks. It is also one of my favorite songs in the album (I have a lot of favorite songs in this album apparently). It's a cheery party anthem, but it's not the kind of party anthem that's played in the club. It's the kind of party anthem that you play when your friends are having a picnic in the meadows and you decide to have a little dancing party with flowy, dresses. It's the kind of party I imagine ballerinas throw after they held a Spring performance of Giselle in a park, where everybody is happy and wearing beautiful tutus and flower crowns. ("The best people in life are free")

So that's my thoughts about Taylor Swift's new album 1989! What do you think of the album? Tell me in the comments below! And if you haven't listened to it, buy it on iTunes or Amazon or your nearest record shop, and listen to it. Now. It'll be good for your life (and ears).

Late, Late, Late Post

Hey, everyone. Sorry that I've been MIA for almost three months now - my last post in this blog is in June the 25th and now it's already mid-September.

Yeah. It's funny how time flies, isn't it?

I don't have any excuse or explanation other than that I've been sidetracked by life, basically. As some of you might know, I'm a law student now (hehehehe) and am fortunate enough to be able to study in one of the best universities in my country. It's been a hectic three months, with Lebaran and my own laziness preventing me to update my blog in July. August was a complete mess with the ensuing preparation for orientation week, the grueling orientation week itself, and all the anxiety and agitation new students have when they enter university for the very first time. September was a blur, since it was the first weeks of class and I've to familiarize myself with new surroundings, new friends, new ways of learning, new teachers.

But other than that, university is exciting! I get to move to a sprawling big city with lots of culture and meeting with lots of new people and doing exciting things that weren't available in my tiny town. You might think studying law is tedious and boring, and while there are some classes where I almost fell asleep in class, it's more because of the lecturer rather than the material. Studying law requires critical thinking and advanced problem-solving skills alongside a broad knowledge and it's fun to discuss legal scenarios with friends and trying to solve all the legal problems that arise with it. Being an international lawyer/diplomat is also my life-long dream and that's an incentive for me to study hard.

Exploring a metropolitan is also very exciting. Yogyakarta has everything I want in a city: a close-knit sense of community, friendly people, a vibrant cultural scene, lots of libraries and bookshops, and a diverse range of food. I get to learn French and eat chocolate macarons with Twinings' tea in the afternoon and eat roadside ayam geprek at night. I love it.

Of course, since I'm now living alone completely independent of my parents and relatives, I have to be careful. I have to be careful when I'm going out and I have to be careful not to blow my monthly allowance money on useless things. Sometimes I get stuck in traffic in Jogja and I found myself missing my little town where there's no traffic at all except for exceptional circumstances. Sometimes as I eat my dinner alone, I found myself missing my aunt's cooking and nasi pecel. Sometimes when I'm tired after a day in class, I found myself missing my mother and the high-speed wifi we have in our home.

But over the time I'm learning to manage living on my own. It's both a exhausting and a scary experience, but it's also fun and exhilarating, don't you think? Eventually we all have to learn to be adults, even though most of us can't quite get the hang of it, we'll try anyway.

Read Like a Viking: June Book Haul (25/6)

Hey, everyone! I apologize for being MIA for a couple of months. My laptop's acting out and I'm busy with university stuff so I can't get to update the blog as much as I wanted to. Sorry!

However, June has been an eventful month for me in terms of book shopping. This month alone, I bought eight books, and I'm so busy I haven't even finished even one of them. Oops.

The books I bought this month are:

• The Cuckoo's Calling by J.K. Rowling
• The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith
• A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams
• Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
• Therese Raquin by Emile Zola
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
• Chicken Soup for the Girlfriend's Soul by various authors
• Matilda by Roald Dahl (my old copy was lost when I moved so I bought a new one)

I'm slogging through the Cuckoo's Calling, so I've taken up A Hundred Summers in the mean time. I'm a quarter in (which is more than I can say for the Cuckoo's) and it's a very light read even though it's 400 pages long, so expect a review soon.

Happy Days Indeed!

I got accepted to my dream university in my dream major! Yay! I can't stop smiling, even as I typed this I was smiling and laughing. I will be taking a couple of weeks off to sort out my admission and university-related stuff, but I won't be too busy since I don't have to prepare for the university entrance exam. The reason why I didn't update the blog much was because I was preoccupied with preparations for the university entrance exam, but since I got accepted, I won't be the exam anymore and I could update the blog more. Also, I ordered a copy of Robert Galbraith's the Silkworm, so expect a review as soon as it got here!

Review: The Queen of Attolia and the King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner

You know a book is good that even when you knew the plot and its twists and turns (thanks, Wikipedia!) it still hits you like a thousand bricks when it did happen. And boy, did it happen gloriously.

Now, you must be wondering why I chose this two particular book and why I hadn't bothered with the first book. Well, I was short on cash, and I had low opinion on first-person POV, so I chose to buy the two books that I knew didn't have a first-person narrator: The Queen of Attolia and the King of Attolia. I devoured the first book in a span of four hours, a feat that was unheard of from me. I finished the second one a little slower, reading the first half late until night, and finishing the rest of them the first thing in the morning.

And let me tell you, I was glad I picked up this series. It's everything I expected and more. With an all-knowing third-person narration, you would expect the book to be plain and tame, since as the reader we knew all the twists even if the characters didn't. But no, much like how the titular Thief of Eddis steals belongings, this book hides its secrets that you wouldn't even realize exists until it is revealed oh-so-casually by a line. And what a line indeed! When you read it, you feel like you have to backtrack and read the whole book again because now, with the knowledge imparted by it, everything changes. Every dialogue, every thought, every action; all of them was brought into new light because of one simple line.

These two books held my rapt attention and had me read them all in one sitting, something which doesn't happen very much. I am a skeptic, well-versed in the inner-workings of a novel, and I usually read the general plot of a book before buying it, since I don't want to spend money and then come back disappointed because I don't like the book's ending, or that I think the plot is inane. Owing to this qualities, nothing really fazes me anymore. I am more interested in how the way an author weaves their worlds rather than the twists and turns of the plot.

But Megan Whalen Turner is an expert wordsmith, and her books did not disappoint. She weaves her worlds expertly, breathing them life. When I read this, I am not in the confines of my room, sitting contently in my bed: I am in Attolia, I am in Eddis, and I move between them as swift as Eugenides do in the night. The characters, too, are a treat. They are layered beautifully like a good baklava, doused with a rich personality instead of honey. They calculate their actions carefully, so that everything means something, and no energy is wasted. After spending too much time with too-stupid-to-live YA protagonists obsessed with boys and romance, the Queens of Attolia and Eddis are a breathe of fresh air.

As a future diplomat, I also like the focus on politics and the precarious world of inter-kingdom relations. Not too many YA books discuss these topics, I am afraid, but with a main character roster consisting of kings and queens and members of their courts, it is inevitable that politics will come to play. But the book does not give a black and white approach to politics, like so many YA fantasy books do. I find it tiring when YA books have a "rebellious princess" that is careless and tactless when it comes to politics, insulting nobles left and right, disregarding courtly manners, etc, and yet everyone is awed at her boldness. Politics do not work that way. There is an art to it, and chances are if you're insulting your retainers, or show blatant favouritism to one of them, they would be irked enough to revolt themselves. Wars have been waged for less, and the Queens of the Queen's Thief series knows that. Eugenides acts like a typical rebellious prince--disregarding courtly manners, throwing thinly veiled insults to his nobles, complaining about court functions--but almost everyone agrees he is a buffoon and does not take him seriously or respect him.

Well-written and smart, this series is an underrated gem more people should be into. Five stars to both the Queen of Attolia and the King of Attolia.

Final rating:

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Book information:

Title: The Queen of Attolia
Author: Megan Whalen Turner
Edition: New York: Greenwillow Books. First Eos edition. 2006. (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-06-084182-9
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Title: The King of Attolia
Author: Megan Whalen Turner
Edition: New York: Greenwillow Books. 2007. (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-06-083579-8

Review: 1984 by George Orwell

I know 1984 will rank as one of my favorite book since the first time I had heard it. I know this. But I keep postponing my intent to read it, since I feel like due to my age I will not be able to understand properly, and because I want to work on my English so that I can read it without much difficulty. But one day I was at my local bookstore, window-shopping, and I happened upon a translated copy of 1984 in one of the shelves. I didn't expect it at all and I was so shocked and happy at the same time that I paced around the shelves for some time to calm myself. I was seized by the sudden impulse to grab it and stuff it into my shopping bag, before I saw the publisher. I've read several books by this publisher, and most of them have shoddy translations; I even have to buy a copy of one of them in its original language to even remotely understand anything because the translation is that bad.

But the book haunts me even as I got home. I agonized about it for days. Should I or should I not buy the book? Am I ready yet? Well, I decided finally, if I'm old enough to go to college I'm old enough to read the book. So I placed an order in one of those online bookshops and wait. When it arrived a week ago, I promptly read it.

You must be wondering why it took me almost a week if I liked it so much? Well, because a book like this is like fine wine; you can't read it all at one but rather savor it slowly. And because this book is depressing as fuck, that's why. There were many times when I have to put the book down, draw a long sigh, then took a rest browsing for cute puppies and kittens pictures. The book gets to you. Its worldbuilding is so good that you can't help but get sucked into its world and feel the helplessness of the character. I was there, with Winston in London, trying to survive under constant censorship and squalor, despite the fact that we are separated by the pages of the book.

Orwell has a vivid writing style. He can make his character and his world come to life with mundane words. Every author who thinks that the only way they can write well is by using the most superfluous words needs to read Orwell. Sure, sometimes his paragraph is long and confusing, but like I said, you need to savor it slowly like fine wine. You can't speed-read an Orwell. I usually felt bored upon encountering a wall of text in a novel, but with Orwell, the wall of text makes me feel excited. It doesn't bore me, not at all.

Wow. I really don't have anything to add anymore. What can I say? Everything that needs to be said has been said in this book. You need to read it. That's all I'm going to say.

Final rating:

Book information:

Title: 1984

Author: George Orwell

Edition: New York: Signet Classics.1950

ISBN: 978-0-451-52493-5

Oui, j'aime Duolingo!

Salut! Desole, I have not posted for quite some time. I am in the middle of reading 1984, and it's going very slowly since the book is so depressing that I have to stop every once in a while and play some happy games to restore my faith in the world. While I'm scouring the App Store for some easy games, I discovered Duolingo, a free educational app for language learning with a 'gamingification' method. As a poor would-be polyglot from a Third World country, I couldn't refuse an opportunity to learn a foreign language for free, so I downloaded it and signed up for a course in French. Now, I am completely addicted.

Duolingo is very easy to use, with a simple, user-friendly interface. It doesn't have any instructions in the beginning, but you'll get a hang of it quickly enough since it's so intuitive. You learn language like you play a game. In the upper-right corner, there's several "hearts" and the objective is to go through your course without losing them all. If you complete a course, you get XP points that contributes to you leveling up, and if you manage to complete the course without losing any hearts, you get a Lingot, which is the virtual currency for Duolingo that you can use to buy perks in the shop. Lingots are awarded for other activities too, such as leveling up, adding friends, etc.

The courses made up several skills or lessons. In the beginning, you only have one "skill": the Basic. As you complete the Basic, you can unlock several other skills, and so on. The skills are inter-connected to each other and you have a "Strength" bar that reminds you to revise the skills every now and then. I love that the course's challenges are very varied: there's a listening challenge, writing challenge, and speaking challenge. French being the accent-heavy language that it is, the game is very forgiving at first if you don't write the accents when you first try it, but as you level up and move on to more complex skills, it starts to get stricter.

I love, love, love this app. It doesn't really teach you the ins-and-outs of grammar or structure, but it teaches you enough for you to be quite proficient with it. You explore the grammar structure by yourself, but it provides explanation should you be confused. The learning style is easy and breezy and you don't really feel cooped up or tied down. Of course, since the app is designed to get users to B1 level, I don't think you can learn to read Proust with it, but it's enough to get by for everyday uses. And because it's free, you can use it anytime you want!