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Archive for the ‘Weekly Something’ Category

Weekly Something #10 – “We were liars”

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August 21st, 2014 Posted 6:19 pm

Hi guys!!! Finally I’m here 🙂 Missed me? 🙂 I definitely missed you and blogging and so so so happy to be home, be able to do photos and write posts again! I have some news about my blog but they’re mostly for my Russian audience except one – it’ll probably be more book related posts here from now on, but don’t worry, I will not abandon journaling topics, just add a little more book reviews. Hope you’ll like it, cause I promise I will recommend only books I really like and enjoy, there will be no crappy ones just for quantity of posts.

I’ll try to do all of missed “weekly somethings” from the past two months, probably will organize them in groups chronologically according to my reading them and of course the big series such as “The Mortal Instruments”, ” The Infernal Devices” and “Lux” will get their own big individual posts as I always do with the series. Oh well, I’m pedant like that 🙂

Let’s cut to the chase. As ya’ll know that heartbreaking tear-jerking story of my life when I read the last book of TMI and then got hangover and decided to re-read TID (I know, you’re sick of me saying that so often 🙂 ), but after that I was so afraid that I might end up in a huge reading slump so I grabbed a bunch of new releases hoping for the best 🙂 And it worked. I was lucky that the first book I picked up was “We Were Liars” by E. Lockhart cause it was amazing! Despite the little size of it that book surprised me in a good way. I really enjoyed reading it and that twist in the end took me by surprise, I didn’t expect it at all. It took me three or four hours to finish it and after that I was just sitting in the middle of the night thinking about what have I just read, teares were involved. But then the next day I continued thinking about it pouring coffee in my tea instead of sugar and throwing teaspoon in garbage can instead of used tea-bag. Even now writing this I want to re-read that book so badly cause I know that now it would not be the same, I will see it with another eyes and pick on some details and clues that I’ve missed reading it for the first time. So I might give it a re-read soon 🙂 I know it’s that kind of book you either really like or hate it and I’m definitely one of those who liked it a lot, if you can’t tell already 🙂

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Probably someone will freak out right about now and splash coffee on monitor or give a real hard kick to the keyboard but I will not tell what this book is about 🙂 I’m a wicked one 🙂 Not really, no… It’s just that you should go into this book blind, that’s the best way to fully enjoy it and feel all the feels. You don’t want to be spoiled on that one, I promise you! So you can just skip all my writing, look at the photos and go read this book 🙂 Even the author said on the cover: “Read it. And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE”. But I won’t lie to you. I simply will not tell you anything except that this book is about very big and rich family, members of which spend every summer on their private island but one summer something goes terribly wrong and after that no one remains the same.  It’s hard to tell which genre this book is belong to, and I think that’s for each of us to decide. And if that is not enough for you to go pick up this book, I tell you another thing – John Green blurbed this book and he said that it is “thrilling, beautiful and blisteringly smart. We Were Liars is utterly unforgettable”. Here you go, John and I will not recommend something bad, that’s for sure 🙂

Okay, I need to calm down because this book is doing something to me 🙂 Let’s take a look at the design of it because that book is not only beautifully written inside but it is pretty outside as well. First off, the cover. Simple but very mysterious and summer-ish too which is a good combo, I think. And the title looks cool, textured on the glossy surface of the dust-jacket.

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We like it when the photo is placed all over the cover continuing from the front to the back of the book:)

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And there under the dust-jacket is simply a book-porn 🙂 I mean, look at that spine! That is gorgeous!

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It doesn’t show on photo but these blue pages have like perl finish to it.

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Truthfully I didn’t expect to see cool stuff like maps and charts in this book ’cause it is not a fantasy but once again this book surprised me big time 🙂

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There’s a map! The map of an island with all the houses and buildings and stuff 🙂 And wait for it, wait for it…

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That’s not all! Wanted genealogical tree? There you have it 🙂 And it was pretty handy when I started reading and got a little confused about who’s child who and all that jazz.

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Besides chapters this book is divided into parts because we are dealing with not just one summer but several of them, before and after the bad accident and each part has it’s own whole starter-page. By the way, just want to throw it out there that even though this book is pretty short, like 225-pages short, still by the end of it you get really attached to the characters. And that kind of deal usually happens with big books or series even but this shorty accomplished such a hard task.

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And even if that all is not enough for you (John will be disappointed), I give you my favorite quote from this book which appears in the beginning and after reading it I was convinced that I will definitely enjoy this book.
“That June, summer fifteen.  Dad announced he was leaving and departed two days later.  He told my mother he wasn’t a Sinclair, and couldn’t try to be one, any longer.  He couldn’t smile, couldn’t lie, couldn’t be part of that beautiful family in those beautiful houses. Couldn’t.  Couldn’t.  Wouldn’t.”

“He had hired moving vans already.  He’d rented a house, too.  My father put a last suitcase into the backseat of the Mercedes (he was leaving Mummy with only the Saab), and started the engine.
Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest.  I was standing on the lawn and I fell.  The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed.  Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound,
then from my eyes,
my ears,
my mouth.
It tasted like salt and failure.  The bright red shame of being unloved soaked the grass in front of our house, the bricks of the path, the steps to the porch.  My heart spasmed among the peonies like a trout.
Mummy snapped.  She said to get hold of myself.
Be normal, now, she said.  Right now, she said.
Because you are.  Because you can be.
Don’t cause a scene, she told me.  Breathe and sit up.
I did what she asked.
She was all I had left.”

Great metaphor, don’t you think?

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And I even found a song that in my opinion is very suitable for this book.

Прослушать или скачать Evanescence Hello бесплатно на Простоплеер

Okay, want to say no more about this book. Just go read it and come back to discuss it with me 🙂

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I decided to show you my current journal today which I started at the beginning of spring and looks like it’ll last till the end of this year, or maybe not… it depends on how often will I be writing because usually I write a lot in autumn. So my current journal is Daily Moleskine and I have a great pleasure writing in it. The paper is so smooth and nice and I think my handwriting looks even better on Moleskine paper 🙂

So I show you some pages with doodles, clippings and calligraphy. I don’t have a lot of them but here it is.

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I always tend to cover up all that standard information that comes with planners and for that I use big hand-made stickers which I make myself.

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And of course I like to write lots and lots of my favorite quotes in different styles.

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I have a special guest in this journal who keeps all my secrets safe and it’s my beloved Jace whom I drew at the beginning of this Moleskine.

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I write a lot, I can write pages and pages of only text without any decorations and doodles. But sometimes looking through my old school diaries I get inspired to try some stuff again like drawing tattoos and calligraphy which I’ve been really into in school years.

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Sometimes it gets really hard to make photos and not to show a lot of personal text so lighting on some photos is pretty bad 🙁

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Clippings from magazines are always appear in my journals. Can’t help it, love ’em 🙂

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As I mentioned in previous posts I don’t really like drawing in my journals, I prefer my sketchbook for this kinda stuff but you can see some small drawings here and there in my journals nevertheless.

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I used mostly black liners and colorful gel-pens here.

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Found pretty good colorful gel-pens, they work decently on Moleskine paper, not excellent but I can work with it 🙂

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You’ve probably seen some stuff from this journal on my Instagram already 🙂

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Well, here goes my attempt on drawing tattoos again after so many time without practice. I was kinda good back then but not now.

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Some John Green related clippings 🙂 Couldn’t resist after I bought my collector’s box-set with autographed books by him 🙂

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And of course I can’t live without my Korean rabbits stickers 🙂 I put them everywhere and they look so good on anything 🙂

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I will be posting some more interesting pages from this journal once I have enough of them for another post.

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Well,guys, that’s it for today. Here you have it. I hope you enjoy this post because I am really stoked to be back and talk to you and make photos finally 🙂

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I will be happy to see you in the comments here and chat with you especially about books. You know me, I’m always up for a good book chat 🙂

Here is where you can stalk me on other social media:
Instagram: coopik
Twitter: @kcoopik
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/coopik/ (haven’t uploaded most of my photos yet but I will soon)

And as always guys thank you so much for you support, for staying here, commenting and giving me some love! Thank you for your awesomeness!

Love you all!
Hugs and kisses!***
Laters, babies!!!***
P.S. Pancakes doesn’t want to be photographed these days cause of the heat. She’s really suffering in this hot weather. So I ended up with only old photos of her. She quickly deletes from my phone all her selfies which she makes when I’m not around 🙂

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Weekly Something #9 – “Stolen”

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July 8th, 2014 Posted 7:18 pm

Well, here we go again 🙂 Long time no see, guys 🙂 I think I forgot to mention last time that I will be absent pretty much the whole month, but I’ll try to post two or three more times during July, hopefully. Okay, lets jump right in then. Past few weeks my “bookish life” so to speak was revolving around TMI and TID ’cause when I finished “City of Heavenly Fire” I was afraid that I might end up in a huge reading slump. That’s why I decided to re-read TID right away and Oh My God…THE FEELS came rushing back again and the epilogue of “Clockwork Princess”  left me devastated. So my plan obviously backfired right in my face – I ended up with a huge book hangover. Desperate I decided to pick up something familiar, something that I knew I would definitely enjoy and not fall apart again, so I re-read “Stolen” by Lucy Christopher. And wanna share some thoughts about it with you guys 🙂

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When I read this book for the first time I was really hooked because of the writing style – the book itself is a letter from a girl to her kidnapper. That was disturbing but really interesting and refreshing because I never saw anything like it before. And usually I prefer books written in a form of journal or letter so that book was right up my alley 🙂 Main character Gemma was kidnapped by young and attractive guy Ty from airport’s coffee-shop when she was suppose to be flying away with her parents. Basically that’s the main premise. He took her away to the Australian desert, practically into wilderness without a single human soul nearby. Which sounds more like Gemma was in bigger danger of that wild nature than of Ty himself.

I really enjoyed the descriptions of desert, its animals, flora and all of that got me thinking about the way I see Australia. This book changed my point of view on it. Yeah, sometimes long descriptions can be boring but not in this case. They were vivid, exciting and not gonna lie, sometimes really scary! When I read this books it felt like I was watching the movie, every sunset, every star and grain of sand mattered. Without them this book wouldn’t be as atmospheric and beautiful as it was.

I can’t say that Stockholm Syndrome was deeply revealed but it’s there and it has a big part at the end of the book.

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I can definitely say that after reading a bunch of kidnapping books this one stands out as a unique and has its own atmosphere and beauty.

And of course this book is beautiful not only inside but outside as well. It has simple but very appropriate design which I like. It may look boring at first sight but when you read it then you realize that this design is very suitable to the plot.

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And as always they had to ruin it all with that award sticker which can’t be removed 🙁 I’m glad that book won this award but that doesn’t mean that they have to put it in front on the cover…

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The snake at the back of the book is very symbolic.

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And now the main reason why you are here 🙂 You want to see the book naked 🙂 I know you want to, don’t even try to deny 🙂 So here you go!

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I think it’s beautiful even without the dust-jacket! Black and gold and that cool font and the butterfly…Really nice 🙂

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I like how the first pages look like. Those big words and almost nothing else.

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And the snake again…

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Cute butterfly at the beginning of the chapter.

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I think it’s nice how they separated Gemma’s thoughts with this pattern so the text of her letter is not just one big mess.

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All in all I liked this book as much as I liked it reading for the first time and it saved me from landing in a big reading slump so I was able to move on to another series which is crazy guys! I don’t want to spoil you right now about what series I’m reading but I can say that I already addicted to it and I don’t wanna stop 🙂

Sorry that I can’t share my favorite quotes from this book, but I am not at home right now 🙁 We are renovating our apartment and I am currently living in another house so I don’t have all of my books with me which is so depressing 🙁 And of course I don’t remember all of my favorite quotes, I’m not Will Herondale you know 🙂 So today we are left without quotes but here’s some music for ya’all. I don’t know why but this song seems appropriate to me for this book…


Прослушать или скачать Sylver I Want To Be Forgiven бесплатно на Простоплеер

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I decided to show you this old journal of mine today ’cause it’s kind of goes along with the style of the book I guess 🙂 It was difficult to shoot this particular one because there are a lot of personal photos of me and my friends in it, and I don’t know if those people would be comfortable with me showing their faces to you. So I tried to cover up as much as possible and show you only the most interesting parts of it.

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I wrote in this journal back in my high school days in 2005 so there are a lot of memories from my first prom.

I want you to know that I was crazy about tattoos back then. Me and my step-father were planning on doing tats for us in summer so I was obsessed and draw a lot of tattoos, pasted in a lot of clippings from tattoo-magazines 🙂 So be prepared about what you’ll see here 🙂

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This notebook is from ErichKrause as a lot of my old journals are and I really like this company and their products, they’re cheap and good quality and look pretty cool. Of course this one is kinda old and started to fall apart at the spine but it survived a lot so I’m not complaining.

I put a tag from one of my teddies in the spot for the photo, because I love love love Me To You Teddies, I have a big collection of them, around 50 or something 🙂

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When open this journal you’ll see a big photo collage which I covered here and some superman tats which look pretty bad-ass as I say so myself 🙂

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First entry 🙂 Which was written with the purple pen and here goes my advice to you guys! – do not write in your journals with purple  pens because after some time it starts to bleed-through.

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All of the drawings in this journal were made with gel-pens and nothing more, cause back then I didn’t have anything special like I have now 🙂

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By the way, this notebook has a very good paper which allowed me to write on it with gel-pens without a problem. It doesn’t get wet too much and it’s pretty thick but not too thick.

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Look, there is Kurt peeking out from the corner 🙂 Of course we didn’t plan to get portraits on us, me and my poppa, I just glued them in because I liked them and couldn’t draw them myself.

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I went real crazy on this one 🙂 Probably used the whole black pen on it 🙂

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Don’t know why some of the clippings from magazines faded away a little. Probably old magazines were not as good quality as the ones we have now.

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Once again I realized that looking through old journals can be so inspiring…all those old ideas are pretty cool like these black-pen frames 🙂

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As I said those tattoos that I found in magazines and couldn’t recreate myself I just pasted in.

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And of course I love tattoos now, I like to draw them in my journals and sketchbooks but I don’t do this very often now as I did it back then, and I don’t know why exactly.

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So this is where part one of my journal ends and starts part two – summer part, which I’ll show you some day 🙂

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Okay guys, that is all for today. I hope you are not upset with me being absent here but I’ve explained already that I’m in the middle of apartment renovation so I can’t take photos of my books and journals for this month. I really hope you’ll understand 🙂

Here is where you can stalk me on other social media:
Instagram: coopik
Twitter: @kcoopik
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/coopik/ (haven’t uploaded most of my photos yet but I will soon)

And as always guys thank you so much for you support, for staying here, commenting and giving me some love! I really appreciate it!

Love you all!
Hugs and kisses!***
Laters, babies!!!***
P.S. I miss my little Pancakes so much it hurts 🙁 I see her only once a week and that is so not enough for me!

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Weekly Something #8 – “13 reasons why”

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June 13th, 2014 Posted 7:40 pm

What time is it? – Adventure time!  No, it’s not. It’s time for my English version of posts. A lot of people asked me to write in English, because they don’t understand Russian, so here you go.

I’m a shy person in a way, so it took a lot out of me to get out of my comfort zone and write a post in English. Don’t get me wrong, I know English pretty well, I write a lot of English entries in my journals, but those are kinda private and no one is going to criticize my poor grammar there. But in here it is totally a different experience for me. I’m trying here. So don’t judge. Okay? Okay (See what I did there? 🙂 )

This week was pretty intense for me, in reading department I mean. And it’s not because I haven’t read much, it’s quite the opposite. I know, I drive some of you crazy by constantly talking about City of Heavenly Fire. But I can’t help it! I really wanted it, and when I got it, I became so sad, cause I realized that this is it! This is the end of TMI, like legit. For me it is the end of a Shadowhunter era, no more new books to look forward to, no more Jace, which is the most upsetting for me. So I took it slow, I read in tiny portions, savoring each word and each scene. But before I got CoHF I decided to reread one book I really love and this post is all about it.
So the book is “Thirteen Reasons Why” by Jay Asher.

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I read it for the first time a while ago and really enjoyed it. So I was sure I will definitely reread it one day, and that day has come.
So this book is narrated by Clay Jensen who received a box with 7 cassette tapes. Clay starts listening to them and finds out that the voice on those tapes belongs to his classmate and crush Hanna who committed suicide two weeks earlier. Hanna explains why she killed herself and pretty much all of those 7 tapes contain 13 reasons why she did it, and if Clay received them, that means he is one of those reasons.
I get it, that it looks kinda strange, that I decided to reread this particular book exactly when the CoHF has been released and when I’m so vulnerable about it, but hey, I’m telling you don’t worry, I’m not gonna slush my wrists with pages of CoHF when I’m done with it. It’s not gonna happen, may be a lot of tears and very long mourning period, yeah, definitely, but that’s it. I promise 🙂

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Truthfully, I reread “13 reasons why” simply because I love this book, I love the author’s style of writing, the plot. I love to feel those emotions that Clay feels, when he receives tapes and finds out that he is the one of 13 reasons why Hanna died.

13 reasons why I love “13 reasons why”:
1. Jay Asher’s style of writing
2. The idea of cassette tapes and how it’s portrayed in book for us
3. The story of Hanna dying and her reasons are very suspenseful, I might say
4. Clay’s reaction on tapes and how he deals with it
5. I just love love love contemporary books
6. Cassette tapes (so nostalgic)
7. The design of the book
8. Suicide (I read quite a lot of suicide oriented books and most of them are very good)
9. Teenage problems at school, home, with kids their age, with parents and teachers
10. The realization that  you need to have an old cassette player stashed somewhere for exactly these purposes if  some other “Hanna” decides to kill herself and dumps on you such a “great” surprise as old-school cassette tapes
11. This book got me thinking about how would I react if I found out  that I’m someone’s reason to die
12. There are no weird people, there are people who are misunderstood by others
13. You should never be indifferent to people and things that are happening around you
And as usual let’s talk about 7th reason in more details. Yep, this book is beautifully made and I’m glad I bought this edition and not the new silver one, cause this one looks much better and cooler to me.

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The cover is very interesting, which I didn’t notice when I saw it on web-site, because the picture there simply doesn’t give it justice. In real life this cover looks very cool and suits the plot very well.

Did you notice that number 13 is incorporated into title instead of some letters?

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The spine looks so great on my shelf, it’s so colorful, and perhaps it’s the only bright spot on this cover which is totally fine.

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At the back of the dust-jacket is my favorite quote “You can’t stop the future. You can’t rewind the past. The only way to learn the secret is to press play”

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Wanna see the book naked? So here it is without the dust-jacket. Simply black but that shining spine is so neat!

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The inside of the jacket has a little surprise. I love when publishers do that.

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The inside of the jacket is a map of that part of the town where Hanna told Clay to go to explore.

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But the book inside is very well designed too.

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I like how the chapters are done. The first and last ones are different from others.

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The rest of the chapters consists of the number and side of the cassette which Clay is listening at the time.

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No one knows for certain how much impact they have on the lives of other people.

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I like how the author made sure that we will be able to separate Hanna’s voice from Clay’s by putting “play”, “pause”, “stop” signs and using cursive for Hanna’s voice.

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Usually I put some of my favorite songs that go alone with the book, but with this one I don’t necessarily feel any particular song playing in my head while reading it. Perhaps it’s because there are a lot of my own thoughts as well as Hanna’s and Clay’s in my mind. But I found vintage cassette tape specifically for this post’s photos 🙂

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Well, it became my tradition to show you some pages from my old diaries in “weekly something” and for this post I chose my 2013th “lazy” journal. I made post about it when I first began to write in it, and know as it’s completed, I decided to share some ideas from it with you 🙂

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It’s gotten really chunky because I put a lot of stuff in it, but I try to keep it under some heavier journals and it keeps it under control, kinda 🙂
Here is the good example of where to put all that memorable junk that we don’t want to throw out and don’t want to put in our regular journal. I hoard all of that stuff in my “lazy” journal 🙂

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I love monthly pages because sometimes it’s easier just to write one or two words about my day and put some appropriate stickers and it looks fun and cool.

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If I have a boring day and don’t have much to write then I put some pictures from magazines I like or quotes.

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Another big advantage is that you can show these “lazy” journals to others because they are not so heavily packed with private stuff as our ordinary daily journals. I think friends and relatives will be curious to look through these journals, maybe even take some quotes from them.

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I even put hand-made stickers of movies and series that I watch at the moment just to remember someday of what I watched and liked. And when I buy some really cool books (which happens a lot) I stick something that reminds me of this purchase as well.

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I had the same style of monthly pages in my 2012 Pony Brown, which is so fun to write in.

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After monthly pages go weekly ones where I write short notes about each day or some quotes, interesting information or paste something memorable.

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I print a lot of stickers of pictures and photos I really like for my journals.

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As you can see I put a lot of bits and pieces from my everyday life such as postcards, receipts, tickets, etc.

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What caт I say, I love “Love is…” gum and collect these cute inserts 🙂

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I have friends who like to travel a lot and they always bring or send me something from foreign countries and I like to glue parts of foreign packaging and envelopes in my journals.

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It was supposed to be the end of the world and I made funny note about it just to remember that day 🙂

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Here I wrote the first name that I wanted to choose for my blog “I Prefer Vodka Better”  but then I decided to call it Coopik’s Blog instead 🙂

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I found this idea a long time ago on WeHeartIt and decided to make something similar about my husband and how I love him more than anything I really like in my life. It’s kind of romantic 🙂

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I made this pocket from some clear plastic so I can seethe contents through it.

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I think I put too much of a washi tape over it but that plastic had an ugly lettering on it so I had to cover it. And you know what they say…there is nothing that washi tape couldn’t fix 🙂

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I still from time to time add the new pieces in this pocket.

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Well, guys, that’s it for now. I hope you liked this post, this book and journal. And I would like to say that no matter how tough and unfair our lives can get sometimes, we have to remember that if we give up, it’s never going to be better. And I think this book “13 reasons why” teaches us exactly it. And we have more than just 13 reasons to live. When it gets unbearable just pick up your journal and write a list of all things that make you feel good, that you enjoy, love and appreciate and that will be your reasons to live, to go on and there will always be more reasons to live than die.

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Here is where you can stalk me on other social media 🙂
Instagram: coopik
Twitter: @kcoopik

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Thank you, guys, for everything!!! You are the best!!!
I will try to post more English posts and rewrite old ones in English too 🙂
Love you all! Hugs and kisses!***
Laters, babies!!!***
P.S. Angry Pancakes is still so cute 🙂

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